Words and Pictures - Beyond Brown Paper

Dr. Charles Brown slides a yellowed piece of cardstock onto a scanner.

Dr. Brown: This is a radio cabinet from 1928...
FX: Scanner noise...
Dr. Brown: Ok, I think we’ve got it now.

Dr. Brown is trim and exuberant.

He’s retired from teaching computer science at Plymouth State University.

But he’s still hard at work on one of the university’s more unusual projects.

In a small room he calls his “hideaway” he’s been using a scanner to make digital copies of some 11 thousand photographs.

The pictures come from the Brown Company, no relation to Dr. Brown.

The Brown Company ran the paper mill in Berlin from 1868 until just after World War 2, but the Collection extends into the 1960’s.

On a good day, Dr. Brown can scan in about 20 photos. He’s just over half-way done.

Dr. Brown: So far, as of this morning, I’ve put in 2,418 hours in just under two years. I started the scanning back at the end of September 2006.
Sean: And when do you think you’ll be done?
Dr. Brown: I’m hoping for early 2010.

After he scans the images, they’re put on the Beyond Brown Paper website. .

But that’s not the end of the story - or even the main point of the website:

Catherine Amidon: What interests me in particular about this project is that it’s not a photo database – it’s an exhibition. And it’s an exhibition that invites the oral history process into it.

That’s Catherine Amidon, Director of the Karl Drerup Gallery at PSU.

She’s been a driving force behind the project.

What she’s excited about is that Beyond Brown Paper encourages people, wherever they live, to do more than just look at the black and white images.

If they recognize someone, or something, they can leave a note in a space provided below the photo, clarifying a person or object.

Casey Bisson designed the Scriblio technology that allows people to take part in this oral history project.

Casey Bisson: …... One of the best ones was where one of the people who had worked in the mills says “That is-” and they give a name. But they’re not sure and they’re not sure if the spelling is correct. And then a few comments later someone else writes: “That is my uncle and that is his name and that is how it’s spelled.” And so there are these family connections that people are identifying, certainly members of their families if not themselves.
Catherine Amidon: Actually, item 718 is the one that has the incredible dialogue of people talking about the two men in the picture.

There are photos of accidents, photos of experiments, photos of men and horses in the woods in the snow.

Of broken tools, of dismantled motors.

Of calendars, notes, chalkboards, shop windows.

Photographs of people walking casually over the log-jammed river as though it was a very wide wooden street.

Of the lunchrooms, of the executives, of the bowling teams.

But why?

Why was the Brown Company so interested in taking photos of itself?

Catherine Amidon says people like to document what they’re doing.

Catherine: Taking pictures of people at work and people doing certain things comes out of a long tradition of the drawing of tradesmen and working in fields and such practices - and so it is a part of a continuity in the arts.

While the practice may have been common, Alice Staples, the project archivist, notes that the Brown Company’s hobby was not typical:

Alice Staples: I think it’s very unique. Some of the earlier documentation talks about the uniqueness of the collection in that respect, that not many industries have documented themselves so well.

Steve Barba is with Plymouth State University.

He thinks the reason for the collection’s uniqueness lies in the Brown Company’s relationship with Berlin.

Steve Barba: There was no separation from the business of the Brown Paper Company and the community of Berlin. It was one and the same. And that’s why this is such a powerful documentation.

He compares it to a family photographing itself
in an effort to keep track of ourselves and our things.

Our lives and experiences.

Who we are.

And while the collection has thousands of photos, not much is known about the photographers.

Alice Staples is certain about one of them, and Steve Barba has suspicions about another:

Alice: There was a photographer named Victor Beaudoin who worked for the Brown Company from the 30’s up until to the 60’s – so many, many of these photographs were taken by Victor Beaudoin.
Steve: I suspected that many of the photos were Guy Shorey’s because he is very well known in this country as a photographer and he lived in Berlin.
Sean: Have you looked over the photos and felt like, “This is a Guy Shorey photo...”?
Steve: Yes. I mean, my impression is that that photo right there is a Guy Shorey photo.

Barba points to a wide-shot landscape that shows an intricate black-line of ironwork, telephone poles and bridges.

It’s downtown Berlin circa 1928.

The mill smokestacks fume, logs litter the Androscoggin and the snowy mountains stand half-erased in the background.

It occurs to me later that this photo of Berlin and the radio cabinet that Dr. Brown scanned for me are both from 1928.

And when I look at this photo of Berlin again, later at home, I imagine that radio cabinet hidden from view behind the tiny windows of the distant apartments, playing something appropriate for the time – like Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust.

MUSIC: Stardust, Hoagy Carmichael.

As you explore the website, these kinds of associations begin to create a feeling for this gone-away world – and begin to bring it back.

Dr. Brown:

Dr. Brown: There was one photo in particular, May 11, 1945, that I remember. Now I remember May 10, 1945 was a Sunday - it was Mother’s Day. And over on the other side of Winnipesaukee we had 10 inches of wet snow. That was May! And I remember the storm cause I went out and I played in it! It must have been going South to North because Berlin had a picture – May 11, 1945! So yes, there are things that I do relate to.

The Beyond Brown Paper Project’s interactive online exhibition brings pictures and words together in way that can only be described as a reunion.

This reunion will have a public viewing on October 15th when PSU’s Karl Drerup Gallery will exhibit more than 30 enlargements at

And just like the website, visitors will be invited to leave a comment if they recognize a friend, a relative, or even themselves.

For NHPR News, I’m Sean Hurley