Arriving Home
A Love Letter to the State of Maine
Before I came to Maine, I had lived in Co. Cork and Co. Kerry, Ireland for 6 years. I had traveled a lot and photographed in many countries around the world, so I was comfortable being in different cultures. But I could never quite fit in on the Emerald Isle. The people were friendly, I enjoyed the scenery and many aspects of the local culture, but I never felt completely at home.
Most of the people around me still lived in the little town in which they were born. Many of them considered each other family, and a three-hour trip to Dublin was like seeing the world. Because most of Ireland’s population is Irish, foreign residents are understandably mistaken for tourists. I often heard the question “So, when are you leaving?” And the cultural mismatch I felt made socializing – beyond exchanging casual greetings – very difficult.
It became clear to me that I would not be happy staying in Ireland long term. I had considered moving to Tuscany, Italy but thought it would be better suited for retirement, which wasn’t on my horizon anytime soon. I thought about Norway, and, while the landscape was stunning and people seemed very happy there, it also felt very remote. After considering many other places I was close to settling for Paris, France. It was accessible for my frequent travel and had a lively contemporary art scene that I would have enjoyed being part of. But the French culture was hard to adapt to, and the language barrier didn’t exactly make this easier – even though I both had learned to speak a little bit of French in school – so I decided to lay the topic to rest for a while.
My first trip to Maine was a last-minute decision. After many years in Ireland without snow, I was looking forward to experiencing real winter again. I decided to travel to New England for Christmas and New Year to spend time with family. I didn’t know much about the area, and many places in Vermont and New Hampshire were already booked by the time I made my holiday arrangements, so I just picked a little house in mid-coast Maine that could accommodate a small group of people.
Landing in Boston and driving up the East Coast was a great experience. I had not visited this part of the United States before the trip and I loved the traditional New England building style. It reminded me of Germany. Everything felt tidy and proper, but not as buttoned-up as I remember my birth country.
I loved how the landscape changed driving up the coast and how Maine seemed to become a little wilder the further north I got. After two and a half hours in the car I lost cellphone reception (I was roaming) and drove through beautiful little fishing villages along the Maine coast. Another hour later I arrived at my little house, which was completely remote, directly by the sea, and welcomed me with a warm stove and a basement full of firewood.
One of my favorite memories from this trip was watching my first snowfall in years. I sat by the window for hours like a little kid, admiring how the snow flakes sugarcoated the pine trees. I remember feeling so at peace. It felt like arriving home after years of searching.
The following three weeks were one of the most beautiful and memorable of my whole life. I completely fell in love with the area and spent every waking minute outside exploring. I hiked in the freezing cold and couldn’t seem to get enough of the elements. The rugged beauty of the state was astounding to me. I drove up to Acadia National Park to hike and photograph the wild coastline, warming up with chili and cornbread at a local diner afterward. In Maine I found everything I loved about many of the places I had traveled, all in one spot.
I love simplicity. It’s what I always admired most about Italy and other Mediterranean countries. The people in Maine seemed so friendly and uncomplicated, so hard working, humble, unfussy and straightforward. Everyone took so much pride in their work, but there was no pretentiousness. The encounters I had felt warm and welcoming. Most of all, nobody ever asked me when I was leaving, even though it was obvious that I was not from here.
Christmas went by, New Year passed, and I headed back home to Europe. Even as I adjusted back to the normalcy of everyday life in Ireland, I kept talking about my experience in Maine. The feelings and memories stuck with me. Something inside of me felt like it had clicked into place. I knew, without a discussion or weighing out pro and cons, that I had found a place where I belong – a place for me to settle down and call home.
Many of my friends from the US were excited about my decision to move closer, but almost immediately raised concerns about the harsh and unforgiving winters in Maine. They worried that I was seeing my new home through rose-colored glasses. They were right, but I had fallen in love with Maine during the offseason and I trusted my gut feeling, having experienced before how important it is to follow your heart – even when choosing where to live.
The next months were very busy and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the logistics of moving overseas. Besides deciding what to bring and what to leave, I didn’t have an American passport and needed to go through an immigration process. Finding a house in the US while living in Europe turned out to be complicated. But I finally signed a lease in August, rented a storage unit for a few personal belongings that didn’t fit into my suitcases, sold the majority of what I owned and booked one-way flight for early November. I was excited and nervous. Moving to the US was a huge step and there were a lot of unknowns.
I have always been attracted to seemingly mundane scenes and finding beauty & poetry in everyday life with my photography. I usually don’t plan ahead for my work, what interests me most about taking pictures is responding to the world around me. I had often thought about how I could combine my love for fine art, travel, and street photography into a personal, long-term photography project. I decided to document the impressions and experiences of my first year in the US with one picture per day for an entire year, and release a book with my work.
I knew I wouldn’t get to pick and choose how my days looked, and that very often they would be dull and uneventful and I wouldn’t be able to make a decent photograph that would be worth anything to anyone but myself. But that wasn’t what the project was about – I wanted it to be a true record of my life: capturing real moments and memories, the good and the bad times. I wanted to photograph how it feels to move continents and get comfortable in a different culture, to document my feelings and personal experiences along the way.
I shoot on film exclusively and I work with a minimalist approach to gear: one camera, one lens, and natural light. I spent a lot of time trying to decide how exactly to approach this challenge technically. After weeks of consideration, I settled for shooting the project with my Leica M, a 50mm lens, and classic Tri-X black & white film.
The reasons were simple: I needed a camera that’s reliable, portable, and fairly quick. I decided for B&W film because I knew I would be shooting day in, day out throughout an entire year – through rainy and sunny days, and through all four seasons. I was hoping for a timeless look that would work across many different situations, tying the resulting body of work together and giving it cohesiveness.
I also just love classic black and white film. I think B&W relates to reading a book like color relates to watching a movie. Both are wonderful in their own way, but when you are reading a book you have to imagine part of the story. That’s the same with B&W film, it’s suggestive. The viewer connects to the story and becomes part of it. With color, your imagination doesn’t need to fill in all of the blanks because everything is already there.
My trusty 50-year-old Leica never let me down. It went through a war in those 12 months, and, besides constantly hanging on my shoulder and being bashed around sometimes when I wasn’t paying attention, it survived being snowed on, frozen to a solid block of ice, and forgotten in the car at the beach on a hot summer day.
I also decided to journal every day to keep a record of my days, with pen and paper following the analog approach I love for my photography. This was one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever photographed, and there were many days where I wanted to quit. What I learned along the way is irreplaceable to me. It felt like 12 years of photographic development compressed into 12 months.
This project was also an artistic exercise. It was about authenticity for me and about accepting my personal limitations, repetition, and imperfection. All of my photographs during the year just “happened”. Nothing was planned in advance. I was able to capture these photos just because I brought my camera with me everywhere, every single day. And sometimes, because I felt brave enough to ask a complete stranger for their portrait, and I didn’t get chased away. Not every image I took was great, but had I not done this project, the ones I would have missed along the way would have broken my heart. I still carry a camera with me every single day.
Since I moved to the US two and a half years ago, I have never looked back. Maine has been everything that I had hoped for and so much more. I’ve made many friends and learned what a vivid art scene the mid-coast area has. Sitting in a little cafe during a blizzard with the locals is still one of my favorite things to do. That’s how I met my good friend and fellow photographer Gary Briechle, who comes to his favorite cafe almost every day and paints. Or Ryan the barista, who is one of the most talented actors I’ve met in my life.
From day one I had the impression that the people in Maine have a very European sense for community, but without the competitiveness I had experienced across the pond. When I went photographing in a blizzard once and slipped into a ditch on the way home, it didn’t take but 5 minutes for a few guys with a pickup truck to show up, pull me out, and vanish as quickly as they appeared. People here look out for each other.
I have traveled to and photographed in more than two dozen states in America now and experienced much of the beauty of this wonderful country. From New York to Los Angeles, from Acadia to Death Valley, from the northwest to the deep south. I had great experiences everywhere I went. Due to my profession, I often seek out situations that many people would find uncomfortable. I’ve approached people from many different backgrounds and never did a single person make me feel misplaced or unwelcome. The opposite.
Many countries in Europe are very conscious about their nation and you’re often left on the outside if you’re not born there. While Americans can be proud and patriotic, they were always inclusive. Everyone I talked to since my arrival was curious about where I am from and shared part of their family history with me after I told them. Because everyone here came from somewhere at some point in history and people can relate, either directly through their own experience or through stories that their parents or grandparents shared with them.
It is sometimes said that people in Maine don’t like people “from away,” but this hasn’t been my experience. Maybe it only pertains to other Americans (or it has to do with New York or Massachusetts license plates? I can’t seem to figure it out yet), but every single person I’ve met here made me feel at home and welcome. I’ve made more friends in the US in the past two years than I did in Europe in the five years leading up to our move. I’ve had more opportunities come my way because Americans want to see you succeed if you work hard and make an effort to be part of the culture. I feel that it’s truly American to help each other and approach everything with a “there’s enough pie for everyone” mentality. I’ve talked to so many people, from lobstermen to business owners to working artists and from all spectrums of the political scale. I have not experienced anything but warmheartedness.
Maybe that’s easier for me to see with an outside perspective. Once you leave your home country and live in a different place, you gain a lot of perspective on your own culture and upbringing. To acclimate to a new country you need to learn to be tolerant and open minded and understand that how you learned normal growing up is not the same as normal for everyone else. Because you are shaped so much by these experiences, you never truly fit in again in your own culture when you return home. It’s an experience that changes you forever.
My American dream is made of the people from this country, the local communities, the warmheartedness I feel here in my home state. My America accepts people that don’t fit in because at some point, most people didn’t fit in. But there were always others welcoming them, embracing them and offering a place to stay, to be safe and to rest. That’s exactly what I have experienced and I feel a deep sense of belonging here in Maine, more than I’ve ever felt, even in the county in which I was born. For that and so much more, dear Maine, I am very thankful.
– Johnny
A selection of prints from this series is available for purchase.
A version of this photo essay was featured in Maine The Way – Issue 02: Spring.
All images were taken with a Leica M2 and a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2 on Kodak Tri-X 400.