Article in the Nashua Hippo
John Andrews wrote a nice article about me and the 'Nashua' book (last year -- sorry it took so long to post this!) The text from the article is below if the hippo link is down.. enjoy!
Pictures of you
Visual history of city published
By John "jaQ" Andrews jandrews@hippopress.com
Photographer, writer, Gate City Fencing marketeer and one-time musician Robin Ann Peters recently released Nashua: Then & Now from Arcadia Publishing. It shows images of the city from early cameras and Peters’ own photographs in the 21st century. She signed copies at the Taste of Downtown Nashua June 7 and will also appear at the June 17 Art Walk, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Nashua Historical Society, 5 Abbott St., and 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Hunt Memorial Building, 6 Main St.
I did notice a lot of the pictures, it looked intentional, were taken from the same angles to kind of get the same image of the building, but you could very easily see what had changed around it.
That right there was key in creating the pictures. Going from, I’d say, there’s probably 85 to 90 percent are exact, or as exactly precise as I could be with the lens ... And then there were other considerations ... stuff that made me move. Like, now there’s a huge obstruction. Okay, I’m sorry, but you really don’t want a picture of this giant tree. I know it’s the same spot, you can see the building behind it, but I’m not publishing a tree.
There’s a very, very, very intentional, in the Streets section, progression from City Hall to Railroad Square. So when you read the book, when you turn the page, you’re walking down the street.
The Then & Now series, that’s a series from Arcadia, right? Did you pitch the Nashua idea to them?
No, this is crazy. I wrote www.nashuahistory.com. That was 2002. I got an e-mail, and this e-mail was from one of the girls in the publishing office in Portsmouth. She sent it to, like, info@nashuahistory.com, saying, “Is there anyone in your organization that would be interested in writing this book for us?”
Your organization?
My organization of one. Right? Am I going crazy now? First of all, not to be too modest or anything, but the Nashua History site is pretty big. And it looks like probably a lot of people worked on it, and to be honest, I do have a lot of people out there that help me create it, but nobody did it. I did it.
There’s one [photo] on page 60 where the then and now pictures, the cars are in almost the same position.
I have two like that. That one and the Hunt Building ... yeah, it’s [page] 34. If you look in the background, it’s identical.
How long did you have to compile the whole book?
Initially, it was a shorter amount of time, but because of the crash of a computer, I got an extension. It was supposed to be July [2005], I think, because I wanted to have it out for the Holiday Stroll. Well, it turned out, I passed it in December of 2005, so it’s come out now.
How did you gather all the old photographs?
My first stop was the [Nashua] Historical Society, because I really thought that that would be the best place to go. I thought they’d have the most. I heard about the library, and I wanted to go to the library, but I just said, I’ll start at the Historical Society. Maybe I won’t have to go anywhere else. I had several meetings with them, and everybody was wonderful ... I had criteria, I actually went in there with goals.
You didn’t just go in and say, “Show me what you got”?
Right, it wasn’t like that. Although it did turn into that ... at the very end, I was a little frantic, because I had lost a whole chapter. I couldn’t publish it because it didn’t fit in with the context of the book. It was all about people, and it didn’t make sense — then people and now people?
But I’m not satisfied, because they don’t have everything that I want. And I’m like, I’m in big trouble. I’m in huge trouble! This is not good. I was freaking out ...
[Years ago,] Frank Mooney, we put up a fence at his house, and my cousin came back to Gate City Fence with an envelope. He says, “The guy whose job I was just working on, he told me to give this to you. He asked, ‘Your cousin is the history girl, right?’” So I open it up, I’m not kidding, this [Nashua Gazette newspaper] is from 1834. I’m holding a piece of gold right now ... He had put his card in it too. Nashua Collectibles, always collecting, distributing, whatever. I just hung onto it, because I’m solely doing the Web site at that point. I get this book offer, I go to the Historical Society, I get my pictures from them ... I said, “You know what? I’m gonna get that guy’s number. I’m calling that guy” ... it was like a gold mine! That was it! I said, “Okay, I don’t need anything else! This guy has everything. I could write five, six, seven books just right here.”
So that was step two on the photography, collect pictures. And I was doing really good, but then I got told, I actually submitted, and they said you have to get rid of that whole chapter because it just doesn’t work.
The people one?
Yeah ... so then I said, “You know what? I’m gonna go to the library. I know they have pictures there, I just have to find out where they are.”
Do you keep taking pictures of the city?
Oh yeah, yeah. Lately, I’ve kind of cooled down, because, oh my gosh, I have a lot of archives already. So right now I’m doing events, because that’s fun.
Pictures of you
Visual history of city published
By John "jaQ" Andrews jandrews@hippopress.com
Photographer, writer, Gate City Fencing marketeer and one-time musician Robin Ann Peters recently released Nashua: Then & Now from Arcadia Publishing. It shows images of the city from early cameras and Peters’ own photographs in the 21st century. She signed copies at the Taste of Downtown Nashua June 7 and will also appear at the June 17 Art Walk, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Nashua Historical Society, 5 Abbott St., and 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Hunt Memorial Building, 6 Main St.
I did notice a lot of the pictures, it looked intentional, were taken from the same angles to kind of get the same image of the building, but you could very easily see what had changed around it.
That right there was key in creating the pictures. Going from, I’d say, there’s probably 85 to 90 percent are exact, or as exactly precise as I could be with the lens ... And then there were other considerations ... stuff that made me move. Like, now there’s a huge obstruction. Okay, I’m sorry, but you really don’t want a picture of this giant tree. I know it’s the same spot, you can see the building behind it, but I’m not publishing a tree.
There’s a very, very, very intentional, in the Streets section, progression from City Hall to Railroad Square. So when you read the book, when you turn the page, you’re walking down the street.
The Then & Now series, that’s a series from Arcadia, right? Did you pitch the Nashua idea to them?
No, this is crazy. I wrote www.nashuahistory.com. That was 2002. I got an e-mail, and this e-mail was from one of the girls in the publishing office in Portsmouth. She sent it to, like, info@nashuahistory.com, saying, “Is there anyone in your organization that would be interested in writing this book for us?”
Your organization?
My organization of one. Right? Am I going crazy now? First of all, not to be too modest or anything, but the Nashua History site is pretty big. And it looks like probably a lot of people worked on it, and to be honest, I do have a lot of people out there that help me create it, but nobody did it. I did it.
There’s one [photo] on page 60 where the then and now pictures, the cars are in almost the same position.
I have two like that. That one and the Hunt Building ... yeah, it’s [page] 34. If you look in the background, it’s identical.
How long did you have to compile the whole book?
Initially, it was a shorter amount of time, but because of the crash of a computer, I got an extension. It was supposed to be July [2005], I think, because I wanted to have it out for the Holiday Stroll. Well, it turned out, I passed it in December of 2005, so it’s come out now.
How did you gather all the old photographs?
My first stop was the [Nashua] Historical Society, because I really thought that that would be the best place to go. I thought they’d have the most. I heard about the library, and I wanted to go to the library, but I just said, I’ll start at the Historical Society. Maybe I won’t have to go anywhere else. I had several meetings with them, and everybody was wonderful ... I had criteria, I actually went in there with goals.
You didn’t just go in and say, “Show me what you got”?
Right, it wasn’t like that. Although it did turn into that ... at the very end, I was a little frantic, because I had lost a whole chapter. I couldn’t publish it because it didn’t fit in with the context of the book. It was all about people, and it didn’t make sense — then people and now people?
But I’m not satisfied, because they don’t have everything that I want. And I’m like, I’m in big trouble. I’m in huge trouble! This is not good. I was freaking out ...
[Years ago,] Frank Mooney, we put up a fence at his house, and my cousin came back to Gate City Fence with an envelope. He says, “The guy whose job I was just working on, he told me to give this to you. He asked, ‘Your cousin is the history girl, right?’” So I open it up, I’m not kidding, this [Nashua Gazette newspaper] is from 1834. I’m holding a piece of gold right now ... He had put his card in it too. Nashua Collectibles, always collecting, distributing, whatever. I just hung onto it, because I’m solely doing the Web site at that point. I get this book offer, I go to the Historical Society, I get my pictures from them ... I said, “You know what? I’m gonna get that guy’s number. I’m calling that guy” ... it was like a gold mine! That was it! I said, “Okay, I don’t need anything else! This guy has everything. I could write five, six, seven books just right here.”
So that was step two on the photography, collect pictures. And I was doing really good, but then I got told, I actually submitted, and they said you have to get rid of that whole chapter because it just doesn’t work.
The people one?
Yeah ... so then I said, “You know what? I’m gonna go to the library. I know they have pictures there, I just have to find out where they are.”
Do you keep taking pictures of the city?
Oh yeah, yeah. Lately, I’ve kind of cooled down, because, oh my gosh, I have a lot of archives already. So right now I’m doing events, because that’s fun.
Labels: 2006, book, hippopress, interview, news
posted by RobinAnn | 7:00:00 PM
