the Needs of the Many

the Needs of the Many

I started out with the intention of updating and re-addressing an older piece I did this summer called "Quabbin." Periodically I do go back and try to re-edit pieces that I wasn't entirely happy with, or ones I thought were a good idea bogged down by some compositional flaws. "Quabbin" was the first time I attempted to blend water elements I had recently shot with a "dry" model shot. The water was from a day trip to the Quabbin Reservoir, not far from my home. This was a man-made water supply built for the city of Boston and the surrounding area in the 1930s and 1940s due to the increasing population and the need for a water source closer to Boston.

The price of this water supply, speaking in terms other than money, was four entire towns and their occupants forcibly removed from their homes.

I started to rip apart the original piece layer by layer and address the parts of it that I was unhappy with. Basically, it was too contrasty and I was not happy with the color palette overall. The biggest issue I had was the tight crop of the model - the whole composition felt too claustrophobic. Anyway, as I was trying to fix it, I decided to replace the model shot entirely. The original concept was a human representation of the "spirit" of Quabbin - namely, the Native Americans that were the original settlers of the area. I covered the model with a texture of a stone wall I shot at the Quabbin reservoir, and he was to represent both the displaced peoples of the area as well as the Native Americans who were buried there - their bodies were never disinterred and moved, unlike the 7000 graves of "Americans" that were moved. A tall order for one image, and looking at it all these months later, I don't think it conveyed my intent at all.

I also wanted a town in the shot too, or at least a suggestion of one. It is hard to convey the gradual flooding of a town when there is not one readily available. In any event, as I was ripping the original one to shreds, it became so altered, so unrecognizable to the original, there really was no point in calling it a re-edit any longer. No, this was a new one, perhaps connected to the subject matter, but a new one just the same. One of the hallmarks of the original that i wanted to maintain here was that all the photos used to build the composition were taken at Quabbin. This is true of the new one as well, with the exception of the ladders and keys, which were shot in my basement studio space. The tree line, the water, the steeples, even the antenna and the foreground foliage were shot on the same day trip.

This one is meant to be more in line with forceable relocation as its central theme, more than the flooding itself, albeit in a metaphorical manner. The strings are meant to show the connections to home. The suggestion of blood in the water symbolizing the toil and labor one puts into building a home. The four keys are one for each town now wiped off the map. Imagine what it must have been like for the residents of those towns to look, years later, on their old home towns, now underwater. The towns in question fought the government over this relocation all the way to the Supreme Court, to no avail.

In searching for a title for this new, re-imagined version of "Quabblin," I kept thinking of a famous line of dialogue from Star Trek, originally delivered by the emotionless, pragmatic and logical Mr. Spock:

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

a Before and After version of this image can be seen on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/MichaelBilottaPhotography

model: Gilberto Mendez