BOWDOIN COLLEGE • April 24, 2024
By 1965, John McKee, who was hired to teach French literature at Bowdoin, had fallen in love with photography and with Maine's beauty. Encouraged by Marvin Sadik, the art museum director at the time, McKee spent the summer driving along the state's ragged coast to take photographs. The black-and-white images revealed raw sewage flowing into the ocean, rusting hulks of cars lining beaches, a rash of “no trespassing” and ”keep out” signs, and commercial billboards blighting landscapes. Exhibited in the 1966 show As Maine Goes at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and published in a catalog, his pictures lent visceral imagery to a swelling environmental movement. This semester, to commemorate and reflect on As Maine Goes, Chris Zhang ’25 and Bowdoin College Museum of Art codirector Frank Goodyear are taking their own road trips to retrace McKee’s footsteps. Their photography project coincides with an exhibition of McKee’s work at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art opening June 28.