It seems logical to think that over the last 100 years, an increased concentration of people and development on the Seacoast would be reflected upon the physical landscape. While that might be the case along Hampton Beach, where vacation homes and cheap arcades have eclipsed the shore’s natural beauty, the opposite is true of Rye’s Odiorne Point, which remains comparatively unspoiled.

Several houses once stood at Odiorne. In 1942, the federal government bought the land, razed the houses and established a military fort to protect Portsmouth Harbor. After WWII, the fort was no longer needed and the property was eventually converted into a state park. It’s now a forested pocket of land sewn into the cloak of development that covers the rest of the Seacoast.

When people visit Odiorne State Park today, they explore the same forests, walk the same beaches and express wonder at the same ocean as the residents who lived there 100 years ago: The past and present are connected through the landscape. A new photography exhibit at Odiorne’s Seacoast Science Center reveals this connection. “Twice-seen Images” opened in the Learning Studio Gallery with a reception on Jan. 20, and will remain up until March 16. Using digital technology, photographer Richard Moore merged old photographs of Odiorne Point with contemporary pictures of the same scenes.

One of the resulting images shows a modern man fishing on what is now a deserted beach. In the background, several houses from the past stand in close quarters. In this location, development has worked in reverse—where there once were houses there is now only nature.

“We’re extremely fortunate and it’s extremely unusual that there is this public, undisturbed property on the Seacoast,” said Moore, a conservationist and amateur photographer. “It would be easy to go out and do then-and-now photographs that emphasized the contrast, the development on the Seacoast. What I did observe was the similarity—finding people finding solitude on the coast. We know about how things have grown. Maybe we don’t know about how things have stayed the same.”
The story of “Twice-seen Images” began several years ago, when Moore came across several 19th century photographs of Pawtuckaway Mountain taken by photographer George Goodrich. A frequent visitor to the state park in Nottingham, Moore recognized the locations of several photographs.

“There is one place, actually, next to this old man’s farmhouse, where you can see an old tree, which is now a wonderful, huge black walnut tree,” he said. The idea of merging his own, fresh images with old photographs seemed like a creative way to see how the landscape had changed over time.

“After I finished with the Pawtuckaway work, I thought, ‘Where else could I go where there would be an interesting texture of history?’” Moore said.

He started pawing his way through collections in the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Rye Public Library, the Rye Historical Society and other keepers of old records. He reviewed hundreds of photographs, many of them depicting Odiorne Point, and eventually selected the two dozen or so images now hanging in the Seacoast Science Center.
“As the French say, ‘You have to milk the cow a lot to get a little cheese,’” Moore said.

One of the images shows a uniformed state park employee leaning on a weed whacker. His stance mirrors that of Ralph Edwin, a Seacoast resident who lived on Odiorne Point 100 years ago. He was photographed leaning on a pitchfork in front of a stately white home. It’s obvious Moore staged the photograph. “I tried doing more of that and it didn’t work very well. I’m not a director,” he said.

In another photograph, a man pushing a small child in a wooden cart stands in the foreground. In the background, a woman in brightly colored clothing is jogging while pushing a modern day stroller.  

To create the images, Moore scanned the old photographs and made them into a series of eight-by-10 transparencies. He brought the transparencies out to Odiorne to help frame his shots.

“Back at the computer, I started laying one image on top of the other and seeing what I had. I did a ton of digital darkroom work,” he said.

Merging the two photographs with Photoshop afforded Moore all kinds of creative flexibility. He was able to switch emphasis between the old photographs and the new images. In some images, the old photographs are stronger, while in others the new photograph is more apparent. The contrast shows how each generation has had an equally strong connection to the surrounding landscape. “Who are the ghosts here?” he asked about the images.  
 
“Who are the ghosts here?” he asked about the images.  

Will future generations retain a similar connection to the landscape? Will the landscape look any different in another 100 years? “Yeah—very wet. The Seacoast Science Center will probably be underwater,” Moore said. “But I have no idea. I tend to think it’s going to be unrecognizably different, but what I’ve learned through the ‘Twice-seen Images’ is, some things don’t change.”

For more information on the exhibit, go to www.seacoastsciencecenter.org.