The book covers assignments Gordon Parks made in Maine during February and August 1944 for Standard Oil New Jersey. It was the largest oil company in the US and had a poor reputation; to counter this, they created a PR photo division under the direction of Roy Stryker. Parks had worked for him when he ran the FSA/OWI up to 1943.
The assignments covered visits to Somerville, Pittsfield, Portland, Windsor, Augusta and Skowhegan, in these towns SONJ had oil installations and gas stations (Colonial Beacon Oil/Esso). The title of the book relates to the general store and gas station run by Herklas Brown in Somerville (twenty-seven photos). These and others in the book concentrate on people, either doing their jobs like the Portland Flying School in Pittsfield where Navy pilots were trained (ten photos) or folks enjoying the Windsor fair (thirteen) and farming in Showhegan (eleven). All of the photos reveal Parks ability to capture the wartime feel of these locations and people.
As this is a Steidl book, there are worthwhile additions. An excellent fourteen-page essay by Frank Goodyear about Parks work in Maine, eight pages of contact boards with thumbnail prints, reproductions of nine pages from 'Flash photography' book written by Parks where he explains his use of flash lights for some of the Maine photos, the cover of Pathfinder (a Washington, DC weekly) with a page about Herklas Brown.
The ninety-odd photos in the book have not been published before and they are a celebration of Gordon Parks creativity.
UK
