Shortly I will join a friend for dinner at The Old Dock. We will eat, drink, and catch up. We will observe the ferry coming and going, passengers embarking and disembarking. Crossing Lake Champlain will become the backdrop to our conversation, an audible and visual reminder that Essex serves as a gateway between New York and Vermont.
My mind drifts to a snapshot acquired at auction. Ostensibly captured 90 years ago last month, this cinematic scene may well document the passage between Essex and Charlotte. Perhaps Cumberland Head and Grand Isle. Identity unknown to me, I’m struck by the local relevance suggested by the caption beneath the photograph, as well as the name of the lifeboat.  and I’m inevitably, irresistibly drawn into the allure of liminality.
Lake Crossing, July 1935
Who recorded this moment, captioned and dated it, preserved the photograph? And who was the young lady with a confident, subtle smirk forever frozen between shores?
This liminal moment — between shores, between eras, and between youth and adulthood — blurs physical and temporal passage, inviting the viewer to consider historic and cultural shifts.
If the date is correct, then this photograph was recorded between World War I and World War II, perhaps an explanation for the outfit, especially the top and color, which appears to be inspired by a navy uniform. And despite being in the middle of the Great Depression, the image doesn’t suggest hardship. In fact, everything about the photograph, including the young lady’s gesture, evokes leisure and somewhat jaunty optimism. And this seems to highlight another transition at play when the ferryboat passage was documented. The young woman appears to be unchaperoned (except, perhaps, for the photographer), and she’s dressed casually for comfort (rather than modesty). Both suggest the loosening of social norms for women during the interwar period. And then there’s the growing accessibility of cameras by the 1930s, making photography increasingly accessible, therefore becoming a popular way of documenting vacations, milestones, and other meaningful mementos.
This simple snapshot memorializes not only a Lake Champlain crossing by ferry, but bunches of in-betweenness. Liminality. Transition. Transformation. Flux. These themes remain omnipresent almost a century later. At Rosslyn. In our conversation at The Old Dock. Everywhere.
What do you think?