The Local by Nick Meyer
Franklin County is the least populated county in mainland Massachusetts. Situated at the crossroads of two major highways; One, north/south carrying travelers to and from the larger southern cities. The other East/west, providing a direct route to Boston. The history of the area dates back to before the first settlers, into the American revolution and Civil War, through the industrial revolution and now into the 21st Century drug crisis. Tool factories and paper mills supported the small towns surrounded by pastures and farms until the middle of the twentieth century when the industry moved overseas, leaving a shell of its former self.
People still pass through here on their way to and from the larger northeastern cities, perhaps keeping this place from sinking into record as another industrial town devoured by a culture that no longer needs it.
The same highways that connect the major cities are now the fastest way to move drugs from the south to the north, giving the former industrial towns a new personality.
However, while the current opioid crisis of 2020 is omnipresent, this town has always shown its bruises: An imbalance of poverty and wealth. A lack of identity. A stasis.
I grew up here. This is my town.
Using T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste land” and William Carlos Williams’ “Patterson” as loose templates, I am exploring the rough topography of my hometown: Franklin County, Massachusetts. The resulting photographs are as much a love letter to a known but unrecognizable place as they are an account of disintegrating histories and small-town troubles.
For 30 years I have watched the landscape shift, not change just shift, caught in its own history but touched by the world passing through. I have seen houses and shops erected, razed, burnt and rebuilt; but for all that trouble an apathy persists
“The Local,” a term that can be used to describe both setting and character, is critical of the deterioration, disregard and metamorphoses of rural America, but still very much in love with the idiosyncrasies and hidden back alleys of places both familiar and strange.
Nick Meyer lives and works in Massachusetts. His forthcoming monograph The Local will be published by MACK this summer.
To view more of Nick’s work, please visit his website.
