Paul Lloyd Sargent lives in Brooklyn part of the time and Syracuse part of the time, but he’s seldom far from the Seaway.
The picture Paul sent is part of a series of photographs begun in 2000. It’s called “Untitled Seaway Studies-2013: BBC Elbe, Summer 2008.”
The essay Paul sent is also a Seaway study, and it reflects just how mixed one’s feelings about the Seaway can be.
Paul’s essay:
I’m an artist. I grew up in Syracuse and now live somewhere between Brooklyn and Wellesley Island. At 38, I have spent at least a part of every one of my years on the St. Lawrence River. I’ve visited many beautiful spots on this earth but none as fitting as this.
I approach the seaway’s 50th anniversary with ambivalence. The child in me, nostalgic for the deep bass rumble of a ship’s engine across the water on an otherwise still August night, does marvel that something so colossal, often from so far away, can float right past my house. My adult self finds this uncanny.
Uncanny is the correct word for it, too, as after all my years of watching these ships pass by, chasing in their wakes, photographing them, even tracking their journeys online while I’m hundreds of miles away, it remains unnatural, so precarious. In fact, I’m old enough to never forget precisely how precarious: like the stains on our docks, stairs, and carpets, I will never scrub the oil of 1976’s horrific spill from my memory. I don’t say any of this lightly. My position on the seaway is nuanced with awe for human engineering alongside an apprehension that humans occasionally undertake great projects to ill consequence.
In the last decade, I have made the River, the Great Lakes, and the seaway the object of my study and the focus of my practice as I attempt to understand and appreciate what is best for this landscape and waterway I love so dearly. I’ve written about the area academically and presented images of the region to audiences in cities like New York and Chicago, whose residents, despite their proximity, can rarely locate the path one would take to paddle to the sea. Throughout this work, the more I read, listen, observe and learn, the more I keep wondering, “What will be left? What will remain for future generations if we’ve been wrong, if humanity’s best intentions have been misguided, and if rivers must flow wild to survive and endure?”
-Paul Lloyd Sargent
Brooklyn, Syracuse, and Wellesley Island, NY
