PORTLAND, Maine —More than 50 years ago, in 1971 and ’72, Mark Rockwood was on a mission as he roamed the city, camera in hand, looking for pictures.
“I was a janitor at the time but I was determined to become a photographer,” Rockwood said. “I just needed to shoot.”
And he did, first pointing his lens at what was right in front of him: A rich tableau of kid characters hanging out, playing games and smoking cigarettes on the then-gritty streets of Munjoy Hill, where he also lived. In those years, while learning his photographic trade, Rockwood ended up documenting the lives of children left to their own devices on the sidewalks of a city still untouched by gentrification or the glossy varnishing effects of high-end condos and out-of-state money.
Now, with a long, successful commercial photography career largely behind him serving clients including Orvis, LL Bean and Brookstone, Rockwood has moved back to the Hill and is exhibiting those early photos — which helped launch his photographic life — for the first time.
The series of nine huge portraits are on the wall at The End, a suitably working-class watering hole at the foot of Munjoy Hill, until Oct. 3.
Sitting at the bar on Wednesday, Rockwood, 74, said he first began approaching kids because they were easy going and patient with him as he mastered his craft.
“I was scared of adults. I didn’t have the guts to face that kind of judgment,” he said. “Kids didn’t have any of that.”
One photo shows a pair of scruffy boys, shirts untucked, standing in the middle of an oiled-stained street. Wearing bell bottoms and smiling, one leans on the other’s shoulder. Both are smiling, they’re clearly at ease and definitely buddies. Behind the boys, giant mid-20th century gas guzzling cars are pulled up to the curb.
Another fascinating image depicts a boy standing in an unpaved lot somewhere on Munjoy Hill. An asphalt-sided apartment building looms to the left and a pile of dirt does the same on the right. Above the child, clothes dry on a rotating laundry rack set against a pale sky. The boy is holding a long stick like a fishing pole.
“Who knows what he was thinking,” Rockwood said. “Any object can create a world for you when you’re a kid.”
The haunting photo that gets the most attention from viewers shows two apparently teenage girls smoking cigarettes in front of a chain link fence. A bit of garbage is visible behind the fence. The girls’ shirts are short, revealing their navels, their hair long and straight. Their eyes are locked on the photographer, revealing both open and reticent faces.
“They were in that hinterland between childhood and adulthood,” Rockwood said.
He also thinks he sees his former self mirrored in the photo. Rockwood reckons the girls, like all teenagers, were trying to figure out who they were and what kind of adults they wanted to become. At the same time, Rockwood, who was then just 22 and not much older then them, was trying to define his future life path through photography.
“I think it delves up everyone’s childhood, those echoes and ghosts,” he said.
Ben Bazi, who owns and tends bar at The End, said reaction to the photos has been totally positive.
“Even though they’re not necessarily happy pictures,” Bazi said. “People can relate, even if they don’t remember back then. They have parents. They have grandparents.”
After making pictures of kids on Munjoy Hill in those early days, Rockwood moved on to the Parkside Neighborhood around Mellen Street and also on Peaks Island, where he lived for a short time. Those photos, along with other kid pictures he took in other cities, are included in a small monograph Rockwood had printed called “Street Play.” He’s currently looking to get it published.
But for now, he said, he’s thrilled to be showing his Munjoy Hill photos not far from where they were made.
“It’s been on my bucket list for years,” Rockwood said. “It’s meaningful. It’s proof that I did something, that I was there.”
