Vanishing Beauty | Vermont Photographer Jim Westphalen

In focusing on things that have been buffeted by time and tide, Vermont photographer Jim Westphalen asks viewers to see what is around them with new eyes.

By Mel Allen

Jan 12 2024

“The Fishing Shacks.” Located at Fisherman’s Point in South Portland, Maine, these three lonely shacks are all that remain of the original wharf that was constructed by Scottish and Irish settlers who arrived here in 1718. With interior timbers dating back more than 200 years, these shacks predate the city itself. Local volunteers have taken on the continuous process of maintaining the historically significant buildings, which were repaired and repainted in 2023.

Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen

Upon entering the photography studio of Jim Westphalen, which sits down a country lane just off busy Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont, I stopped. A photo titled Ocean Outcrop 2 held me like few images I have seen. And I have seen many. This image from Reid State Park in Georgetown, Maine, occupied much of the wall, and I felt as if I were standing right there, on the sea-slick rocks. That is not an unusual response to a Westphalen photo. There is no glass on the frame. Nothing between the eye and the image. “I want people to sink into the picture,” he says.

I visited Westphalen just a few months after he put the finishing touches on his first documentary film, Vanish: Disappearing Icons of a Rural America. Four years in the making, it follows his passion to create art from the forgotten and mostly unseen structures that once filled the lives of people in a different era: farmhouses, barns, churches, silos, schoolhouses, railroad cars. They are relics he has cherished for decades, searching them out wherever he is—on the coast, in rural New England, out in Western prairies. In the film, we see him peering through the large-format view camera he has carried for 35 years, hands numb from cold and snow; stepping cautiously inside abandoned buildings; being buffeted by windstorms. He will wait for hours until light and shadow converge at just the right moment. He wants to stop time. To let others see what he does: that decay is both poignant and beautiful.

“Ocean Outcrop 2.” Weather, land, and sea flow into one another in this image taken in Maine’s Reid State Park, a photographer’s dream location encompassing nearly 800 acres of diverse topography: sand dunes, sandy beaches, rocky tidal pools, salt marshes, and tidal lagoons.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

“Ormsbee Barnside 1.” Built in 1866, this barn belongs to the Ormsbee family, who first settled in East Montpelier, Vermont, in 1803 and still farm there today. One reason Westphalen decided to make the “Vanish” documentary was to highlight some of the people who worked and lived in the landscapes he photographs. “It’s their stories that give so much more depth to what I do,” he says.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

“Brook Road Farmstead.” Part of Westphalen’s “Somewhere in America” portfolio, this scene was captured in Chelsea, Vermont, a town that defines timelessness: While most places on the National Register of Historic Places are single buildings or memorials, Chelsea’s entire local historical district, including nearly all of the central village, was officially entered into the register in 1983.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

After years as a successful commercial photographer, first in New York and then in Vermont, where he’s lived since the mid-1990s, Westphalen today is a fixture in prominent fine art galleries. Collectors find his work there; others see it on Instagram or in his book, or hear about it via word of mouth, and then seek out his light-filled studio, where they may spend several hours. It is new territory for him. And a prominence he did not chase.

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He traces his life today to something he saw in 1996 near Poultney, Vermont. “I had just moved to Vermont, and I saw this old house that was being slowly covered by vines of wild cucumber. I remember being so excited, seeing the textures of the old barnboard, the glass-less windows, the drop shadows, the rusted roof. The feeling it was all being reclaimed by nature. I was like, Oh wow.”

Whenever he could steal time from his work shooting for resorts and magazines and architecture firms, he’d roam Vermont, stopping whenever he found a structure that seemed it was just holding on, fighting for another year, even if nobody else cared. “Over time, as I processed these images,” he says, “I saw I have a body of work. Some people told me it was too sad, that nobody would get it. But I kept shooting.”

“Stonington Ark 1.” Used years ago as a lifeboat by the Maine Maritime Academy, this craft now serves as a bait boat for local lobstermen in Stonington Harbor, Maine. The weathered vessel seems to evoke a line from the introduction to Westphalen’s “Vanish” portfolio, describing subjects that “will eventually succumb and fold into the soil on which they were built, taking their stories with them.”
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

“The Clearing Storm.” A hay barn in Orwell, Vermont, sits under a sky churning with clouds and sunlight. Westphalen may visit a location half a dozen times before photographing it, watches the weather closely for the right conditions for the shoot, and even logs the best times of day to get certain lights and shadows. “I’m intentional about it—it’s not just like, ah, I’ll grab my camera and go out today,” he says.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

“Prairie Sentinels.” Having photographed vanishing icons in the New England landscape, Westphalen also wanted to show how it was happening around the country. “I needed to find a place that was, in a landscape way, the antithesis of Vermont and New England. A place with ‘big sky,’” he says. Traveling out West, he discovered these old grain elevators in Rapelje, Montana—time-worn, but still standing tall in their rural community.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

In the fall of 2014, an exhibit in Burlington of what he called his “Vanish” work showed Westphalen he had tapped into something, a longing to know what was being lost. “I was nervous,” he says. “Will anybody care about these? [But] I saw from their reaction it was not just me. I realized I can make art. I can sell art from these images.”

A coffee table book called Vanish followed, and now the film. “My stuff is not nostalgia,” he says. “I see it as a respite from the craziness of the world. When I go out there, my cameras set up, whether on the coast or in a rural landscape, I get in that space. Just this calming thing.”

He is soon to be 65. “My wife reminds me the clock is ticking. But I feel I am just getting started. I’ll always have a passion for the disappearing.”

“Always?” I ask.

“Forever,” he replies.

“Box Car 8319.” An old refrigerated boxcar in Machias, Maine, inspired one of Westphalen’s rare midday photos. While early morning and late afternoon are usually the sweet spots for lighting, here he wanted hard, raking sunlight to bring out the contrast between the boxcar’s rusty patina and the lush grass below, and to spotlight structural details on the car itself. “You can even see drop shadows on all the individual rivets,” he says.
*Photo Credit : Jim Westphalen*

To see a wider portfolio of Jim Westphalen’s work and to find out how to watch Vanish, go to jimwestphalenfineart.com.

Mel Allen

Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.

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