Life’s Work (cont.)

There are about 90 families in the area, but only ten or so give Bill permission to photograph. "They know me intimately, and they know I come there often and roam around, just to get casual shots. I never decide in advance what I'm going to photograph—often the weather and the look of the sky is going to determine what I'm going to photograph that day on a particular farm."

He has a few things he likes to do. "I found that it's much more meaningful and universal when you see a child from the back. When you see him from the front, you're looking at someone's child; from the back you're looking at everyone's child." And there are two things he never does: pose people or stage events. Fortunately, he doesn't have to. The daily life around him provides all the opportunity he needs. He also has the added benefit of familiarity. The people are so used to seeing him that they practically don't see him. "And if they see me," he says, "it's nothing special to them. They'll say, 'Oh, that's just Bill, hanging around, taking pictures.'"

After photographing the families for about two or three years, he says he began to feel a need to continue to document the community, to preserve it in his pictures. "I think it is one of the last communities of Amish in this country that tourists have had very little effect on," Bill has said, "so there is a basic integrity here. There is so much that goes back a hundred years that has not been diluted. I felt that if I didn't capture this on film, no one else would. I know it was a presumptuous thing, but that's how I felt."

He has shared his feelings with members of the community. "A few do understand. Over the years I've seen people become much more lenient towards me, even the ones who were at first adamantly against me. I think they're beginning to understand what my mind set is all about."

The Amish aren't Bill's only subjects. He also photographs in Maine, and he travels at least once a year to Italy, where the last two images you see here were taken. He has said that he photographs in villages in Maine and Italy for the same reason he photographs the Amish. "I've watched values and society slide into a predictable package, and my photography of the Amish was an escape, a return to a basic reality. The Italian small town is the same...there is something exquisite about the lifestyle and the people.

"I go into villages—usually farming or fishing villages, but really any village off the beaten track—and what I'm looking for there is the same thing I'm looking for among the Amish—a lifestyle more befitting the way we were born and built to be."

To see more of Bill’s photography visit his website at http://billcolemanphoto.com/gallerymaine.htm.