A Tribute To A Millerton Photographer

This book has been a labor of love for Mark Goodman. A love of photography. A love of Millerton. And a love of the works of Chester Eisenhuth.

Goodman began his extensive photography career in 1970, when he studied the medium with Minor White at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville. A year later, he arrived in Millerton to continue honing his craft at Apeiron’s inaugural photography workshop. His assignment: Walk around Millerton to see what he could see. He spent his time photographing people and ultimately met Eisenhuth, who was the town and village historian. 

Eisenhuth, who died in 1995, was also an amateur painter and photographer. His photos were mainly portraits: family members, friends, residents, even animals. As they got to know each other over the years, Goodman became enamored with collecting Eisenhuth’s negatives to print.

“I always liked to record things — a wedding anniversary or a special birthday — that’s the historian in me, that something should be put down for future reference, should be preserved somehow, save it for somebody to see someday,” Eisenhuth told Goodman.

That drive to preserve history led Goodman to compile Eisenhuth’s photos in a book, aptly titled “Chester Eisenhuth, Photographer.” It’s a beautiful tribute to the man and the town. Not only does it feature 51 full-page photographs that Eisenhuth took in Millerton from the 1930s to the 1950s, but it also includes Eisenhuth’s family chronology and a brief history of the town of North East and the village of Millerton.

You won’t find the book in a store. Instead, it’s available to print on demand through a publisher called Blurb. For $165, they’ll send you a massive 12-inch by 12-inch hardcover coffee table book — or you can flip through a digital preview online for free.

“This was never a commercial undertaking,” Goodman said during a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas. “It is about completing something that began for me 45 years ago when I first made prints from Chester Eisenhuth’s almost-forgotten negatives. It’s really a portrait of him, a presentation of his photographs and a certain sense of the history of the village.”

When asked to select his favorite Eisenhuth photos, Goodman notes the cover image, which features four people posing in the village,  and a photo of Bill Cole in front of his insurance agency.

“I love these pictures,” Goodman said. “They’re so direct and genuine. They’re intimate. They’re fun. They’re all very humane.”

Thanks to Goodman’s efforts, Eisenhuth’s photographs are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

“The larger selection of them is at the Dorsky in their boxed collections,” Goodman said, “as opposed to being lost in his attic.”

“Chester Eisenhuth, Photographer” can be viewed or purchased online at www.blurb.com by searching for the book’s title. A link to the book can also be found on Mark Goodman’s website at www.markgoodmanphotographer.com. Goodman’s photographs of Millerton can be seen in his previous book, “A Kind of History.”