Neil Rappaport's Early Work (1970-1980)
For the first ten years Neil Rappaport lived in Pawlet, he concentrated on photographing the work and social environments of his neighbors. "Through extended study of people and places - listening as much as looking, and returning daily or weekly, usually over months and sometimes years - he achieved a familiarity that yielded visual biographies and narratives as rich in detail and ambience as in empathy and human truth." (Meg Ostrum, text for exhibition "In Place: The Photographs of Neil Rappaport")
This work began at the old Evans Brothers slate quarry in West Pawlet. Neil was there for two years and the resulting photographs will always be considered some of his finest even though he was just starting out in the field. Throughout his career he returned off and on to the quarry environment both in Vermont and across the border in New York State. It was at the Evans quarry that he met Vince Covino for the first time. "I formed a lifelong friendship with that lone rockman who taught me what it was to be a worker who cared passionately about his work." (Neil Rappaport)
From there he moved to making portraits of the denizens of the local general store at Butternut-Bend, owned by George and Leora Clark. And then he created an extended portrait of an eighty-five year old neighbor, John Scott, whom he had met at the store. John lived just a short way down the road from the tenant house that the Rappaports rented from the Baker family, another family who would be photographed by him throughout his almost thirty years in the town. Neil photographed at Ed Connors's garage, a central gathering place, and at Rogers Farm, chronicling the activities of the farm through the seasons of an entire year. He later photographed at two other farms, one in the southern part of the town, owned by Tim and Dot Leach, and one to the west, owned by Chester and Lenora Clark and rented by the Lewis family. During 1977 and 1978 the chronicles expanded to include the daily life of a coon-hunter and trapper, Floyd Troumbley, and an older couple, Lonnie and Etta Loveland moving toward the end of their lives.
This was an extremely prolific ten years and a time of growth and refinement in Neil's thinking about the medium and its history and about his intentions as a documentary photographer. It was also when Neil began to invite his subjects to participate actively in image gathering. For instance, Howard and Freda Rogers would call from the farm if a calf was being born, and they would point out a landscape, significant event or object that Neil's ignorance of farming might cause him to overlook. Subjects began to tell him if a group of photographs captured a process clearly. It was also during this period that Susanne Rappaport began interviewing Neil's subjects, giving voices and tales to the photographs, strengthening and broadening their meaning.