Photographer is chronicling Maine city’s disappearing character

PORTLAND, Maine — Mark Marchesi knows a thing or two about being priced out of a neighborhood. His grandparents left New York City for then-affordable Westchester County in the 1950s, but gentrification and skyrocketing housing prices eventually drove his family out.

That’s why, when he saw the same thing starting to happen in Portland, his adopted hometown since the mid-1990s, he knew he wanted to do something.

In 2009, beginning with the fast-changing waterfront, the artist began photographing the buildings and neighborhoods that made the city feel special, real, authentic. Marchesi wanted to document Portland’s empty lots, industrial buildings and humble triple-decker apartment buildings before they all turned into drab, boring, box-like condos and hotels.

Ten years on, he began publishing his spare, elegant photographs in a series of three self-financed picture books. The first two runs of about 100 copies sold out fast. Now, the third will soon be gone, too, just like many of the buildings featured in the books.

“A lot of the places that I photographed that are now gone were happenstance — like I didn’t know that they were going to be gone within a few months. I just kept taking pictures of places, and they would just disappear,” Marchesi said.

The first place where he remembers that happening was Len’s Market, a famously rundown convenience store, with used shoes in the front window, which once stood on Cumberland Avenue.

“Then I realized, ‘Wow, there’s something to this. There’s gonna be a lot of things that we see now that will be disappearing,’” Marchesi said.

In addition to Len’s, longtime Portlanders will recognize other dearly departed city staples preserved in the artist’s photographs, including Paul’s Food Center, the old version of Joe’s Smoke Shop, and a pair of spindly trees which used to grace Fort Allen Park on the East End.

The three books, each titled “Greater Portland,” are filled with hundreds of photographs representing thousands of frames he shot over more than a decade. Most of the photos were taken early in the morning, with beautiful slanting light, using expensive and finicky 4×5-inch color film.

Marchesi often went back to the same place many times, searching for the best light and circumstances.

“This one,” he said, pointing at a photo of a building on Commercial Street, “I went back to that one at different times of the year, day-after-day, though maybe not consecutive days, until I got it without a car in front of it.”

Not a single human appears in Marchesi’s photos. The images are dedicated to physical spaces, only — mostly commercial and residential buildings, but also a few interiors and urban landscapes, as well.

“The thing that bugs me is the homogenization of architecture — these [new] buildings don’t mesh with our traditional architecture,” Marchesi said. “It’s the same everywhere, not just Portland. Its vernacular architecture is losing out to cheap buildings because of fast profit and a lack of craftsmanship.”

Marchesi said he’s been pleased with his books’ popularity but is even more moved by how people connect with his pictures. Sometimes, his images bring up strong emotions, reminding viewers of their personal connections to Portland places and spaces where important parts of their lives took place.

“One time at a Maine College of Art holiday sale, there were these three ladies that were looking through one of the books — and they saw the house they grew up in,” Marchesi said. “That’s the part that has been really cool.”

The artist said he’s not sure if he’ll ever republish the now sold-out books. Marchesi said he would love to collect all three in a single hardcover coffee table book, but the cost of publishing such a tome is prohibitive. Even selling out the first three books was just a break-even deal, at best. At the least, he’d like to someday leave his work to the Maine Historical Society.

Even though there’s a palpable visual twinge of melancholy running through the three books, Marchesi maintains that his work is not meant to be a downer. Rather, he said, he just wants to document what we have now, just in case.

“This is more like an ode than a eulogy,” he said. “What I’m trying to capture here is not disappearing altogether. You just have to look harder for it.”

The last few copies of Marchesi’s third book are available at Pinecone+Chickadee on Free Street in Portland. See more of the artist’s work at his website .