Using photographs of the few surviving “mint condition” meetinghouses as illustrations Wainwright will tell the story of the society that built and used them, and the lasting impact they have had on American culture.
New England’s colonial meetinghouses embody an important yet little-known chapter in American history. Built mostly with tax money, they served as both places of worship and places for town meetings, and were the centers of life in colonial New England communities.
Wainwright has always loved photography and history, but he was captured by physics in high school, eventually getting a PhD in it from Yale. He worked for many years at Bell Labs, with photography being a continuing avocation. Since 2001 he has been pursuing his love of photography and history full-time, and is especially drawn to photograph historic structures in personal and introspective ways. Wainwright’s book, A Space for Faith: The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England,was published in 2010.
The talk is sponsored by the by the Vermont Humanities Council