May 20, 2016 — “I should have been born 150 years ago,” said Markham Starr, a man who actively documents the present so it can be preserved for the future.
In recent years, Starr has documented working cultures throughout New England, mostly through photography. Many of these images have been organized into books, such as “In History’s Wake: The Last Trap Fishermen of Rhode Island,” which “documents a tradition now hundreds of years old, capturing the spirit and work ethic that drives Rhode Island’s fishermen to continue providing food for their neighbors.”
More recently, Starr began capturing these stories through video. In 2011, he spent a day scallop fishing on a small boat called Mister G with its owner, Mike Marchetti, and that experience has been made into a 45-minute film, “Scallop Fishing on the Mister G,” which will have its first public showing at Peace Dale Library, 1057 Kingstown Road, Peace Dale, Saturday at 2 p.m.
Starr said he first met Marchetti a number of years ago, when he was photographing around Point Judith and got to know people working in the area. He said fishermen tend to be very welcoming when it comes to letting him on their boats, for a day or the week. After taking many still photographs of life and livelihoods on the water, he decided scallop fishing would lend itself to video production. So he asked Marchetti about filming on one of his two boats. He agreed, and the two set out from Point Judith on the Mister G, a typical 40-foot lobster boat converted to trail a dredge.
The subject of scallop fishing is significant because it is an industry in peril, at least for the independent fisherman trying to make a living at it. While scalloping is now the most successful and largest fishery in New England, large corporations dominate the industry. Big industry has “knocked out all the little guys who used to scallop,” Starr said, noting there are only six licenses left in Rhode Island, and only four people scalloping from small boats like the Mister G.