Keeping Time in Sag Harbor

For 300 years, Sag Harbor has been a prism reflecting facets of American history, from its heyday as a whaling port worthy of mention inMoby-Dick, to a factory town shipping out Bulova watches to its latest reincarnation, as an alternative retreat to the exclusive Hamptons. Stephen Longmire explores its many stories inKeeping Time in Sag Harbor. Sag Harbor's architecture encompasses buildings from the American Revolution to the present, including the stately eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mansions lining "Captains Row" and public buildings such as the early Custom House. The work to protect this architecture in the face of booming real estate development is at the heart of Longmire's account. Archival images and Longmire's own color photographs are interspersed with interviews with new and old residents, and together they reveal the evolving character of the village, as the book charts how Sag Harbor has struggled to retain its identity while learning to sustain itself on tourism. Keeping Time in Sag Harboris an intimate portrait of a historic American village that stands as an example of the challenge facing American communities from Santa Fe to South Beach.

Stephen Longmire is a photographer and writer who has taught at Georgetown University and Columbia College Chicago and has written for such publications as Afterimage and Doubletake. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Guild Hall in East Hampton, and are in the permanent collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, among others.