Description

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Evangeline is a photographic exploration of Nova Scotia, Canada, directly inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1847 epic poem about the historic Expulsion of the Acadians. Today, the proud presence of Acadian heritage on the shores of the Bay of Fundy is unmistakable in Mark Marchesi's soft, pastel images of churches, Acadian flags, and unique architecture. But the region's population is dwindling, and the culture that struggled against the New World British influence is again losing ground. Marchesi eloquently portrays this gradual exodus of the Acadian people from rural Nova Scotia in haunting landscapes of empty seaports and abandoned Victorian properties.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?

Mark Marchesi received a BFA in Photography from Maine College of Art in 1999. He was a winner of Jen Bekman Projects's popular photography competition Hey, Hot Shot in 2007, and has been awarded three Maine Arts Commission project grants.

About the Author

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Mark MarchesiMark was born in 1977 in the suburbs of NYC. He received a BFA in Photography from Maine College of Art in 1999. Mark's images have been shown and published widely throughout the US. Among his solo exhibitions are The Town and the City at Nelson Hancock Gallery in Dumbo, and Slack Water at Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. Notable group exhibitions include Port of Portland: A Ship Shaped History at Maine Maritime Museum, and Unframed First Look at Sean Kelly Gallery. Mark was a winner of Jen Bekman Projects popular photography competition Hey, Hot Shot in 2007, and has been awarded three Maine Arts Commission project grants to support his efforts in Photography. Mark currently lives in South Portland, Maine with his wife and two young daughters. Christoph IrmscherChristoph Irmscher, a native of Germany, has taught at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Since 2006, he has been at Indiana University of Bloomington, where he is the Provost Professor of English and the George F. Getz Jr. Professor in the Wells Scholars Program. He also directs the Wells Scholars Program. He is the author of several books, on subjects ranging from natural history writing (The Poetics of Natural History, 1999) to the life of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Longfellow Redux, published in paperback in 2008, and Public Poet, Private Man, 2009). His work has been extensively supported by the National Endowment of the Humanities, most recently in the form of two grants for summer institutes on John James Audubon, held at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, in 2009 and 2011. Widely recognized as the leading authority on Audubon, he is the editor of the Library of America edition of Audubon's Writings and Drawings. His new biography of the 19th-century scientist Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science, was Editor's Choice of the New York Times Book Review in February 2013 and has been extensively discussed in, among others, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, Harvard Magazine, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and The Scientist (where he was a featured contributor in May 2013). At Indiana University, he has won awards for his teaching; he is particularly proud to have received the 2010 James Philip Holland Award for Exemplary Teaching and Service to Students. Henry Wadsworth LongfellowBorn on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow became a Harvard scholar versed in several European languages. He was heavily inuenced by romanticism and made a name as a poet and novelist with works like Hyperion, Evangeline, Poems on Slavery and The Song of Hiawatha. Known for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy as well, Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.