Limited edition of 1,500 copies.

“Chester Mullen (1886-1958) earned his living as a carpenter, but he is remembered as a photographer. In the small town where he lived, the sound of the fire bell was a signal for him to drop his hammer and grab his camera. Contemporaries remember him dashing off to the scene still in his carpenter's overalls.

Chester's fame (if it could be called that) was strictly local. As an amateur, he was not in competition with professional photographers; his subject matter was of everyday things and not confined to a studio. As amateurs do, he took pictures of family and friends, and the occasional exciting event (such as a fire), and at first glance his images do not seem particularly remarkable. Though he had a keener eye for composition than most amateurs, his pictures are not overwhelmingly "artistic." In fact, his pictures are straightforward, generally mundane, and limited mostly to whatever was going on in the small town where he spent his life.

That limitation, however, is also their virtue. Chester Mullen's photographs are a significant visual documentation of the daily life of a small town over a span of about 50 years. A few of his photographs may pre-date 1907, though 1908 is the earliest date of which we can be certain; and his last parade pictures were made not long before his death in 1958.

That he took so many photographs, literally thousands of images, would not be remarkable for a photographer today - but then one realizes that he was doing this 75 years ago, when each photograph required an inordinate amount of effort. He mixed his own chemicals to coat the glass plates he used. They were heavy to carry around and breakable, but reusable if he was not satisfied with his work (though it was probably more effort to clean off old emulsion than to start fresh). The images present a world circumscribed by one man's view, but we feel privileged to be able to go back to that world and that time through his photographs.”