The Island Guy

Peter Ralston has spent the past four decades photographing Maine’s coast. Betsy Wyeth, the wife of artist Andrew Wyeth, first brought Ralston up to Maine in 1978. In 1980, while working on one of the Wyeths’ islands, Ralston met Philip Conkling, with whom he created The Island Institute, to help Maine’s island and coastal communities tackle environmental and socioeconomic issues. Ralston moved to Maine full-time in 1985. Soundings interviewed the 72-year-old photographer at his gallery in Rockport.

Soundings: Where were you raised and how did you get into photography?

Peter Ralston: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, is where I was raised in the 1950s. It was the era of great magazines. There was Life and National Geographic and the idea that people could make images and get paid to travel to the most interesting places in the world. Even as a little kid, I thought, how cool is that? Next door was the other huge influence. My parents bought a place on the Brandywine River in 1957, part of an old Quaker mill property. The next year, Andy and Betsy Wyeth bought the other part of the property. I grew up with them right next door. They were extremely interesting people. Andy didn’t have a job like most fathers, which was kind of curious. And I had a wicked crush on Betsy. She was beautiful and smoked. They were very powerful. Andy and his father [painter and illustrator N.C. Wyeth] were visual storytellers. I was just fascinated by all of that. I can’t draw a stick figure, but photography came to me early. My mother, who was English, bought an Ansco Shur Shot camera in England at the end of the Second World War before she came to America. It still has my name tag on it from summer camp. So, photography got to me really early.

SO: How did that interest turn into a photography career?

PR: I went to Europe as an American Youth Ambassador in the summer of 1965 and that opened my eyes to the world. I came back to the States and went to private school. My academic career was a little spotty. I was never exactly a choir boy. Boarding school ended very abruptly a week before the end of my junior year. I wanted to be a photographer and I had a wicked attitude. I’d seen the world, after all. I never finished high school, became a photographer and did a lot of grunt work to support myself. I was on my own early. I had the world’s best parents and caused them despair. I was awful that way, but I knew what I wanted to do. I worked my way into sort of freedom through local magazines and newspapers, a few weddings, product shots, and the whole time the Wyeths were there as sort of second parents. They understood this fire in my belly.

SO: Did the Wyeths guide you towards a photography career?

PR: They always said they saw something in me. They would take me to shows and let me sit in on a lot of discussions. They gave me books. They were my education.

SO: How did you end up in Maine?

PR: The Wyeths would come back from summers in Maine and I’d run over to see ’em right away. I was kind of their third son because both Nicky and Jamie [the Wyeths’ sons] had grown up. So, they’d come back from Maine and here’d be these pictures that Andy had done and the paintings fascinated me. In my child’s mind’s eye, I conflated Maine into this really exotic place, like far deep north Canada. They would tell me about the paintings, and they would sometimes use colorful language. They’d never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And I’d hear of pirate fishermen and trap wars and skullduggery and sex and who was doing what with who. And I’d see drawings and paintings of Christina. We were having dinner at their house in Chadds Ford one night in the winter of ’77, and Betsy pointed at me and said, ‘you are coming to Maine with us this summer. It’s time you see Maine.’ That was the year she started buying islands. She bought Southern Island, and then Allen and Benner. She called me the day she bought Allen in 1980. I was in Moline, Illinois, on assignment and she tracked me down, no cell phones. The conversation was, it’s done. The ink is dry. You got me into this. What the hell am I gonna do with an island the size of Monhegan? Tell you what, let’s have some fun. You help me with this, and the island is yours in all but title.

SO: So that’s when you went up to Allen Island?

PR: Yeah. Betsy created the worlds in which she and Andy lived, and in which Andy painted. Whereas Andy’s medium was pretty much the pencil, paper, watercolors, tempera and tempera panels, Betsy’s medium was work crews, skidders, bulldozers, diesel and hydraulics. That was the case restoring the mill in Pennsylvania and out on Southern Island. Allen Island had gone completely feral. Betsy had a vision, and the vision was to create a village out there that would empower the fishermen to stay.

SO: How did you get out to the islands?

PR: Early on, there wasn’t much in the way of boats. The Wyeths had an Aquasport center console. We’d camp out there, tents early on, and then the shacks and the camps.

SO: So, Allen Island had gone wild. What was done first and how did Philip Conkling come into the picture?

PR: We started by clearing up the north end of the island. And that’s when Philip came out. He had a degree in forestry and a lot of hands-on forestry management experience. She was the sorceress, and we were like the apprentices. The land was cleared and the Laura B [the mailboat out of Port Clyde] would take some of the wood out to Monhegan for firewood. There were different boats and a series of barges. We built our own barge in Port Clyde at one point for getting wood off the island. And as the project grew, logging crews expanded the fields. That is where the sheep were going in as lawn mowers.

SO: That’s how “Pentecost,” your well-known photo of the sheep in the dory, came about?

PR: Yes. We made arrangements with two Port Clyde fishermen to help us get the sheep to Allen Island. All went well until the skipper declared, “There’s not a single one of those goddamn things getting on this boat today.” We had no choice but to borrow a dory into which we loaded the sheep. I borrowed Betsy’s Aquasport, from which I made photographs of Susan L towing the dory. On the run to Allen Island, we ran into a fog bank off Mosquito Head and, all of a sudden, the light went silvery…magical. I quickly took a number of photographs, but wanting a different angle, I gave the helm to Philip, telling him to get me close up to the stern of the dory. I was using a wide-angle lens, and I wanted more in my foreground, so I kept yelling ‘get closer, get closer!’ We knew we had achieved maximum proximity when the bow of the Aquasport slammed the stern of the dory a mighty blow. At that very second, I managed to squeeze off this single vertical frame.

SO: You moved to Maine full-time in ’85. When did you get a boat?

PR: The institute, which we started in ‘83, needed a boat. The first one we got was a Seaway 23, but it was clearly the wrong boat for us, so they loaned us a 26-foot Seaway with twin Yamaha 115s. Fishhawk. That boat was great. We didn’t have radar or any navigation stuff. We had a radio. Finally we put together enough money to buy a radar, but we would run her steady from Casco Bay right down to Eastport and beyond.

SO: What was the idea behind The Island Institute?

PR: We both recognized that the remaining year-round Maine Islands—Maine used to have 300 and there are now 15—hung by a thin thread. We knew how rare these communities were, and here we were, two guys from away thinking that they can use some help. I mean, are you kidding me? But we did, and we cobbled together a business plan. We thought that the real endangered entity on the coast of Maine were the working communities. Philip had seen more Maine Islands than I had, but I started figuring how to get around and get places. Early on I fetched up over on North Haven. And then there was Criehaven, where two fishermen and their wives took me under their wings. Criehaven is in some ways where I really cut my teeth on this passion for islands.

SO: How were you perceived by most of the locals?

PR: We were not welcome in a lot of places at first. [There was an] alpha fisherman on one of the islands out here in Penobscot Bay. He’d see us out there in the Seaway and we’d get this single-digit gesture of universal contempt. And if it looked like we had some wealthy people with us who we were trying to raise money from, we’d get the double bird. And this went on for years. But over time we started delivering on our stated mission.

David Lunt from Frenchboro, when the island was gonna lose its school, actually swallowed hard and called the Island Institute. We were able to be pretty helpful over there. He was the island leader. We raised a lot of money. We helped build affordable housing. We learned. We listened a lot. And that was probably one of the best things we did for years.

SO: How did you get Raven?

PR: So, you know who Betty Noyce was? Her husband was the cofounder of Intel. Betty ended up in Bremen. Betty used to love to go out with me on Fishhawk. One day we’re out on Butter Island. We came back from a hike, and the wind had changed and blown the boat on the beach as the tide was going. We were stuck. Betty said, now we’ll see the rest of the island. And while walking, she said, we need a real boat (with amenities). She named a figure. Will that get the institute a real boat? And I said, oh, yeah.

I looked at 40-some boats and then one day I was over in Castine and there’s this 37-foot Repco. That was short for Re-enforced Plastics Company. Horrible name. It’s not exactly Herreshoff. She had a 440 Chrysler marine conversion with a Walter V-Drive. It was a bomb waiting to blow up. And with a V-drive, which was horrible. The thing would go through impellers like Chiclets. We got a good price on a Caterpillar 3116, moved the engine, reconfigured the boat. I was the primary operator until I was struck. I was terribly sick and couldn’t run it for two years after I had brain surgery, then got back into it.

There were times when I realized, we’d come a long way. We started an island school program and there were islands that put their entire future in my hands. They would let every kid in the island schools come aboard Raven. And I’d run ‘em all down for a school conference that we had organized, down on the Cranberries. She was the school bus. We used her for all sorts of environmental studies.

SO: Where is Raven now?

PR: When I left the institute in 2010, I was burned out and wanted family and photography time. I really wanted Raven. It took a couple years to pull that off, but I bought her. She’s sitting down here in Rockport Harbor now, the ultimate boat for me. Big-ass rudder, plenty of power. Makes me look good.

SO: What are some of your favorite places to go boating?

PR: I like poking around in the Muscle Ridge Channel. It’s so ledgy that you don’t get too crowded. I love Friendship; that’s a real hard-charging fishing crowd. I love Stonington, but of course, with all due respect—and I don’t want to get cut off or have bait dumped aboard—it’s a bridged island. I really love Vinalhaven. It’s big, beautiful and no matter how much money you’ve got, they want no part of it.

SO: Looking back on your 40-plus years in Maine, what do you think about?

PR: There’s not a single day that I am not grateful, profoundly, deeply in my bones. Grateful for everything I’ve been getting. Andy and Betsy gave me Maine and it changed my life in ways I can’t even begin to tell you. 

This article was originally published in the August 2023 issue.