The Photo Lounge Chronicles: Dan Higgins
Trailer of The Photo Lounge Chronicles: Dan Higgins
4 minutes 12 seconds
The Photo Lounge Chronicles: Dan Higgins
72 minutes
documentary
In 2020 I completed a documentary, The Photo Lounge Chronicles: Dan Higgins about a photographer who spent fifty years documenting varied aspects of life in Winooski, Vermont. While the focus is on Higgins, the film becomes a portrait of Winooski, as well as of many small towns in America over the last half century.
Higgins’ work includes rare videos of the town’s efforts to adapt itself to enormous change–from the closing of the Woolen Mills in 1954, the demolition of the downtown, to urban ‘renewal”, to the resettlement of New Americans.By exhibiting his work locally- as he makes it- Higgins establishes a forum with residents who are encouraged to participate in his projects. He believes everyone has a story but a place only becomes a community when those stories are shared.
Along the way we visit Burlington’s sister city of Puerto Cabezas, and revisit an era when the Photo Lounge was ground zero for Halloween.
Directed by Eleanor Lanahan. Music by Gordon Stone and Blake Hazard