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Growing up in Rochester, New York, photographer Clara Riedlinger was always fascinated by the Erie Canal’s history. In school, she learned about the canal and sought to examine the landscape where it had once been. When she heard about the Erie Canal Museum’s residency program, she was ecstatic.

“The proposal from the Canal Museum felt like the project I already wanted to do,” Riedlinger said. “It just seemed like a really good fit right from the start.”

Riedlinger, along with fellow photographers Judit German-Heins and Alon Koppel, captured the canal’s past and present story through “At Water’s Edge: Reflections on 200 Years of the Erie Canal.” The exhibit celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal’s completion and is co-hosted by the Erie Canal Museum and the New York State Canal Corporation.

The exhibit, featuring the three artists-in-residence, is on display through April 27 at the Everson Museum of Art in downtown Syracuse.

Koppel, German-Heins and Riedlinger each spent a year researching and photographing the canal, approaching the work with their own interpretations of the canal’s significance. Riedlinger found inspiration for the exhibit from her existing work about central New York’s “Burned-Over District” and overall religious history.

“I started to get curious about those invisible forces that are latent in the landscape that feel like a collaboration between society, like people, human beings and the land and where those things intersect,” Riedlinger said.

Riedlinger’s eight images displayed in the museum span the Genesee Valley, which is often referred to as the “Burned-Over District” for the religious zeal of the evangelical and spiritualist movements of the Second Great Awakening there in the 1800s. Although her photographs don’t directly refer to religious imagery, Riedlinger acknowledged the role of the canal in facilitating the travel that allowed preachers to rapidly spread religion.

Unlike Riedlinger, Koppel and German-Heins had no personal connections to the canal before applying to the residency at the Erie Canal Museum. Both artists looked to their previous projects for inspiration.

Koppel used rephotography, or repeat photography, to picture the “then and now” of the canal. Koppel drew inspiration from a previous project, “Middle Eastern Promises,” in which he used historic photos of Israel and Gaza and rephotographed them. With the historic image and the recreation, he then edited the images together to create a new image.

“It’s about how things change with tourism and people in the world,” Koppel said. “And how histories, like the historical places, are there, but you can’t really approach it the same way.”

Using historic images from the Erie Canal Museum as references, Koppel returned to certain sites and recreated the same images. Koppel wanted the work to immerse viewers in both the historical and modern visions of the canal. He said he understands how impactful the construction of the canal was for New York City residents and wants the audience to understand that.

Alex Levy | Contributing Designer

For her photographs, German-Heins, an Hungarian-American photographer, chose to take portraits of women and non-binary people whose work relates to the canal. German-Heins’ work has traditionally centered on women, so when visiting the Erie Canal Museum, she noted that the few women depicted in the historical photos were limited to domestic tasks. For this project, she wanted to “elevate the voices of women” working on the canal today and highlight their contributions.

“I wanted to see how different today is as far as women’s labor,” German-Heins said. “And that’s why I proposed this project of photographing women and nonbinary people who work on the canal.”

German-Heins used a historical photography process called tintype to create her portraits. She said the vintage look of the photos allows viewers to understand that these problems of gender inequality are rooted in history, yet still permeate contemporary society.

Accompanying each photograph are excerpts from conversations that German-Heins had with her subjects. Before photographing them, she interviewed the individuals and asked them to provide a statement about their connection to the canal.

One of the photographs depicts a woman standing in front of the canal with her arms crossed. The woman, Abbie Heinl, is currently an engineer and planner for the canal.

“I work alongside our environment, cultural resources, codes and safety departments to bring projects from concept to completion,” Heinl’s statement reads.

German-Heins these statements were essential to capturing the variety of roles women have in the canal’s operation and maintenance.

“I just wanted to connect them so the portraits would be more genuine,” German-Heins said. “Then I would know what to look for when I was taking their images.”

Through a range of artistic perspectives, techniques and inspirations, the exhibit brings the history of the Erie Canal into a contemporary light, the artists said. Reflecting on the residency, Koppel felt that each artist — while different in their approach to photographing the canal — sought to capture the canal’s continued relevance.

“It comes together in the show in a way. We’re in the same room and each one is delving into different aspects of the canal, but they’re all very different projects,” Koppel said.

Published on February 25, 2025 at 11:18 pm