'Hey, can I take a photograph?' Exhibit features people and places from along the Connecticut River

Reporter and photographer Ben James conducted dozens of interviews this summer as he rode his bike the length of the Connecticut River — from the Quebec border to Long Island Sound.

Along with the radio stories he produced from his journey, Ben took thousands of photographs, some of which are on display now in the Hosmer Gallery at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts. A reception at the gallery is scheduled for Saturday.

James described how he approached people during his trip.

Ben James, reporter and photographer: Usually I would just sort of say what I was doing and ask if I could talk to them for a bit and ask some questions, and sometimes we'd get in a, you know, a half-hour-long conversation and I'd finally say, "Hey, can I take a photograph?"

I mean, one of the challenging parts of editing this whole thing was that [for] some of the best interviews, I didn't get a great picture of the person. And some of my favorite photos — either it was super windy and the sound was terrible, or I just didn't even get a good interview or anything. So figuring out how to put it all together into something was complicated.

Sam Hudzik, NEPM: So there are a couple dozen photos in this exhibit. A few of them are montages, so we get to see many more people there. But take me to your favorite photo.

Oh, wow. I mean, definitely this one we're standing right in front of here. The biggest one that's of Pamela, Wilfredo and their daughter, Chloe. This is the one I put the most time into editing and printed the largest. And this was before I went on the bike trip, actually. I would say this photo is, in some ways, what inspired me to do this entire trip.

I encountered them on the street. I asked if I could take their picture. I took it in a few different spots and they were just so generous with their time. It's this young couple. The dad is holding the baby. I don't know a lot of their story. The dad was the only one speaking English. Their expressions, their sense of of pride, their stances, everything about it just felt like I got something that made me see them more deeply than I could have if just in a chance encounter. You know, I've spent a lot of time looking at this family and admire them hugely.

Also, I could talk about this one, which is totally different. So this was on the very first day of my trip. I got dropped off at the Canadian border.

With your bike?

With my bike. And my bike [was] overloaded with stuff. Like, within a day, I was like, I got to mail some of this stuff home because this is ridiculous. But at that point it was loaded.

But it's a weird spot where you actually walk above the Canadian border on this trail, but you don't have to go through customs to do it. And then you come around and you end up at a place called Fourth Connecticut Lake. I spent some time there. Then I went a little ways down the river. So this isn't fourth Connecticut Lake. This is the river itself, but it's just down — I don't know — like a mile down. And that's where I slept that first night.

So you're talking about a mile down from the very start of the Connecticut River?

The very start of the river. There's another picture around on the other wall that's actually where you can see the trickle forming. But this is a few miles down from the actual start of the river. And I found a place to sleep on this night right along the river.

And this this photo is taken in the dark with a two-minute exposure. So it's got this crazy luminescence to it that I totally love. It feels very dreamy. At the same time. I was standing there with my microphone recording the most incredible frog sound ever. So there's a scan that goes along with this, where you can listen to the frog sound while staring at this picture that's really surreal, because technically it's dark when it's taken, but just through ambient light, you get this sort of dream state of blueness and greens all blending together.

You mentioned the scan. So there are QR codes with some of the photos, right? And then if you use that QR code, then you're going to go to audio of the people speaking?

Yeah. So this is the only one that's sound of nature. The rest are interviews that I did with people that are edited. Many of them, they had their moments on the radio stories. And a couple of these are those stories covering a few different characters, a few different people that I met. But some of them are extended edits of where it just was these fantastic conversations that just didn't have time to make it in the original radio stories.

So this was a 500-mile-plus trip on your bike when all was said and done.

The river is 400 miles long or 410 miles long. But my odometer ended up above 500 because I was just zigging and zagging the whole time. Or I would get in a town and just ride around it for a while.

Do you miss it?

The trip? Totally. Yeah. I've been totally plotting, like, what's the next one going to be? How am I going to do this?

It's weird because in terms of making a story, it's very undirected. And that is strange. But that feeling of openness, of like, I don't know who I'm going to meet. I have no idea what they're going to say, what concerns they're going to bring up. For me, being in that state of openness is just one of the most valuable states I can find myself in, and it takes a lot of effort to get there.

So I'm really looking forward to what the next one is going to be. I don't know what it is yet.