Kevin Johnson, author and photo archivist for Penobscot Marine Museum (PMM), presented a slide show of antique postcards to a gathering of about 50 people, Sunday, Nov. 9, at Edgecomb Town Hall. The first half of the presentation included lively stories of Johnson’s and the collections' several twists of fate before landing at their current PMM locations. In the second half of the presentation, Johnson sought audience feedback in identifying buildings, people and perspectives of the Edgecomb images. Many attending were able to contribute historical context surrounding the images, including structural changes to buildings and homes, family names belonging to the structures, businesses and residences that no longer exist, and at least one engaging story of the legendary "Marie Antoinette House," including a supposed piece of fabric believed to be from one of her dresses.

In an interview before the talk, Johnson helped define the term postcard: “Postcards are historical documents. They were different then (early 1900s). They included factories, retail shops and small town life. It wasn’t always glamorous. It gave the community identity, good, bad, or mundane.” He said people sent postcards that showed where they worked, where they shopped, how they performed the chores of daily life – it wasn’t like today’s vacation postcards. They were mailed, traded and kept as keepsakes. They are the third most collected item in America, he said, behind stamps and coins.

“My charge in life is to make all the images available, to put them to work, to tell the stories,” he said. Johnson partnered with two of his heroes, historians W. H. Bunting and Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., to publish “Maine On Glass: The Early Twentieth Century in Glass Plate Photography” (Tilbury House, 2016) which details about 200 photo postcards from Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company, showing early 20th-century Maine life through a unique visual archive of people, architecture and landscapes. The book won the John N. Cole Award for Maine-Themed Nonfiction and a 2017 book award from the New England Society in the City of New York.

This past year, Johnson partnered with the late George McEvoy to create “Boothbay Now and Then: New and Historic Images of the Boothbay Peninsula” (Penmore Press, 2025), due out in time for holiday shopping. “George approached me with the idea of rephotographing (images from the archive) from the same vantage point,” said Johnson, “to document the changes over time.” The project was funded by the Mildred H. McEvoy Foundation. George McEvoy dedicated his life to historic preservation and has left a lasting imprint on the region; Johnson regrets that McEvoy didn’t survive to see the book come out.

Johnson’s 20-plus years of collecting, curating and preserving 5x7 glass plates have produced an extensive historical photo collection. Many of his favorite images adorn PMM’s walls in Searsport. The database he created stores over 140,000 entries, growing weekly, and he encourages the public to become active participants in the collection. Johnson has worked with many local historians and historical societies to caption and index the volume of history provided by these high-resolution photos. He travels and gives talks to make the public aware of the collection and PMM's commitment to the archive.