BOOK REVIEW: Cabins of Minnesota

Cabins of Minnesota is part of the Minnesota Byways series published by the Minnesota Historical Society;

Bill Holm, Author; Doug Ohman, Photographer.

Kayleen Larson, Client Services Director at Lake Country Journal Magazine, recently spoke with photographer Doug Ohman about his work on this book.

Q: How did you find the cabins for this book?
A: Many came from referrals, people telling me about a great cabin I had to look at. The others were total drive-by’s. I knew what areas of Minnesota were prime cabin country so I plotted out my drives and just went looking

Q: Where was the most remote cabin?
A: Actually, there are several remote areas where I photographed cabins. There is the Legacy cabin (in the book) in the Red River Valley and a lot of the cabins up near Ely, along the Echo Trail from Ely to Crane Lake. Of course, Lake of the Woods has some amazing and very remote cabins. Rainy Lake, too, especially the Rainy Lake islands.

Q: What is the oldest cabin you photographed?
A: Interestingly, the ones that come to mind are not cabins but old farmhouses that are now cabins. They’re on pages 66 and 67 of the book. Also, there’s an old hunting cabin that was built in 1885. I photographed quite a few cabins built in the 1880s. There are some older than that in the state, but not many.

Q: What is the most unusual cabin?
A: That’s hard because there are many with their own unique character, but perhaps the cabin on Spider Island on Lake Mille Lacs. Local legend has it that it was a bootlegger’s cabin and the moonshine was kept hidden in the cellar.

Q: What cabin surprised you the most, and why?
A: I think what surprised me was that, regardless of the type of cabin, they all had the same consistent feeling to them, this sense of being warm and inviting. You feel as if you want to stay there, spend some time. That’s they same feeling I got from all these places all across the state.

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
A: I met a lot of great people and made a lot of new friends doing this book. Since people’s cabins are their getaways from the stress of day-to -day life, I tried to respect that and to photograph their cabins during the weekdays, when many were not there.

And the cabin owners were so great about letting me come. They’d say, “If we’re not there, the key is under the red rock, the boat is down on the dock, feel free to take it out fishing.” I can guarantee you, every time I photographed someone’s cabin when they weren’t home, some retired guy from a nearby cabin would come to check me out, saying, “Excuse me, can I ask what you’re doing.” What it told me was that we take care of one another, that’s there’s a community on the lake.

The most important work is not behind the camera, but what I do away from the camera. The camera is just a mechanical tool. The best work so often came when I slowed down. Instead of chasing the light of the setting sun, I would tell myself that the sun will rise tomorrow—and I would go meet that person whose cabin or barn I’m supposed to shoot.