Self-described ‘oddball’ photographer’s book highlights the ‘Weird, Wild, and Wonderful’ in Connecticut

“Connecticut is a state of nooks,” declares photographer and writer Christina E. Cole of Killingworth. “You have to look in the nooks.”

She uncovers around 150 of them in her new book titled “Photographer’s America: Weird, Wild and Wonderful Connecticut” (America Through Time, 2022). Her subjects include parks, cemeteries, bird conservatories, lighthouses and museums, but with twists. Some of the parks are dinosaur parks, the gravestones include circus star Tom Thumb and alleged witch Mary E. Hart, and while the Wadsworth is among the museums, so is the Witch’s Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol.

“I like quirky things,” Cole said in a phone interview last week. “I’m an oddball looking for oddballs. There’s so much odd art out there.”

There’s a photo in the book of hikers making the trek to Charles Island, which can be reached along a thin strip of land at low tide.

“I love the idea that you can walk out to the island, and then the tide rises and you can’t,” Cole says.

One picture is captioned “The Lover’s Leap Bridge casting late-day shadows from the sun in New Milford.” The chapter on “Landmarks” ranges from the Beehive Bridge in New Britain; to the Heublin Tower in Talcott Mountain State Park; to the Frog Bridge in Willimantic, marked by statues of giant frogs atop equally large spools of thread. A chapter titled “The Art” shows public sculptures, topiary and random graffiti inside an old train track tower.

One of the most charming chapters is called “The Quaint,” which begins “Thanks to ‘Gilmore Girls,’ Connecticut will never outlive the quaint stereotype. Nor should it.” Images of “The Quaint” include a houseboat in Westport, a vintage auto parked near the site of the old Killingworth Cafe, a goat at Bradley Mountain Farm and a Halloween display at Strawberry Hollow Farm. Cole calls the Hollow Farm photo “the epitome of what you want Halloween to look like in the fall.”

Cole is originally from North Carolina and has traveled the world.

“I used to fly up here to be with a friend in Stratford,” she says. Then a prolonged illness led her to stay in Connecticut for the past seven years, and she embraced the state.

“I was moving around, doing photography all over. Then I got sick here and stayed here.”

This is her second book about the state. The first, “Abandoned Connecticut: First World Wasted,” was released last year.

Cole says nearly all the photos in “Weird, Wild, and Wonderful Connecticut” were taken before she even knew she was doing a book.

“I didn’t specifically shoot for it, except for a couple of things. When the publisher asked me to do this one, at first I didn’t think I had enough for it.”

Her first book for the America Through Time series, “Abandoned North Carolina: Mouth of the Holler,” came about by the sort of happy circumstance that should brighten the hearts of all freelance writers and photographers.

“I would never have thought of doing a book on my own. The publisher found me on Instagram.” The America Through Time editors have also encouraged her to write the text for all the books she’s done for the series. Cole is currently working on a fourth book, on Connecticut farms.

Cole wanted “Weird, Wild, and Wonderful Connecticut” to live up to all three adjectives in its title.

“Connecticut is beautiful,” she says. “I try to show how pretty it is. But I also try to cover all of it. I wanted these to be attributes of the state rather than tourist attractions. I don’t see it as tourist stuff. I see it as a natural landscape that offers so much.

“I wanted the book to be positive, something happy for the current [COVID] climate. I wanted it to inspire people to get out and drive and look at Connecticut.”

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com .