Finally, Coyne’s emphasis on aesthetic concerns suggests an inclination to subdue the chaotic fl ux of the world. In this regard, Paul Strand’s mid-20th century photographs of working class Italians come to mind:like Strand, Coyne idealizes her subjects and emphasizes their dignified humanity through aesthetic means. Her photographs of single fishermen especially aggrandize the men and their livelihood, ascribing to the worker a powerful timeless quality. Surely related to the personal fact that Coyne’s grandfather was himself a fi sherman, her depictions are also part of a well-established pictorial tradition that ennobles rural life, its people and landscape.

And yet, Coyne ’s project is uniquely her own. Her series embodies a private goal and a personal passage —a journey to see the land of her grandparents, to assimilate the experience through her own eyes and identity.

Shared by countless individuals who have experienced migration and its ramifi cations, this type of return has been facilitated in the 20th century by mass travel and tourism. Coyne’s work reminds us that there is always an interchange between personal and collective experience;
that the personal journey is always fi ltered through collective memories and shared representations.

To a large extent Coyne leaves the traditional mystique of Sicily and its people intact.Her series includes images of traditional forms of labor(fishing and farming)and records gendered social customs (men passing the time with male companions,women leaving church together, adolescents socializing at a soccer game).

Only in subtle,almost unnoticeable ways do discrepancies in the conventional picture emerge: In The Field Workers, Milazzo (1997), the cement buildings framing the seemingly idyllic fieldworkers introduce a contrast between timeless agricultural labor and encroaching modern life. Interestingly, it is the wide-angle view that allows this insight to emerge rather than the tighter frame that Coyne favors.