What could be more iconic than the little red New England barn?

In fact, they aren't all barns- though some of them are. They're also tool sheds, outhouses, storage shacks, milking sheds. Small buildings that are red.

Driving around Vermont and upstate New York, many things surprise me about them. They strike me as both omnipresent and endangered at the same time: they seem to be everywhere I look until I try to find them. Set against the perfectly contrasting snowy landscape, the little red building conjures up a stereotype, an image out of a movie set, yet in practice they are infinite in their variety and character.

Stalwart and fragile, solid and gaping, in use and abandoned; they wobble and lean, perch, hover, and play hide and seek. Most prefer to be plain, but for those that would be fancy, they have their own brand of finery: white trim, flags, antlers, the occasional wooden fish.