Savannah, 1966

I was 18, and so clueless it embarrasses me now. But I was also a newly minted “staff photographer” at the Savannah Morning News and Evening Press. I think there were three reasons they hired me, not in any particular order: 1) I looked like I knew how to use a camera (I did not, but that may have been the beginning of my understanding of “Fake it ’til you make it.” 2) I would work cheap; and 3) my friend Bill Murton, who was leaving the job to move to Charleston, recommended me, and that saved them the trouble of having to look for someone.

The photography department then was a service bureau, seldom, if ever, initiating stories, The various other editorial departments (News, Sports, Society-later called Women’s, and I don’t know what now) turned in assignments and we covered them. The one exception for enterprise work from photographers was the regular need for “feature art.”

If page designs were looking a little gray because stories being run didn’t have photos or illustrations, an editor might ask for an interesting stand-alone picture, a “feature.” My boss, Buddy Rich, was trying to teach me about this part of the job, and encouraging me, while out on other assignments, to always be on the lookout for something curious, interesting, pretty that could be available on short notice to fill those “art” holes in the layout. I mentioned a fence made of old doors that I had seen a while back; his frustration with why I had not already made the photograph was obvious.

I made this shot that afternoon.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index