savannah photographic workshop

In Salvador Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory,” melting clocks suggest that no matter how hard and fixed something may seem in the moment, over time, everything changes. Live long enough, and you start to understand. I don’t mean that you understand the adage, “Change is the only constant.” I mean on a cellular level you recognize the steady, incessant, relentless drive of change, happening in every moment, everywhere. Seeing change is a little like Ernest Hemingway once described bankruptcy: it happens two ways; gradually, and then suddenly.

As I remember it, when I was in high school, in the early 60’s, Captain Sam had a boat named “The Waving Girl.” In addition to whatever other boating business he pursued, he offered picnic/swim-party day trips for groups to the beach over on Daufauski Island. That’s before there was “Conrack,” or a golf course. One’s biggest concern during those “lazy, hazy days of summer” (thank you Nat King Cole) was, depending on your motivation, to try to slip off into the bushes with a companion, or to try to prevent anyone from doing that.

A few weeks ago a friend asked if I had some photographs from the Savannah riverfront during some general time frames, for her to use in an upcoming presentation “A Walk Down River Street” (https://reg129.imperisoft.com/SeniorCitizens/ProgramDetail/3531393030/Registration.aspx). Pulling files for that has led to me doing an exhibition in the Rotunda of Savannah’s City Hall.

The exhibition “The Persistence of Change,” explores the continuing evolution of Savannah’s riverfront in a series of photographs spanning the past five decades, reminding us that we are on a change continuum that started long before each of us arrived and one that will continue long after each of us is gone. From August 28^th through December 2024, the exhibit will be on display in the rotunda gallery of Savannah’s historic City Hall (open to the public Monday-Friday, 8:30am-5:00pm).

Artist Talk Details:

• Program: Photographer Bill Durrence discusses his work on display in the exhibit “The Persistence of Change,” followed by an opportunity to view the exhibit with the artist
• Where: 2^nd Floor Media Room, Savannah City Hall, Bay Street at Bull Street
• When: Wednesday, August 28, 2024, 3:30pm
• Registration Required: This program is free and open to the public, but space is limited and registration required. Email [email protected] to reserve your space now.

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

My newest web gallery, “Kolkata: Art, Spirit, 2012,” https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G00007QMbT_AMcUI, concludes my four part photo-essay on my brief visit to Kolkata.

My reason for being there was my Dad. Dad was a farm kid from deep in the country of southeast Georgia who never finished the 7th grade. In WW II he was in the US Army Air Corps, stationed in the Bengal area of Bangladesh and India (all of it India then), and it’s always seemed to me it would have been a huge culture shock for him. I regret he passed before I was curious enough to ask him about his feelings, details of his experience. One thing is, Dad was so low key, took everything with equanimity, at least on the surface, so no matter how much he might have been surprised, most people watching him would not register that. Mom used to say the only way she could tell if he was teasing her sometimes was a little twitch near the corner of his mouth.

I wanted, in some small way, to try to get a feel for what he might have seen, even all these years later.

During my visit, and now reviewing the images, it feels like a creative thread runs through every aspect of life there. Something being practical, utilitarian, doesn’t mean it can’t also be pretty or interesting visually, and the craftsmanship is sometimes spectacular. The gallery runs through a series from art found on the street to elaborate spiritual palaces. In September/October Kolkata celebrates the Durga Puja festival and for months beforehand extravagant straw and clay sculptures and altars are created to only be walked into a river and left to dissolve at the end.

In the countryside, ancient temples are covered with small tiles of bas-relief designs and characters, or groupings, each character uniquely individual.

All four of the Kolkata essay chapters are at https://www.billdurrence.com/index/all

If you want to know the feel of a place, you need to be on foot, on the street, off the beaten tourist path, and not part of a herd. It is not enough to see something of it through a window. You have to be where you can hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it. Step in it.

It was HOT! My intrepid travel companion, Randy Thompson, and I were in Bengal in early June, a few weeks before monsoon. It was the kind of hot that makes a cold beer taste so good, even to people who don’t usually like beer. Coming from Bangladesh where I could not get a beer (Muslim country), the first swig of a cold one the first day in Kolkata was ambrosia; I set the bottle down on a table and when I picked it up for the next taste, it was already too hot to drink. In temples and other spiritual sites you were expected to go barefoot out of respect, so we quickly danced across various hot paving stones until reaching the cool, soothing feel of marble.

It would have been so much easier to lie near-naked in a dark hotel room, lit only by the bright glowing around the window shutters, with a ceiling fan languidly pushing at the thick air. If you grew up in the American South pre-air conditioning, you know the drill. But much of the point of travel for me is to be surprised, and that’s unlikely to happen if cocooning.

I want to see what I might discover; discover in the sense of Christopher Columbus discovering North America. A lot of other people may already know, but it’s new to me. To capture detail and intimacy in narrative photographs of that journey, I like to use a wide angle lens and step into the scene. Here that let me see a fashion/style clash between the main subject-the women-that could be a metaphor for any number of social/political battles, and also include story-telling context like the bakery in the left background with goods in a modern deli case surrounded by a dirt storefront, the patchwork of architecture, and scary nightmare of wiring.

My new web gallery, Kolkata: On the Street, 2012, https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000gmGmlDXTr4Y, is a series of photographs from street level that tell some stories of the “feel” I got for Kolkata and countryside.

Fresh markets are one of my favorite destinations when traveling. They provide color, both literally and figuratively. They are generally very lively, peopled with vendors, buyers, and gawkers who usually tolerate photographers amicably as long as they don’t get in the way of business or otherwise make a nuisance of themselves.

Numerous Kolkata roadways were lined with street vendors. I had a sense of abundance, richness, at the same time I assumed (based on no source I can specify) that India suffered from overwhelming poverty. Out of curiosity on the facts, I checked. According to World Bank data, the poverty rate in India in 1977 was 63.11%, but dropped steadily from then. 1987-50.59%; 2017-13.37%; 2021-11.9%. I estimate that in 2012, when I made this photograph, it was around 20%. For some perspective, that’s less than the poverty rate has been in Savannah for three decades.

I’ve created a new gallery, “Kolkata: Markets, 2012,” that explores a variety of energetic commercial activities: from street vendors to a wholesale flower market; an enormous indoor wholesale vegetable market where large bales of produce are dropped off outside and groups of men muscle the bale up and onto their heads to walk it into the market; and a large-scale, non-electric commercial laundry. To see that gallery, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000cUgS.K.Ufl8.

It’s been 12 years since I was there, but one of the things I remember, in going through the people photographs from four days in Kolkata, is a sense of acceptance of each moment, a calm center in the middle of chaos.

Visiting India was like falling into a kaleidoscope, a constant swirl of colors, patterns, textures, sounds, smells; a dense, noisy population in constant motion. But moving in close to individuals, for portraits, was met with grace and generosity, a willingness to confront the camera directly in most cases, and without artifice.

I’ve just created a new gallery on my website “Kolkata: People, Portraits.” To see those photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000J7IIfMI8aqs

It is a truism that we don’t realize, visually, changes in a landscape when we watch it happen incrementally over time. Older photographs are a quick reminder of how different the same place has become while you were watching.

Recently a friend, the city’s archivist, asked me about seeing some older photos that might be useful for a presentation she is doing. What I pulled out reminded me of how open the riverfront used to be, used to feel.

In the early 1970’s River Street was in pretty bad shape. Much of the old wooden pier was dangerous to walk on, but open to do so. There were 2-3 clubs/bars/restaurants, but it was mostly storage and service oriented tenants. It was not a place that felt safe after dark. The city did a polishing up: re-laying the ballast stones to smooth the street, adding bulkhead and riverwalk infrastructure, and landscaping. That’s what’s happening in this photograph.

Forty seven years later, the landscaping has matured; the foliage has grown and offers shade, there’s lots of seating around, it feels “not new,” comfortable, weathered in, like it’s always been this way. Lots of tourists on some mission, purposely-headed hither and yon. Some of the changes have been architectural. The large dirt area where the delivery trucks and VW microbus are parked is now part of the footprint of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. This view no longer exists.

For anyone who might be interested in the presentation, here are the details:

A “Walk” Down River Street

In a visual history of Savannah’s historic riverfront, Luciana Spracher, Director of the City of Savannah Municipal Archives, uses detailed narrative and unforgettable images to explore the evolution of this iconic landscape, from the colonial era through the present. 12-1 PM, August 21.

Register through The Learning Center: https://seniorcitizensinc.org/the-learning-center

Another aspect of this trip down memory lane has been: for many years I looked at a lot of vintage photographs, recognizing their place in a historical context because of the flat but detailed look they had, and understanding their shortcomings needed to be forgiven for limitations of earlier technology. Turns out I’ve been doing this long enough I now have my own “vintage” photographs of a time past. History doesn’t seem to be as long ago as it used to.

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

Barbara and I have been hanging out together for more than 40 years, but there might not be much more than that many photographs of us. We both shoot when we travel, and have lots of individual shots of each other, but not so many together. A mirror at the Rodin Museum let us each capture us, with the sculpture mimicking our photo-posture contortions.

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

A convergence of phenomena conspired to give this local boy a frozen moment alone with his magical, normally tourist-laden, city.

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

This ship looks pretty small, by today’s shipping standards, but Savannah was also smaller then. Missing from this view are at least four subsequent skyline-altering properties: the Hyatt, the Convention Center, the Westin, and Plant Riverside.

I don’t remember who the client was, but I was shooting a campaign that included several illustrations of port activity, and getting a hero shot of an arriving container carrier was on the “want” list. Today, just get a drone, but such remote options were not available then, for positioning or operating the camera, let alone having a preview of the composition. Yes, there was a time when you had to make photographs IRL.

Needed a chopper, but no commercial service was available in the area, and not enough budget. There were the Army helicopters at Hunter AAF, but rides on those were generally by invitation, not request. Fixed wing, door off, still a budget issue, but there was one elevated position possible–the old Talmadge Bridge, crossing right over the shipping lane.

The thing about the bridge was…no pedestrians allowed, and it was a two lane roadway with only a couple of feet on the outside of the lanes, so no pulling over and stopping.

I got a driver, drove over the bridge making sure no one was directly behind us, stopped just long enough for me to jump out and flatten myself against the side of the bridge (some open horizontal railings as I remember) while the driver continued on, to wait for a while in the then sparsely populated wildness of the Low Country. After a time, the driver came back across, stopping briefly to pick me up.

I was standing at the highest arc of the bridge where the roadway was a large section of open grating covering the entire width and length of the top. I could see the river under my feet. (I just had a little shiver remembering it.) I also remember a number of cars passing by while I tried to not get hit, them routinely yelling out, “Don’t jump!” Yet, no one ever stopped to see if I was OK, or reported me for being there.

Good light, nice ship, tide, and transit timing, everything came together, got the shot. But then I had to cross the bridge on the open grate, dodging traffic, to catch my ride. (Another shiver.)

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

Golden Lane runs along the wall inside Prague Castle, with houses built against the wall in the 1500’s. Today those buildings are shops and displays. Nearby is St. Vitus’ Cathedral, the third iteration of a church on the site, named for a Christian saint from Italy because, purportedly, a relic of St. Vitus (his arm?) was gifted for the establishment of a Romanesque rotunda around 925 AD. Construction of the current basilica started in 1344 and only took 600 years to complete. We think public works projects take too much time today, which they often do, but we also often lack perspective.

St. Vitus was a vaguely familiar name to me because Mom would sometimes say someone was doing the “St. Vitus Dance,” which I don’t think she meant literally. Turns out, same guy as the church.

We visited Prague about a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was adapting to open society quickly, but pricing had not yet caught up to western standards, and service was warm and friendly. And pretty much everyone spoke English. One prominent memory is a dinner experience–cocktails, appetizers, meals and dessert, with wine–that could have been in a “Michelin-starred” bistro in Paris, except the bill was half what it would have been there.

Now if I could only find a way to show the scale of these little shops….

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