Pictures at an Exhibition

Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
June 1, 2016 7:19 p.m.

Last Friday the Museum of History held a reception to honor the recipients of the Fourth Annual Historic Preservation awards and to announce the opening of Historic Details, an exhibit of photography in the Gaslight Gallery. The subjects of the photographs were the various architectural details and unique features that can be found around our city and its environs.

There were about 20 photographs ranging from details of houses to weather vanes to a cemetery angel. I talked to a couple of the photographers whose works were on display. Roger Moore had a charming photo of a white oriel window seeming to sprout out of a brick building. I asked him where it was and he said the upper story of the building that houses the Amelia Island Coffee Shop and Blue Door Galleries. I was amazed then recollected that I seldom walk around downtown looking at the upper stories of buildings. My eyes are either straight ahead or scanning the sidewalk lest I trip over something. Now I have to train myself to stand in one spot and consider the upper stories of the downtown buildings.

There is an incredible photo of the Fresnel lens in the island lighthouse. Almost equally incredible is hearing Scott Moore talk about how he managed to get the photo. At first glance the photo looked to be of some giant, multi-colored creature staring at me. The lens is quite large and colors reflected off all of its glass surfaces. Scott said he’d been standing on the upper balcony of the lighthouse, camera stretched up trying to capture a photo. He said he took 30 photos and only one showed the spectrum of colors.

One of my favorites of the exhibit was a close up of a rack of post office boxes. The photo was done by Steve Leimberg, whose photography never ceases to amaze me. Walt Peterson expresses a wonderful whimsy in his photos, especially one showing four weather vanes that hung in the air unattached to any structure.

Looking at the photos will bring home to you how little we see and how much hidden treasure is all around us. For instance, there was a photo of a shutter dog at St. Michael’s Academy, sort of an S-shaped piece. The anchor chain by Brett’s took on a sculptural appearance. There’s not enough time to describe each photograph in this short column. So you need to go see the exhibit yourself. And you have plenty of time to do so as the exhibit will be at the museum through the end of August.

Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.