The inaugural exhibit in the city’s public art space at the Roger W. “Pip” Moyer Community Recreation Center opens this week featuring photographs by The Capital’s staff photographers.
An opening reception for “Capital Photojournalism: Art on a Deadline” is from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday and will be hosted by Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley.
As the city’s Art in Public Places Commission pondered what to hang in the new space, the idea popped up to approach The Capital’s photo department.
“They take highly artistic art on deadline,” said Arlene Berlin, who helps develop exhibits with the commission. “We thought it would be a great way to kick it off.”
In November she contacted Jeff Bill, director of photography for the Baltimore Sun Media Group. Photographers Paul W. Gillespie, Joshua McKerrow and Matthew Cole picked photos, Bill enlarged them, then the photographers framed the pieces. The exhibit will be on display through April.
McKerrow started studying fine arts photography with Jack Radcliffe in Harford County. But then came the first day as an photo intern at The Aegis, Hartford County’s twice-weekly paper.
“My first day I shot pictures of a crane collapse on a construction (site), then a small factory making chocolate bunnies for Easter. Then at the end of the day there was a fatal house fire, and they let me go along. I took a low-angle shot of all the fire hoses leading to the house and turned it in,” he said.
The next day he stopped at a Wawa to grab a cup of coffee and he saw the paper. “I saw my shot, above the fold, page A1, and I said, ‘OK, universe. I can do this.’ ”
After his internship, he was hired by The Aegis in 2000 and four years later joined The Capital staff.
Gillespie’s interest in photography was piqued when he took a friend to pick up proofs of her college senior picture. “The guy charged her $300 for six proofs. I said, ‘I want to do that,’ ” he said. So he took his 21st birthday money and bought a camera, took classes at the local community college in New Jersey and aimed to be a commercial photographer.
“My first photo was with the photo professor who hired me on as an assistant,” Gillespie said.
He got hired as a staff photographer with the Current newspapers, a group of weekly papers in southern New Jersey.
After two years of that, he started freelancing for the Atlantic City Press. He moved to Maryland to take a job at the Maryland Gazette in 2000, moving up to The Capital two years later.
Cole started shooting pictures in 10th grade at Old Mill High School, then moved on to studying photography at Anne Arundel Community College. “I took all the photography classes they had,” he said. “Then I took them again, auditing the classes so I could still have access to the darkroom.”
Then It was on to the University of Baltimore and, while there, an internship at The Capital. “I learned from Paul and Josh and Alison Harbaugh. And J. Henson,” then The Capital’s photo editor.
After that, he freelanced for the paper until he was hired as staff in 2012.
For McKerrow, one of his favorite pictures is a backstage picture of two clowns in front of a makeshift makeup mirror preparing for a Cole Bros. Circus performance in Crownsville.
“There’s a lot going on in there,” he said. One clown is nearly finished with his makeup application; the other is clean-faced, just beginning. A mask hanging from the mirror was like a model, in case the clown forgot what he is supposed to look like. Then the mirror itself crookedly hung by string in the makeshift dressing room in a trailer.
“Then you see a few small flags. American flags. And neither of the guys spoke English,” McKerrow said.
For Cole, it’s a shot of an Annapolis Summer Basketball League player in mid-dribble.
Shake-N-Go’s Gerald Stansbury is captured while making a quick move. “But look at his foot,” Cole said. Stansbury’s foot is planted, distorting his shoe, turning his ankle. “That caught my eye. I could not believe he didn’t break his ankle.”
Gillespie’s favorite was from a series on the Maryland prisons in Jessup.
“As we were being escorted through the cell block, a prisoner using a mirror to look down the cell block some distance away caught my eye,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t really have time to check any settings, but I raised the camera to my eye, composed the shot and managed to fire off three frames.”
The first photo was out of focus and by the third shot, the subject had spotted Gillespie and lowered the mirror. The second was the shot.
“The lines of the bars lead right to the mirror and his eyes,” he said. “It has been one of my favorite images since the day I shot it in April 2001.”
