Solo Exhibit - Thirty Years of Salt Life

I am very pleased to announce my solo exhibit titled 'David Durbak - Thirty Years of Salt Life' which will open at the Ross Bagwell Art Gallery in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 5, 2015. The exhibit is a retrospective of the past thirty years of my photography and features selected images from three of my Florida-based series; Floridays, Oceanids, and Source. It is difficult to believe that 30 years, three whole decades, have passed since my wife, Janice, first gifted me with a Hasselblad camera in order to start this wonderful career in photography. My, how the time has flown and what a crazy, fun-filled time it has been!

The images are all film-based and were created using various methods that match the intent and narrative of each series:
 - Floridays, based upon my memories of 'Old Florida' as well as the songs of troubadour Jimmy Buffett, were created using a simple, mostly out-of-focus Holga toy camera
 - Oceanids, based upon my love for Greek and Roman mythology (and my many hours of reading and re-reading the Iliad and Odyssey), and Source, based upon Florida's unique waters, were created using that now 30-year old Hasselblad camera
 - while the Floridays and Source series were printed using modern carbon piezography methods, the Oceanids images were printed using the antique cyanotype process.

My grateful thanks to all of my clients, family, friends, and supporters who have made the past thirty years possible, and my special thanks to you, Janice, for starting this whole whirlwind.

I hope you get a chance to visit the gallery and share my images and my memories.

A sample image from the Source series is shown above and I'll be posting images of the exhibit in the gallery soon.

St. Petersburg, Florida - The Pyramid Pier

The first City of St. Petersburg Pier was the Railroad Pier, built by the Orange Belt Railway back in 1889. The most elaborate was the Million Dollar Pier, with its Mediterranean revival architecture, which was completed in 1926. It was demolished in 1967, to make way for the current inverted Pyramid Pier, which was opened to the public in 1973. The Pyramid Pier was closed in 2013 due to structural deterioration.

It remains to be seen what style of architecture will replace the current pier. In the meantime, it still makes for a fetching photographic subject.

Heartland - Texas Hill Country

I spent a few months in Austin and wandered a bit through the Texas Hill Country. The terrain is quite a bit different from that of the areas I have called 'home' which have always been near large bodies of water; the Pacific, the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic.

The waves in this image of the Hill Country were created by a sea of tall grasses and the horizon was cut by the branches of a lone tree instead of sails on a tall mast. For those who have wondered if I ever use a palette containing anything beyond monochrome.

Floridays + Mangroves

There is a beautiful symbiosis amongst the microbes, plants, and animals of the Florida shorelines within the communities of red mangroves. The numerous feeding and spawning fish and nesting water birds that live within the sprawling roots of the mangroves make for delightful viewing on any day along the shores.

Floridays - Juno Beach, Florida

There's something rejuvenating about simply walking along the beach in the early morning. The sunlight filtering through the clouds, the gentle rhythm of the waves, and the salty breeze combine to wash away the cares (and carousing) of the night before and refresh the mind at the start of a new day.

A New Floridays Image

I love serendipity in my photographic explorations - coming across unexpected subjects such as this castaway bench by the Florida Gulf coast. Very often, I will set out, camera in hand, with one idea in mind and then - wham - something presents itself that just begs to be photographed and suddenly all pre-formed ideas are swept aside.

"Back to Livin' Floridays... "

I am quite pleased that, for the fourth year, a photograph of mine has been selected for inclusion in the ART Of Seeing book. This year, it was an image from my 'Floridays' series, an on-going collection of images created along the Florida Gulf Coast and inspired by the Jimmy Buffett song of the same name.

To view the current 'Floridays' images, please visit:

http://daviddurbak.com/floridays.html