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.

Happy New Year 2015

I have a ritual of creating new images on the first day of each new year and this year has been no exception. A visit to the downtown and sponge docks area of Tarpon Springs is always fruitful as it seems that there is something interesting to photograph on each and every street corner and all the points in between.

I decided to experiment with my Polaroid Spectra camera using The Impossible Project Silver Shade film. This image was created with the original version of the film, so it's quite unpredictable and every image is a surprise. (Sometimes it's a surprise to simply get any image.) The film needs to be shielded from sunlight, so it's imperative to slip each image immediately into a light-tight container or, at the least, a coat pocket. I'm looking forward to trying the new formula which is supposed to be more stable.

I wish everyone a peaceful and creative New Year in 2015.

Anartia jatrophae

"Anartia jatrophae" is the title of a new print of mine that will be on display at the gallery opening on July 12, 2014, at the Morean Arts Center in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida.

Each one of the 16 individual carbon piezography prints on bamboo that combine to create the finished 24" x 32" (60.96 cm x 81.28 cm) piece of artwork  is hand-pinned to the substrate, much in the manner of a captured butterfly in a collection.

The piece is also available in a finished size of 48" x 64" (121.92 cm x 162.56 cm).

I hope to see you at the exhibition opening.

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.

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.

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.

A Conversation with the Artist at the FMoPA

"We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning." ~ Jean Baudrillard, 'Simulacra and Simulations,' 1988

In 1917, under the pseudonym R. Mutt, the French artist and champion of the Dadaist movement, Marcel Duchamp, challenged and shocked the Art World with his submission of 'Fountain' to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit, forever changing the perception of Art. In the latter part of the 20th Century, the Digital Revolution, with its bits and bytes and ones and zeros, forever changed the processes and the media in which art could be created. Photography has been squarely caught in this rapidly evolving landscape of digital capture with an accelerating distancing and removal of the physical contact between the artist and his media of geometric proportions.

As part of the ongoing museum series "The Individual's Opinion - The Photographer's View" at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, "A Conversation with the Artist David Durbak" will be presented on the evening of July 10, 2012, and I will be discussing the impact of digital capture on the art of the hand in photography. I hope you can join me in downtown Tampa, Florida, at FMoPA for an interactive conversation.