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.

Disruption of Design

Photography students are often told to search for patterns and repetition in creating images with good design, but sometimes, disruption of the patterns and/or the repetition can be just as interesting, as seen in this image of a fence that has fallen over on the lawn of a residence in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas.

I do wonder how the mailman works around the precarious position of the mailbox.

Texas Flood

I was perusing some images from a few years back while listening to some old vinyl LPs, when I came across this image which just seemed to fit the lyrics of "Texas Flood" by Stevie Ray Vaughn.

"Texas Flood"

Well, there's floodin' down in Texas,
All of the telephone lines are down.
Well, there's floodin' down in Texas,
All of the telephone lines are down.
And, I've been tryin' to call my baby,
Lord, and I can't get a single sound...

The Ubiquitous Quonset Hut

At one time, the quonset hut was a ubiquitous sight across America, used in a multitude of purposes from storage facilities, to living quarters, to recording studios (like the famous Columbia Records' Studio B in Nashville, TN), and many more applications.

Based upon the design of the Nissen hut which was developed by the British during World War I, the 'quonset' in the name comes from Quonset Point at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville, Rhode Island, their first manufacture site. The first quonset huts were developed in 1941 for the U.S. Navy, which needed a lightweight, all-purpose building that could be shipped anywhere and built by virtually any unskilled laborer.

This particular quonset hut is located in Rice, Texas, and was captured on film just as the sun illuminated its gleaming metal side.

Light and Time

"What makes photography a strange invention - with unforeseeable consequences - is that its primary raw materials are light and time" - John Berger

Photography is truly painting with light, and with the light ever changing by every single instant, a photographer, like a Boy Scout, needs always be prepared. Henri Cartier-Bresson speaks of the decisive moment, but that moment in time and that particular light cannot be recorded unless the photographer is prepared with camera at hand and with a keen eye for what is to come - to anticipate the scene that is about to unfold.

Very early morning street scene, Dallas, Texas, 2008.

Heartland - Farm, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

This scene in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was just a few blocks from my hotel and seemed to be begging to be photographed and added to my Heartland series. An early morning sun, a nice Midwestern sky, along with some judicious framing produced this image on Ilford Delta 100 film.

I used my Hasselblad X-pan on the normal 35mm frame ratio setting, rather than the panoramic ratio setting. The ability to switch between two different capture ratios makes it a quite versatile camera for me.

Heartland - Grapevine, Texas

Grain mills and silos are ubiquitous within the Midwest landscape and have always been a photographic attraction for me. I happened upon this series of silos at just the right moment when the sun was highlighting a single cylinder.

Storage silos, Grapevine, Texas, 2008

The Unique Print

There is an intimate pleasure in creating tactile art; a pleasure that is sorely missing from computer-based art. Art of the hand is much more satisfying to the psyche and allows for unique, one-of-a-kind artwork that, while filled with all of the foibles and artifacts and inaccuracies that occur with handmade art, give the art life, and perhaps, even a soul.

I am currently revisiting using instant film in my art, creating emulsion lifts and emulsion transfers, modifying old techniques for the modern emulsions that are coming out of Ilford and Fujifilm. They are quirky, inaccurate, and a bit frustrating at times due to working with cameras and lenses that are 30 to 70 years old, but, they are oh, so satisfying.

Calla Lilies, Anniversary model Speed Graphic camera, Polaroid 4x5 film, Arches watercolour paper

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.

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.

New Years Day 2014

I love photographing at Howard Park in Tarpon Springs and it's been the inspiration for many of my Floridays images throughout the years. Continuing a tradition of creating new images on New Years Day, I went out to see a very strange sight as the Gulf of Mexico was at the lowest tide I had ever seen. It was quite surreal, like an other-wordly view, as I was able to walk out for several hundred yards on what was usually the bottom of the sea. A strange start to a whole new year.

Source - An Ongoing Series

A series, like any body of work, is created over a period of time, which, in the case of Source, has been a period of almost ten years.

In this era of instant gratification, it is sometimes difficult to understand the concept of a project that is years in the making and development. We tend to look for the immediate and we so often forget the simple, yet extreme, satisfaction that comes with savoring the time and creating photographs, instead of merely taking snapshots.

Working with silver gelatin film allows one to slow down and actually think about the process of photography, yet you can't get bogged down in the technical, for the concept of the final image has to be constantly in the forefront of creation. It's never a simple matter of taking a bunch of snapshots and hoping you can find something worthwhile by messing around with some plug-ins or actions in some editing program or app. You have to be able to plan from the very beginning; camera selection, film selection, metering and exposure methodology, development process, and finally, the print process.

It's so very exciting to see the pre-visualization of the scene come to life in the final print.

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.

Peaches + Pecans - New Heartland Image

I'm rather partial to small towns, having grown up with cornfields bordering my backyard, and love to explore the backroads and byways.

This image of a peaches and pecans farmer's shed during the off-season was created close to sundown on a wintery day, as evidenced by the grey wisps of clouds in the sky.

River of Grass Revisited

I recently re-read Marjory Stoneman Douglas' book, "The Everglades River of Grass," which was first published in 1947. I was particularly interested in the Afterword titled "Forty More Years of Crisis" which was published in 1987, forty years after the first publication. In 1987, Ms. Stoneman Douglas, at 98 years of age, was still a tireless supporter of the River of Grass and still seeking to educate more people about this fragile ecosystem upon which all of southern Florida relies so much, yet understands so little.

I have been a visitor to Florida since the 1960's and a resident since the 1970's and, like Ms. Stoneman Douglas, have watched as Florida has continuously vanished before my eyes under concrete, landfills, and pavement. It is so ironic that Florida politicians, who seem to know no other commerce than tourism, are so Hell-bent on destroying the natural beauty and the natural ecosystem of the state, the very things which are the real Florida.

Shame on them for doing so and shame on us for allowing it to happen again and again and again.

The 'Other' Side of the Atlantic

The erosion of the coastline is a constant losing battle of man vs. nature and nature's overwhelming force always wins. Although Hurricane Sandy's immediate effect was hundreds of miles away from the Florida coastline, the significant erosion of the shoreline is testament to the powerful effects of that devastating storm.

A New Image for the Heartland Series

North Carolina offers hundreds of winding back country roads through small towns that are filled with photographs waiting to be created; just like this one of an old sharecroppers cabin.

New 'Heartland' Image for the New Year

I love the panoramic view of the Hasselblad X-pan camera; the ratio reminds me of shooting a PanaVision movie camera with all of the compositional idiosyncrasies and nuances.

This image from the 'Heartland' series was captured on a side street in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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.