If “timing is everything” then so far this year I’ve been blessed. I ended my partnership with Savannah’s The Gallery earlier in the year, with the anticipation of pushing my work into other markets more receptive to the nude figure. I sold my share of the partnership to another photographer and at the close of business January 31st, removed the last of my unsold inventory from the building.
This past Tuesday, I received a call from a friend asking if I knew what had happened with The Gallery. When I told her I wasn’t aware of anything happening, she said during the latter part of the preceding week, there had been a fire in the building. Now, the space was completely empty.
Huh?!?
I called one of the current owning partners, painter Bobby Bagley to find out what in hell had happened.
The Gallery is located in an old Savannah building built sometime in the late 1800's, and occupies the ground floor and basement of the structure. On the second and third floors are apartments which rent mostly to college students. Bobby explained that in the early evening hours on a Thursday of the preceding week, a tenant in one of the apartments was smoking a cigarette and left the room to take a shower. The cigarette was not fully extinguished and somehow found its way onto combustible material, and the fire erupted. The fire supposedly did a number on the apartment where it started, and the automatic sprinkler system in the building activated. Fortunately, no one was injured or worse.
According to Bobby and much to my amazement, little work in The Gallery was damaged. The floors, walls, and ceilings however, are another matter. I’ve since spoken with another of the owning partners and she confirmed the water damage is significant. The space is now completely empty and undergoing repairs.
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The past two and a half weeks have been quite busy. In addition to some minor continuances of the hard drive crash, the necessities of the day job have kept me hopping. The foreseeable future offers little relief, and time for camera and subject will be sparse. If it sounds like I’m complaining, well, I suppose in a way I am. But make no mistake, I’m grateful to be busy and have paying work to do.
I’m hopeful to get some edits done from my two weeks ago shoot with Megan K once an early business trip, which begins tomorrow, is concluded.
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One from an early natural light session with Anna S.
