Colorful canvas prints hang on the walls of Jackie Barton’s office at the Westerville History Museum: a man climbs a ladder set against a startlingly red brick building, three children stoop toward a pond on a sunny day, pink sunlight reflects on the water of a blue public swimming pool.
The prints are just a few of the photos taken by longtime Westerville resident and photographer Gary Gardiner.
"I just tend to pick things that feel a little like art to me. Gary's photos are not always like art," Barton said.
Barton, the museum manager, chose the shots from the leftovers of an old museum exhibit of Gardiner’s work. That exhibit included 75 images and was titled "Accidental History," to reflect the idea that what happens today is tomorrow's history.
That sampling of Gardiner's work was tiny, however, compared to the digital collection Gardiner recently entrusted to the museum.
He is handing over two decades of work — some two million raw images.
Gary Gardiner
Gardiner spent nearly five decades as a news photographer for the Associated Press.
"I've done pretty much everything you can imagine as a photographer. I've covered natural disasters, unnatural disasters," Gardiner said. "From popes to queens and kings and everything in between."
Gardiner jokes that he's never been in a war zone, but he did work in Detroit in the mid-80s.
He retired from the Associated Press in 2004.
A few weeks later, he left a doctor’s appointment where his doctor had told him he was in perfect health, and was nearly hit by a dump truck that had run a red light.
Gardiner realized he could have died that day.
"And people would go, ‘oh, poor Gary, he'd been retired two weeks, he died in a car crash. Oh, I wonder what his last photo was?’” Gardiner said.
The very next day, he began a blog called My Final Photo.
"There was no greater pledge than just to make a photograph every day," Gardiner said.
Gardiner set simple parameters: Photos could be of anything, as long as they were taken within a few miles of his home.
Two decades later, he still produces a photo every single day. Sometimes, he shoots hundreds or thousands of photos to get the perfect one.
"There was no greater pledge than just to make a photograph every day."- Gary Gardiner
Preserving history, one step at a time
Now, it’s up to Barton to figure out what to do with the millions of raw photos.
"We're gonna preserve it and we're gonna make it accessible. There's your short version," Barton said.
The long version is complicated. History museums are used to analog collections that are sometimes made digital. Gardiner’s photos began as digital files, and the sheer volume of data makes organizing and preserving the images challenging. It will involve the museum buying new software and the staff learning new skills.
"We are very much on a right foot-left foot path. And the first foot is make sure everything's secure, make sure it's being backed up," Barton said.
Barton is also thinking about who will view the photos.
“There's the today audience and then there's future us, right?” Barton said, referring to the generations of people who may search the museum's databases for years to come.
People 25, 50, 100 years from now, may use Gardiner's images to understand the way our world is today.
They’ll see the woman kneeling at graveside on Mother’s Day. They'll see Boy Scouts saluting a blazing orange fire at a flag retirement, and young women holding hands as they stride through the rain.
Gardiner's photos are a snapshot of real life in Westerville. Not every image is one that Barton would display in her office, and some may not paint a flattering picture in 100 years. Gardiner, however, believes there is value in seeing people as they are.
"I'm really a people person, and I think that may end up being that hundred-year strength," Gardiner said.
Recently, Gardiner photographed a holiday performance of Handel’s Messiah at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church.
"There’s a woman with an iPad, a woman with a printed sheet singing. And I went, ‘oh, that's a great photograph to tell the time,'" Gardiner said.
"There's a picture of something, there's a picture about something. You take a picture of something, you make a picture about something."- Gary Gardiner
The life of a photographer
Gardiner said that as a photographer, he’s been lucky to capture many moments like that.
“That's the exciting part of what I do, that I get to be the one that gets to stand in a spot and see the story," Gardiner said.
When Gardiner talks about photography, he says he makes photos – not takes them.
"There's a picture of something, there's a picture about something. You take a picture of something, you make a picture about something," Gardiner explained.
Gardiner, 81, will keep making photos as long as he can. He also runs a Westerville newsletter, putting his years of journalism to work.
"In this age of shrinking journalism budgets and conglomerated newspapers, we have that spotlight shone here on our local community and now it's gonna be preserved for the future," Barton said.
She said that's pretty special. Gardiner said he's only doing what he's always done.
"I tell this to people every now and then. The main reason I do this is for me. To keep me active in the thing I've always done. Because it is who I am. It's that simple," Gardiner said.
Gardiner decided to donate the My Final Photo collection to the museum now, while he’s still around to help manage it.
“I didn't want to be dead, gone, and not be able to put them in a direction that they're comfortable that they've done the right thing," Gardiner said.
Gardiner said the museum staff will decide how to share the photos and what story they want to share. He believes his images will make people feel something, even years from now.
“I tell photographers all the time, your photographs have to be evocative. If they don't evoke some emotion in the viewer, you failed making photographs," Gardiner said.
