If a picture says a thousand words, then The Valdosta Daily Times photographers have said thousands of words through the years. Hundreds of thousands.
This week, The Valdosta Daily Times photographers from the past to the present will speak volumes without having to utter a sound.
The Valdosta Daily Times: 50 Years in Photographs opens Monday with a free, public reception as part of four new exhibits opening at the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts. The photography exhibit represents more than 70 photographs taken by seven photographers from the past 50 years at The Valdosta Daily Times.
Robert C. Winter III started with The Valdosta Daily Times as a part-timer in 1958 before joining the newspaper full-time in 1960. He worked with The Valdosta Daily Times until the early 1980s before starting a local security-alarm company.
Jimmy Brooks joined The Valdosta Daily Times as a photographer from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, before working with the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce and then with area congressmen for many years.
Ken Klanicki was a photographer with The Valdosta Daily Times in the 1970s, before moving onto other papers and other fields.
Joey Ivansco worked with The Valdosta Daily Times from the late 1970s to early 1980s and has been a photographer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since leaving Valdosta.
Mike Tanner has worked with The Valdosta Daily Times three times as a photographer from the late 1980s through 2004 and now works for Lowndes County.
Pat Gallagher joined The Valdosta Daily Times as a photographer in March 2007, and continues taking pictures for the newspaper and our Web site, valdostadailytimes.com.
Paul Leavy joined The Valdosta Daily Times in the late 1980s and continues taking pictures as our chief photographer.
These seven men represent the pictures in The Valdosta Daily Times for the past five decades. With Winter’s 25 years with The Valdosta Daily Times and Leavy’s nearly 22 years, they represent about 46-47 years of the past 50 years of photography in The Valdosta Daily Times.
Our photographers have been dedicated to telling Valdosta-Lowndes County’s life story in photographs. Viewing the show, our readers can see how hairstyles, fashions, fads, architecture and other things have locally changed while newspaper photography has gone from being a total black-and-white concept using film to a full-fledged computerized, digital, color process.
Yet, some things remain the same. Great photography tells stories. Great photography reflects lives. Great photography captures a moment in time and makes it timeless. Great photography shares those thousand words and more.
The Valdosta Daily Times: 50 Years in Photographs is great photography, and it is photography of ours and your lives.
