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Issue date: 12/5/06 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Chris Kory On Wednesday, November 15, 2006, two visitors read about the latest photo exhibit on its opening night at the Southeast Museum of Photography. The photo exhibition it's titled, On the Beach and gives a small taste of the beach culture of California .

Media Credit: Chris Kory Jacques Garnier looks on as Douglas McCulloh takes photos of some of the visitors to their "On the Beach" display opening night at the Southeast Museum of Photography.

Recently the new photo exhibit "On the Beach" by Douglas McCulloh and Jacques Garnier opened in the upstairs gallery of the Southeast Museum of photography.
The exhibit consists of nearly 70 large, somewhat unusual portraits of people on several beaches along the West and East coasts, including Daytona Beach's. The photographs are very colorful and mostly close-ups, often oddly cropped and intriguing in their weirdness.
It was the photographers' goal to simply record the passing of beachgoers. As McCulloh says, "Beaches are half display, half voyeurism. This is the precise terrain of photography - one side posing, the other looking."
Garnier adds, "We just picked a spot on the beach where a lot of people passed and set up our lights. We didn't have to ask people to model for us. Our setup was attractive enough for people to stop by to see what was going on."
And so the images have become a perfect display of real life characters representing the incredible social and cultural diversity on the beaches.
Both McCulloh and Garnier have a very conceptual approach to photography, which has lead to many interesting individual projects ranging from stealing - or what the photographer likes to call "taking"- pictures of model homes to having a blind friend create a series of images.
The photographers have collaborated on several big projects in the past, like the production of the largest photograph ever taken. The dimensions were a stunning 31 by 111 feet.
Their conceptual approach is woven through "On the Beach" as well.
"We decided to use one camera together. While one of us was taking pictures, the other would take care of all the paperwork like model releases, etcetera, and vice versa. In the end we honestly didn't know anymore who took which picture - the ultimate collaboration!" says Garnier.
Another remarkable decision of the photographers was to use a traditional film camera on the West coast and to use a digital camera on the East coast.
"It was like crossing over from one medium to another while we were crossing the continent," said McCulloh. For the observant viewer this gives away which images are taken at which location. Although none of the images are marked by coast, the two different sizes of images in the exhibit are a result of digital proportions versus film proportions. The digital images, and thus the ones taken on the East coast, are slightly bigger. So now it's left for the viewer to guess where Daytona fits into the picture.
The exhibit will run through Jan. 19. Look for more information of www.smponline.org.

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