RALEIGH – Visitors to the Gaston County Public Library in Gastonia will get a fresh look at North Carolina through the “Telling Our Stories Photography Exhibit,” on display Sept. 3-24. The exhibit contains 50 images from the mountains to the coast that show different time periods. Organized by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the exhibition incorporates some of the state’s best professional and amateur photographers, and for the first time photographs from the State Archives are on tour.
The “Telling Our Stories” exhibit will have visited 33 public libraries across the state by December, on an eastern and a western route. Each route includes 11 images from the top winners of the 2008 Our State magazine Readers Choice Photography contest, 21 images from professional photographers and 18 pictures from the State Archives. Among images are a young Andy Griffith in The Lost Colony, a desert crossing and a pleasant pig. Learn more at http://www.ncculture.com/TOS_2008/TOS_home.asp. The State Library of North Carolina coordinated the tour.
Photographs from the region include the Our State magazine grand prize winner, Blue heron in my backyard, by Bonnie Short of Hendersonville. Professional photographers featured from Charlotte are Byron Baldwin with Dairy Queen and Andrea Brown with roomneedles.
Visitors have written impressions in a notebook including from Madison County, “Great exhibit – a pleasant surprise in our library,” and “Great, wonderful! Especially the black and whites – fond memories of days gone by.” Henderson County visitors wrote, “Church of the Living God 2 just broke my heart again,” and “Love the photos, especially the old ones, the nature ones, and the tubas.”
For information about the Gaston exhibit, call (704) 868-2164. For information about the tour call (919) 807-7385. The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency dedicated to the promotion and protection of North Carolina’s arts, history and culture. It is now podcasting 24/7 with information available at www.ncculture.com.