I only have a few things to say.
First of all, thank you to the HCPL and the Frederick Porter Griffin Library for Local History and
Genealogy for archiving my pictures. It is a prodigious amount of work to archive half a million
images.
Thanks to all the sponsors of Life in Corydon over the years, and I won’t try to name them all,
but four of them deserve special mention for being sponsors since its beginning 19 years ago:
• Butt Drugs,
• Bennett & Bennett,
• Harrison County Visitors & Convention Bureau, and
• Conrad Music Service.
And thanks to two new sponsors:
• Zimmerman Art Glass and
• Gehlbach and Royse.
Also, thanks to photographers who have assisted me over the years, Meredith Sarles Jones,
Mike Fisher, Jerod Clapp, Bob Brann, and my grandchildren, Zachary Webb and Emily
Hollingsworth.
As some of you may know, my wife of 59 years, Mary Jo Moss, died in January, which is why this
event was postponed. She was also a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, a writer,
photographer, designer, teacher, and food editor, but best known as a picture editor. She was a
faculty member and for three years, director of the Kalish Workshop – a prestigious workshop
for picture editors, photographers and designers. I’ve established a scholarship there in her
name.
My book PhotoSynthesis is for sale today, and all proceeds will go to the Mary Jo Moss
Memorial Picture Editing Scholarship Fund. Harrison County Arts is graciously donating their
share of the sales as well.
PhotoSynthesis is a compilation… no matter the skill or the equipment, it will make you a better
photographer. I still use the wisdom in that book every time I got out.
The prints around the room are also for sale.
When my father was 24 years old, he went off to war in Germany. His unit, the 20 th Armored
Division, was among those that liberated Dachau. But the story he tells most about the war was
the day he walked into the living room of an abandoned German farmhouse. There was a
fireplace, a picture of Jesus on the mantle, an easy chair, a kitchen table. He says he remembers
clearly what he thought. “These are the people we’re fighting? They’re just like us,” he realized.
I’ve worked at newspapers all my life, and I’ve been sent to countless houses to photograph
people who have pictures on the mantle and easy chairs and kitchen tables. Somewhere along
the way, I came to the same realization my father had. These people are just like me.
Other photographers have gone off to war and enlightened us to the horrors and strife in the
world. I’ve chosen to make pictures of ordinary people doing ordinary things. I’ve devoted my
career as a manager to teaching other photographers that it is the lives of ordinary people
going to work, raising children, cheering at T-ball games, that photographers must also
document, that such pictures need not be merely snapshots.
Quote from Will Durant, who said it more eloquently:
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people
killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record – while, on the banks,
unnoticed, people building homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even
whittle statues.
The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.”
I retired from newspapers in 2006 and set out to give something back to Corydon, the
community that had made my career possible. What better than pictures of the ordinary lives of
Croydon people. Thus the website.
Thanks again to all.
Harrison County Public Library Photo Archive
Brought to you by Bryan Moss