The city of Savannah, Georgia – a place flowing with Spanish moss and studded with dark oaks – thrives on the stories that it tells about itself. I used darkroom techniques, superimposed type, and antique printing processes to present my photographs of Savannah in a way that probes the murky ground between myth and hard stone. The images themselves depict a collection of scenes from
the city and the surrounding area, some pulled from the best-groomed streets near the hotels and restaurants, some snatched from less-manicured locations. The quotations, spoken by Savannians talking about the city as they see it, come from John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Some of them—such as the comments about the stratospheric murder rate—might unsettle, while others blend quietly with the images of palm trees.

I chose the antique cyanotype printing process in order to give the images distance, to pull them away from the modern day, and also to allow flexible layering. I found that the medium encouraged combining and interrupting images, allowing me to create visual flow between each frame and each quotation.