The St. Johns Cultural Council is presenting a new photo exhibition this month highlighting changes in St. Augustine throughout its history.
The exhibition is called Snapshot St. Augustine. The photos are on display in the Rotunda Gallery in the St. Johns County Administration Building.
During an appearance on WJCT's "First Coast Connect," photographer Ken Barrett talked about his work.
"Well some of the photography is related [to] St. Augustine's history, of course, and it's sort of my personal view of our town and its changing environment," Barrett said.
He says St. Augustine has constantly gone through change.
"We've lost buildings. We've lost part of our cultural heritage through the assimilation of so many different people coming into St. Augustine and wanting to do their own thing so to speak," Barrett said.
Barrett says he went through his archives, which date back to 1972 to find old photos of the city.
"I went from 1975 to 2015, and I just sort of picked out images that I think represents the changing town and its environment and its reenactments," Barrett said.
He says St. Augustine has been an attractive city for photographers since the 1800s.
"The two oldest photographs are of the city gate, which was rebuilt in the early 1800s by the Spanish," Barrett said.
He says St. Augustine has a rich, great legacy of having photographers come into town and record the images that are important to its history.
The exhibition is open and will run until Oct. 22.
Listen to the full conversation with Ken Barrett on Tuesday's episode of the "First Coast Connect" podcast on iTunes.
Photo credit: "fort4" by Sandy Auriene Sullivan is used under CC BY 2.0.
