To the countless enjoyment of hundreds of thousands living on or near the Chesapeake Bay, the region is now blessed to have some of the country’s finest photographers document for the whole world to see this vast watershed’s rare beauty.
That wasn’t always the case. Three decades ago, when the Baltimore Sun’s award-winning photographer Dave Harp left his job in the 1980s to devote his working life to capturing the Bay on film, he didn’t have much company. While the region had been fortunate in the first half of the 20th century, with the likes of A. Aubrey Bodine and Constance Stuart Larrabee, by the time Harp came on the scene, the subject matter had returned to a kind of no man’s land.
Since those days, Harp has continued his love affair with the Bay, albeit now with the digital photography and aerial photography, but his themes of land meeting water have remained. And now with over one hundred thousand photographs behind him, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has decided to honor this remarkable legacy of work with a major retrospective on Harp’s images. Starting at the end of this month until 2021, the Museum has pulled together fifty of those photos for all to enjoy.
A few weeks ago, the Spy talked to Dave about his work, his approach to photography, and his concerns about the Chesapeake Bay’s future in the 21st Century.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about “Where Land and Water Meet: The Chesapeake Bay Photography of David W. Harp” please go here.
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