Accidental History

It’s a very rare thing for a city to have a professional photographer capture the number of historical events that Gary Gardiner has captured for Westerville. In the last twenty years, he has appeared all over town photographing building demolitions, restaurant openings, parades, city events, and public programs. He has also wandered into parks and walked down sidewalks capturing the everyday moments of people from all walks of life

It is a rarity to not only have photographs of public historic moments, but the often-overlooked quiet moments of city life. The Westerville History Museum is thrilled that Gary has chosen to preserve these photographs with us so they can be seen and studied for generations to come.

We have started the process with Gary to get these photographs into the collection. Although not all can be viewed yet, we have a small sample of these photographs on display in the museum. This exhibits we’ve titled “Accidental History” because Gary didn’t try to create a historic photograph collection. He just did.

Capturing Westerville history is only what Gary has been up to relatively recently. He worked as a professional news photographer in Florida and Georgia, and worked for the Associated Press in the 1970s.

Gary will be presenting at the Westerville Historical Society meeting on January 27 at 7pm in the Westerville Public Library’s meeting rooms.  He will be presenting about his life as a photographer, leading up to his more recent activities of capturing historic moments in Westerville history.

The museum exhibit “Accidental History” will be open starting at 6:30pm on January 27 and will be viewable after the program up until 9pm.