Local Color: Long Beach Island's Photographic History Reimagined

by Ray and Ganss Fisk, Ray Fisk

Overview

In this uniquely different look at Long Beach Island's past, historic black and white photographs, meticulously hand-colored,are paired with fascinating historical descriptions, quotes, and short passages. We see anew the colorful characters, history, rich stories, and lost landmarks of a vibrant New Jersey Shore community. Blurring the lines between a fine art coffee-table book and a history, Local Color is like visiting a gallery exhibition. The images, combined with the text vignettes, carry the moods and feelings of a vanished world. New life is breathed into the moments and lives of the Island's past and we enter a colorful world long gone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593221249
Publisher:	Down The Shore Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

LESLEE GANSS, an artist and graphic designer, spent her youthful summers in Harvey Cedars, NJ on Long Beach Island until moving to the Island year-round. After graduating from Philadelphia's University of the Arts (then the Philadelphia College of Art), she was hired for a summer job at the Island's young weekly, The SandPaper, and stayed on for 18 years as Art Director. She designs books and publications, and continues to create a weekly editorial cartoon -- The SandPaper's ''Artoon,'' now in its third decade. As an artist and craftsperson she paints, repurposes and up-cycles found objects, helps diamondback terrapins cross roads during nesting season, and has held a baby osprey. She has published two collections of her Artoons. Her family's home is in Harvey Cedars, NJ and she lives across Barnegat Bay surrounded by tidal creeks and salt marsh in the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.

RAY FISK was one of the first editors and photographers on Long Beach Island New Jersey's alternative weekly, The SandPaper, joining college friends at the Jersey Shore on the small staff with issue #7 -- before the paper even had an office. He planned to stay on the Island only through that summer but never left. (Long Beach Island does that to people.) He worked throughout New Jersey and the Shore region for over decade and a half as a full-time photojournalist for The New York Times and United Press International as well as other major publications while based on the Island. He founded Down The Shore Publishing from his home in a land-locked houseboat in Harvey Cedars, and has published over 100 titles with nearly three-dozen authors.

Read an Excerpt

FROM THE INTRODUCTION --

A picture is worth a thousand words, the old adage goes.

But what happens when photographs are so commonplace that they lose their meaning and their value is just another click? What happens when images become background noise? In this age when we're drowning in images and media, and apps can make every cellphone photo appear interesting, how do we find authenticity?

As a publisher who has worked with historic images for nearly four decades, that's the challenge we're trying to meet with this book. The Long Beach Island photographs published here reveal lives and moments from a world that no longer exists. How do we transport ourselves back into those lives and moments? How do we get to a place where we can actually feel that world?

In our earlier books about Island history, old pictures were only starting to emerge in public from yellowing albums and dusty attics; they hadn't been widely shared beyond family and neighbors. Readers would pore over those pages, absorbing stories and imagining — through never-before-seen photos — a younger Island.

The digital world has altered our perceptions about images. We're a bit jaded. We see a steady stream of photos — online, in messages, Facebook groups, Instagram, and other social media. All too frequently they're presented without context — without the story that could enlighten us. At times inaccurate history is attached to old photos. Historic images are also employed to persuade, to sell, to convince us that a business or product has deep roots and is connected to our shared past. Sadly, the visual content becomes devalued.

We wanted to break free of that; to find a way to present our history with new vibrance, yet still give a soulful and honest sense of place. To make it easily discovered despite our limited attention. To breathe new life into historic photos even if we've seen them elsewhere. We wanted to do this with an integrity that respects the original image and respects the people captured in that image — to show the humanity of this place....

Editorial Reviews

''...Brings to life the colorful history of a barrier island, its people and environs, from the 1870s through the 1980s.... Appealing to the Island's curious newcomers and generations-long loyalists, Local Color is the book for the Instagram generation, as well as an enchanting addition to the Down The Shore library for existing collectors.""

Long Beach Island, NJ - 7/28/21 - The SandPaper