Photos serve as Ohio town's 'family album' from '30s Christina A. Stavale THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Print Run Date: Sunday, July 25, 2010 // Arts section inside One man's photographs have created a historic album of Zanesville. Through Sept. 18, Harry Taylor's scenes of everyday life in the Muskingum County seat, circa the 1930s, will be on display in the Zanesville Museum of Art. Taylor was a high-school student with a simple Kodak Retina camera and a love for the medium. He captured everything he could, including scenes from what was then the 5th Street Bridge. That bridge connected both sides of the Muskingum River before I-70 was built, and it led into downtown Zanesville. "I used to walk over the bridge to get to high school," Taylor, 88, recalled. "I regarded it as a prime photographic scene." Taylor left Zanesville in 1939 to attend Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pa. By the time he completed medical school at Temple University in 1945, photography was a "fond recollection." His negatives remained tucked away in his basement until 1990, when he retired from work in obstetrics and gynecology. "I became re-involved with the photographs, and developed an interest in them," Taylor said. Assisted by his three daughters, Taylor transferred the negatives onto a computer. In 2008, he contacted Susan Talbot-Stanaway, director of the Zanesville Museum of Art, and sent her a few images. Later that year, the museum displayed a small collection of his photos. Talbot-Stanaway said the pictures sparked memories for many of those who remembered Zanesville in the 1930s. "People came in and recognized their parents or themselves in these photographs," she said. "It was like opening a family album for Zanesville." The photographs in the larger exhibit of about 45 photos offer many stories. "They tell about back alleys and the steps of City Hall, with elderly men sitting and talking," Talbot-Stanaway said. "(They depict) storefronts, bridges and roads that no longer exist; the way streets were made out of individual bricks; a lady who sells vegetables at a downtown bridge, and everything is three for 10 cents. "It's very direct. It's not like reading a history book. You feel like you've experienced a different time." Talbot-Stanaway said Taylor's collection is one of only a few individual photo documents of such a specific time and place.
"They're so unique," she said. "This was a high-school boy with a not-very-sophisticated camera, who managed to capture photographs that describe Zanesville and its people so remarkably." cstavale@dispatch.com