Field Trips, South Carolina State Museum
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Sam Wang

I remember the South Carolina State Museum from its planning stages from day one. The State Museum is a jewel for the state, and I'm particularly glad that it's a combination of history and art together. So I put a lens that was intended to be in front of a very small camera, in front of much larger pieces of film, till I got the whole image, which is a circular. So I stuck with it and it became sort of my way of looking at things. Dave Vandiver was a very unusual person. He's very, very smart and I met him when he first repaired my camera equipment, and later on he would find very unusual, odd camera equipment and bring them to me. And then I found out that he also renovated houses. So I said since I was involved with this Palmetto Portraits project, I wanted to photograph people that were not only in the center of the arts, but also on the periphery, who are very important. And I felt that he was very important to me, and he showed up in that kind of attire with his hat on. And it was a very hot day. But I climbed on the ladder and quickly shot that portrait with my five by seven round image film camera. And I'm so glad that I did because he is no longer with us. But we have his picture to remember. To me, he represented some of the best of the South. That was not his house. But he repaired it. He restored it, he renovated it. So he had a hand in it. So it represented maybe a strata of population that live here.

Ernie was a very important person at the Botanical Gardens, and at that time he was in charge of a program that brought environmental natural sculpture programs to the gardens. So he was instrumental, and I felt that he needed to be one of the persons in my group of portraits. So I put him in front of one of the sculpture pieces that he was in charge and helping establish and found a tree behind him and put him there and everything just came together. It's amazing. A lot of it was not intended initially, but intuitively I knew I had a very good picture, a picture that's more than just about Ernie, but about a personality, the pride and the sense of art in nature, that feeling of completeness. I wanted them to be that size because I wanted you to feel that you're immersed in the scene. I don't want people to look at the picture as a small picture on the wall. I want it to feel that this is everything in front of you.