SpringfieldNewsSun.com

SPRINGFIELD — More than four decades ago, a Canadian college student stepped through the looking-glass.

"I thought, 'I've never seen such a weird collection of things and people on public display,' " recalled Terence Byrnes.

It was his first trip to Springfield.

Wonderland.

"It was a fantasy world," he said. "An abandoned one."

The people and places he saw through his camera viewfinder that day in 1966 would keep him coming back again and again.

Now 60, Byrnes has photographed Springfield almost every year for 43 years.

He'll visit Wittenberg University on Thursday, Feb. 19, to give a slide presentation on his work — a decades-spanning photo project now officially titled "Springfield, Ohio: The End of the National Road."

If Springfield was the place in the 19th century where the federal government ran out of money to complete the National Road, then it was the place in the 20th century where many others ran out of luck.

One man's midsized Rust Belt city is another man's wonderland.

But Byrnes' fantasyland is grounded in the harsh realities of poverty.

Walking the streets most every summer for up to 14 hours at a time, he chooses to photograph the kinds of people and places the convention and visitors bureau would rather not show to visiting foreigners like Byrnes.

"I know different things about that town than people who've grown up there," he explained. "Do I know much about the social life of the northside of Springfield? No. Nothing at all.

"I know about the people who collect cats and raccoons. I've walked through houses where the loudest sound is the buzzing of flies."

The work — 20,000 photos and counting — isn't a commentary on Springfield, he insists, "other than obvious poverty exists."

It was just so radically different than what he saw growing up in Canada.

"Why does a place take its most stunning features," he wondered, "and say, 'We don't need these.' "

Like Walker Evans, the Depression-era photographer before him, Byrnes has found the downtrodden to be willing subjects who aren't obsessed with image.

"In the better part of town," he said, "a photograph means one thing, that either you goof in a certain way or pose in a certain way. There's a higher degree of natural theatricality in the poorer parts of town."

He wants to simply photograph the people, as they are, in their natural environment.

It all goes back to that first roll of film in 1966, when he shot a young black girl in cat glasses holding her arm.

"There was something so inexplicable and tender about that whole thing. That moment," Byrnes said. "Occasionally, people will assume a posture. I'll bark, 'Don't move or I'll murder you.'

"It's not like fashion photography, where you design generously with the body. I edit from reality and have to be quick on my feet to capture reality."

It's hard to believe, but Byrnes never showed anyone his work for years. Decades, actually.

He's not even a full-time photographer. He teaches English at Concordia University in Montreal.

In 1966, he was just an Antioch College student with an intense passion for photography, but even that was called into question when the Antonioni movie "Blowup" created waves of fake-hipster photographers on campus.

"I didn't like what I saw around me. These were children of affluence," Byrnes said. "I so didn't want to be identified with that."

He even sold his camera.

"Then I regretted it and bought it back," he said.

Byrnes quietly resumed photographing Springfield until 2002, when 40 photos were shown at the Springfield Museum of Art.

Now, a major exhibition is planned for winter 2010 at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Canada. A coffee-table book also is in the works, but on hold because of the economy.

"If I have one kind of unconscious talent in life," Byrnes said, "it's that I don't intimidate people."

Each year, he brings the people he shot the summer before a copy of their photograph — if he can find them.

People move. People die. People get sent to prison.

"Each of those images is the product of a collusion," Byrnes said. "I don't hold myself above any of the people I photograph.

"We produce them together."

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

How to go

What: Terence

Byrnes talks about photographing Springfield for the past 43 years.

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 19

Where: Kissell Auditorium of Wittenberg University's Koch Hall; a selection of photos is on display in Koch Hall through Feb. 20

Cost: Free