SAVANNAH NIGHTS
2004 - 2018
The air is thick down in the American South. Thick with history and rich with culture, every Southern state has its own tourist trap. Florida has Saint Augustine. South Carolina has Charleston. And then there’s Savannah tucked in between, along the coastline of Georgia. But unlike the others, Savannah has its own eccentric pulse. Made famous by the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Savannah has an eclectic population with its genteel Southern heritage enlivened with close to 10,000 art school students. I was one of those students when I arrived in 2001.
Like any tourist, I was initially drawn to the squares, monuments and those 100-year-old live oak trees that line America’s first planned city. But as I started to call Savannah “home,” I found myself being drawn to the outskirts. The third largest port in America to the west and the marsh to the east provided a perfect change of pace, but still oddly felt like Savannah in an uncanny way. I lived in Savannah on and off for 13 years. I grew up with this city and vice-versa. Although all tourist cities experience gentrification, I know that Savannah will always be as strange as it is beautiful.