Photographer captures Apalachicola’s ‘sweet souls’

In his first book of photography, Michael Rindler focused nearly entirely on inanimate objects, the many varied signs he saw populating the city of Apalachicola, his newfound home.

That work had only two people in it, seafood dealer Tommy Ward and bookstore owner Dale Julian, each posed with their business’s signs.

In his newest work, he chose to focus instead on the city’s human population, and celebrate its diversity and multi-dimensionality.

The new work, the “Sweet Souls of Apalachicola,” is Rindler’s first try at a book solely devoted to what he calls “people photographs.” As a retired health care executive, he’s authored several works on the comparatively mundane topics of engineering a hospital turnaround and the challenges of hospital governance. And as a longtime photographer, he’s created portfolios of his works for friends and clients, nearly always of portraits of inanimate objects, everything from classic cars and motorcycles, to working boats, flowers and other still life.

His formula for creating “Sweet Souls” was a bit like the game of tag, in which he started with a couple of people he knew of, and then had each of them recommend someone else until he had assembled a collection of about two people. For each of them, he had them write a paragraph about themselves in their own words, and then he added a similar size paragraph of his own impressions.

There are longtime locals and relative newcomers, those who live modest, middle class lives and those for whom Apalachicola is a place to enjoy a second home.

It’s a clear and simple design, and the photos that emerge are along those very same lines, basic upbeat snapshots that reveal people at their best, 

By design, members, both former and current, of the seafood industry and of the education profession figure prominently in the collection, and their ages range from their 20s to their 80s.

It’s a book that has the lightness of a spring day, bright and promising, capturing a fleeting moment in the life of one of Florida’s memorable small towns.