An emotional vigil was held in Southeast D.C. Thursday night — to honor the memory of popular D.C. photographer Joseph Shymanski.

Shymanski, 51, was reported missing from his Calvert County, Maryland, home on Labor Day by a family member. Law enforcement has since arrested a Pennsylvania man of a murder charge in connection to his disappearance.

An investigation into his disappearance is still ongoing.

Human remains were discovered by police shortly before the vigil. In a Facebook post, detectives said they believe the remains may be linked to Shymanski’s murder.

“While we have yet to formally identify the remains discovered, we do believe they are associated with our ongoing investigation,” the post read.

But friends, family, colleagues and others who gathered Thursday said the night wasn’t about the “senseless loss” of Shymanski.

For good friends of his like Anneli Werner, it was about celebrating his life, and his vigil saw the community come together in a profound and special way.

The evening saw many a tearful embrace, all shared in a room filled with memories, snapshots of Shymanski’s life in photos — just the way those who knew him best said he would’ve liked it.

“Joe was the most loving, giving, generous, accommodating, kind soul that you will ever, and that I have ever met,” Werner said.

Werner told WTOP she first met Shymanski in 1998 in her 20s when she stumbled upon his photography booth, which he would set up in Eastern Market in Southeast D.C.

“I asked him to commission an art piece for me, which was all the way in Cathedral Heights,” she recounted. “He said it was no problem, and showed up a couple weeks later with this perfectly wrapped gift of the photos he’d taken.”

Werner said when she asked Shymanski how much she owed him, he responded, “Whatever you feel like.”

“That’s just how he was,” she said. “He had a heart of gold, and would do anything for anyone he cared about at the drop of a hat.”

Werner said she would go on to hire Shymanski to take photos for her law firm, and before his passing, they’d been good friends for 25+ years.

“It feels like I’m in some sort of sick joke,” she said of Shymanski’s passing. “But it’s appropriate we’ve gathered here in this place, in Eastern Market. He was an artist.”

Werner said her Shymanski story is just one of many.

And one by one, by candlelight outside Eastern Market on a muggy late summer night, people shared tales of Shymanski’s kindness, hilarity, generosity and fierce love.

“Joe was such a light, and such a beautiful spirit and beautiful soul. He never said a bad word about anybody, and everybody who was around him just felt happier,” Werner said.

At one point, those who knew Shymanski in the District, to family and friends who flew in from places like Michigan, Los Angeles and beyond, united in song to sing “Here Comes the Sun,” as a way of showing how Shymanski’s light shines on, even if he’s physically gone.

Werner said Shymanski lived larger in his 51 years than most do in their lifetimes. She said he will live on, both through those who loved him and also through the photographs that he leaves behind.

“He just inspired us all to be better people,” she said, fighting back tears. “And if we can carry that out in this crazy world we’re living in, we will all be a little bit better for it. I know that’s how I’m going to honor his legacy.”

Longtime friends recount Shymanski’s life

Two of Shymanski’s friends, Mike and Robyn Goecke, told WTOP that they remember him as an “upbeat, positive, caring, fun” person.

“He wanted people to be happy,” Robyn remembers. “Everywhere he went he brought such warmth and love and positivity and fun.”

Mike had known Shymanski since high school, and he remembers him being incredibly adept at making people comfortable and committed to capturing “things that were beautiful,” which helped with his D.C.-based photography business.

They said Shymanski’s focus in his portrait and artistic photography was to “capture the happiness and what was going on around him,” which extended from his caring personality. The Goeckes remember seeing Shymanski’s work at many friends’ houses and have heard from many people that own a piece of his work in the past few days.

“He just touched a lot of people,” Mike said. “And it brought him so much joy. Because he got to make people happy for a living. He would say to me, ‘People like my stuff, and it’s fun and they like to put it in their homes and it brings them joy on a daily basis. And I get paid to do that.’ And he just thought he was the luckiest guy ever.”

Shymanski was also able to expand his business with his partner Alton McDougal, who he met as a D.C. public schoolteacher.

“It’s just a great story,” Mike said. “How he was a teacher, developed this relationship with one of his former student’s siblings — they’re now business partners. And Alton’s just a great guy and was critical [and] instrumental in just making Joe’s life run the way it has the last several years.”

Shymanski moved to Calvert County with his ex-wife a few years ago, but remained connected to his community in D.C. by selling his artwork at stands at D.C.’s Eastern Market, as well as the Holiday Market in Gallery Place.

Mike recounted how Shymanski “was such a hands-on, tireless dad” over the past few years, even missing trips with long-distance friends to focus on his two kids and three stepchildren.

“Joe hasn’t been there to do any of that the last couple of years because he’s been going through a tough divorce. And his focus was on his kids,” Mike said. “And my heart’s just breaking for them right now.”

WTOP’s Scott Gelman contributed to this report.

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The Kenai Camera and Coffee photography group is currently displaying its first public art installation at Kenai River Brewing Company in Soldotna. The exhibit centers around the question: what inspires you about your life on the Kenai Peninsula?

“That could mean many different things to a lot of us; what we do with our families, what we look forward to seasonally or every day, what gets us through the harsh times and the really exciting times of living down here,” said Colette Gilmour, photographer and founding member of the Kenai Camera and Coffee group. “All of our pieces reflect that, and every artist wrote an artist statement answering their question.”

The installation features twenty photographs from eight central Peninsula-based photographers. For a few of the featured artists, this is the first time they’ve had work on display in a gallery.

Upon walking into the brewery, onlookers will recognize the various landscapes and scenes that make the Kenai Peninsula so unique. On display are photographs of the Kenai River Estuary in the winter, Mt. Iliamna in the summer, and a caribou resting in the grass, among others.

“There is incredible beauty out there, and sometimes it’s in the simple things,” said Irene Howdek, a member of the group whose work is on view in the gallery.

What started as a passive hobby while backpacking in the early 1980s has since turned into a passion Howdek regularly pursues. With a focus in nature photography, she has two pieces on display in the exhibit.

“The one piece is some fall leaves with a really cool hoarfrost on it,” Howdek said. “I [also] have the beach down on Land’s End where the emphasis was on the rocks, and it’s late evening lights so the rocks are lit up really cool.”

Hanging adjacent to Howdek’s work, Kimberly Sparacio’s photographs focus on the fishing scene of the peninsula. Sparacio and her husband, a fishing guide, moved to the area from Northern California in 2016.

“It’s pretty much our culture,” Sparacio said. “We fish every year, harvest fish, and it kind of just brings our family together. I thought both of these pieces would really explain my life and story, I guess.”

One of her pieces highlights a fly rod placed next to a line of sockeye salmon. Sparacio hopes that onlookers, specifically fishers, resonate with her two photographs.

“A lot of local people will enjoy it, they’ll see a lot of their own lives in it, so I really hope they enjoy that” she said.

Kenai Camera and Coffee was formed in 2019 and is open to photographers of all ages in and around the Kenai Peninsula. Although this is the group’s first public showing, they hope to exhibit more of their work at other venues in the future.

“It’s always interesting to look at the world through other people’s eyes,” said Ben Wishneck, a member of the group whose work is on display in the gallery. “When you can do that through photos, it’s a unique opportunity.”

“Alaskans, we’re off doing our own things in the winter and in the summer, but we all share similar values and why we live here,” Gilmour added. “Knowing that we all come from different backgrounds and different cultures, we all wake up and fill our lives with different things, to ultimately do the same thing; to enjoy our life and take part in what the Kenai Peninsula has to offer.”

The installation will be on display at the brewing company throughout the month of September.

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Thierry Maindrault’s Monthly Chronicle

I grant you, this word is really heavy, relatively indigestible, perfectly dissonant, bordering on banishment. Why am I offering it to you as the title of this column? Because its form and content truly invade and suffocate our entire societal space. Photography, often at the forefront of developments in our social structures, is not deceived after the encounter with this ogre devouring creation. This shapeless and brainless mass which is not adverse to offering itself small treats, by greedily swallowing many of our manifestations, in other times, so prestigious.

At the start, as in all tales, everything went well in this brave new world. All around our planet, a few photographers with more or less talent and some legitimate personal ambitions, imagined events (festivals, meetings, gatherings, etc.) as large as possible to make their works known to as many people as possible. This idea worked well for creative expression, since at the beginning of these trials, photography, still little recognized for its cultural usefulness, took hold and invited itself with recognition and panache into our lives. Objective representation gave way to creative representation, which was overwhelmed by photographic creation. All this worked well with photographers as enthusiastic as they were unconscious, with volunteers as dedicated as they were admiring, with audiences of connoisseurs as eager as they were passionate. A small miracle to discover all these genetically individualist photographers who offered prosperous atmospheres for the development of techniques and their appropriation by enthusiasts. They even ended up imposing some among themselves in the armchairs of the French Academy of Fine Arts (a bit logical for someone wearing a suit made of lights!).

But the great administrators of the well-being of our Worlds do not see it at all with the same lens. Throw me this wide angle with the wide vision that we won’t be able to accept, and close this angle too permissive for our way of life. Let’s put this bunch of photographers back on the right road. How could all these “eggheads”, with or without feathers, succeed in such a public operation to annihilate photography? Quite simply, with a technique that is familiar to them, that of the so-called “ladder”, with the fundamental knowhow of politicians.

When the initial little party, with the festival of friends first, took on a little importance in a society which was slowly returning to leisure, after the war, danger appeared. As anything likely to generate electoral votes (from nurseries to homes for the elderly), the photographic demonstrations attracted politicians who hastened to make many promises. Our initial organizers and managers, a little naive, did not understand that a promise only binds those who hear it. Without realizing that these promises were not lost on everyone. Administration, on the lookout for anything likely to make it indispensable and make it gain weight, rushed into the breach. Certainly, the public authorities were going to release some funds (always much less than the promise); but it is obvious that our happy unconscious photographers had been declared totally incompetent to manage these funds with the lot of procedures and forms, as useless as they are essential to implement. It had become essential to appoint a manager (director if possible) experienced in the workings of this administration, since he came from it. The rungs of the ladder were thus climbed, no longer according to the interest of the event for all, but solely according to the career plans of all those parachuted into the initiate circle. It should be noted that the first responders, other than photographers, were often truly passionate people who took real career risks. Unfortunately, we cannot see the same enthusiasm from their successors, much more attentive to their personal ascension.

The development became comical when our brilliant administrators found themselves confronted with financial problems. The resources of States are not inexhaustible, even by pushing public borrowing lines, the budgetary concepts of our uneducated managers had to find other sources of income. As always in these cases, the original heart of an event became an accessory pretext to operate a gas factory which no longer had a soul.

The lifeguards are the emperors of finance, these heroes who come from the same mold as the administrators, but in a version less limited by scruples. This is how the biggest international photographic events arrive at the last rungs of their ladder and find themselves in a very unstable balancing. Everywhere, communication replaces photographic interest in highlighting kind sponsors who clearly display their omnipresent presence.

The height has now arrived with a significant number of conferences, meetings, breakfasts, or press conferences focused on photography (its future, its sustainability, its societal place, its role, its ecological function, its social obligations, etc. ). All these essential discussions, more or less subsidized, forget the photographers (the real ones who know how to make a photograph that looks like a photograph) who are never solicited. It must be said that there are fewer and fewer of them, and if they know how to do all this, it is because they are old. But still, it is not acceptable, a little decency is required, I know also excellent young photographers (under 40, too old ?).

Civil servants (more on the financial side), curators (the same, on the cultural side), lawyers (necessarily specialized), exhibition curators (for ten years, they have grown like mushrooms after an autumn rain), journalists (a round table without a journalist is a day without bread), gallery owners (who confuse Indian ink and solarization), they are all invited to speak of nothing, except the end of photography. Some, a little vicious, actively participate in this disappearance of photographer troublemakers.

Let’s return to our photographic scale, professional cultural scale, from top to bottom, it is abundantly stocked with a significant number of specialists  who little know the realities and wonders of the photographic know-how.

Should we accept submission to all these diktats, let people walk all over us, or step on the feet of our colleague? Must we hunt for this so-called comfort (I will take care of everything for you) which looks like an authentic deception. I would rather have told a tall story

Thierry Maindrault, September 08, 2023

your comments about this chronicle and its photography are always welcome at

[email protected]

She sued the pop artist while she was executive editor of Modern Photography. She later travel the world as a nature photographer.

Fall is just around the corner, and why leave “back to school” just to the kids? Learning a new skill is good for everyone, regardless of age or experience, and keeps your brain sharp. Starting this autumn, Houstonians can do just that as they step behind the camera and jump into the Houston Center for Photography’s (HCP) new educational programs.

Houston Center for Photography offers around 100 photography classes and workshops all year round. Classes vary in competency levels and are all taught by esteemed photographers and lecturers. Luckily for Houstonians, HCP has re-envisioned its programming this fall with more advanced courses for photographers that want to push their photography to the next level and develop their portfolio.

“We designed HCP’s new educational program with the intention of making photographers at any level feel at home with our offering, and we even added a unique category for non-photographers” says Natan Dvir, Director of Education. Contemporary Histories of Photography, The Photobook: Its History and Highlights, and Cuts & Glue: We Are All Collages are a few favorites. Dvir continues, “Making engaging and inspiring classes accessible for our audience and community was another goal we set out to achieve.” Affordable and conveniently scheduled courses are designed to reach all budgets and schedules. Additionally, a selection of short workshops offers Houstonians opportunities to study at HCP for less than $100.

The new Fall Term includes a variety of subjects and formats that will match the needs and interests of photographers of all genres. The courses will continue to be taught by HCP’s diverse, professional, and accomplished faculty. Students can explore their creativity with AI Imaging: Techniques and Creative Approaches, learn practical skills and techniques with Storytelling with Color, Creative Landscape Photography: Art & Technique or Street Photography: Capturing the City’s Spirit and apply advanced contemporary approaches with Finding Your Voice: Developing a Personal Project, Mining Your Archive: Identifying Personal Series or Unlocking Creativity & Creating Visual Narratives.

HCP offers four terms of education around the year (Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer) so if your schedule doesn’t permit diving into photography this season, not to fret. And, for those interested in taking their skill to the next level, HCP also offers personalized one-on-one education, including portfolio reviews and private lessons.

If you haven’t visited the Houston Center for Photography, you’ve been missing out. Founded in 1981 as a small visual artists’ organization, HCP has grown to become an exemplary fine art organization. The gallery is free to the public and features some of the finest works of contemporary photography.

Join HCP staff and faculty at a special Fall Open House event on Tuesday, September 26, between 6-9 p.m. Take advantage of this opportunity to explore the new exhibitions, receive valuable information and discounts, share your photographic work, get advice on classes, and celebrate the upcoming term with Houston’s photographic community. RSVP is required.

Through its programs and exhibitions, the organization strives to increase society’s understanding and appreciation of photography and its evolving role in contemporary culture. It aims to encourage artists, build audiences, stimulate dialogue, and promote inquiry about photography and related media through education, exhibitions, publications, fellowship programs, and community collaboration.

Christine Callahan, West Village Waterfall, 2021, from the series Waning Days – Storytelling with Color

With all Houston Center for Photography has to offer for all ages and skills, this fall is looking picture-perfect.