LONGTIME CAPITAL GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER PAUL W. GILLESPIE PRESENTS
Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

Exhibition of street portraits, cosmic images and photographs capturing people, places and passing moments opens Sept. 10 at Chesapeake Arts Center

Photography doesn’t end when Paul W. Gillespie’s workday does.
For more than three decades, Gillespie has worked as a newspaper photojournalist, photographing
assignments throughout Anne Arundel County and beyond. But photography has never been limited to his
work. For years, he has continued to photograph simply because it is how he experiences the world—from
the moon overhead to the people and passing moments he encounters on the street.
That personal work is at the heart of his new solo exhibition, Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It? People,
Places, and Passing Moments, opening Sept. 10 at the Patricia Barland Gallery at Chesapeake Arts Center.
The exhibition runs Sept. 10 through Nov. 8, 2026, with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 10.
The exhibition brings together Gillespie’s street portraits and work made primarily over the past several
years, along with photographs of musicians, places and fleeting moments that caught his attention. It also
includes photographs of the moon, a subject dear to his heart. A selection of images from his Journalists
Matter: Faces of the Capital Gazette project connects the exhibition to an important chapter of his life while
keeping the focus on the broader range of work he has made away from his newspaper assignments.
“Photography doesn’t end when my workday does,” Gillespie said. “I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s
really more a way of life than a job. I see someone or something that makes me stop. If it’s a person, I want
to meet them, learn about them and, hopefully, capture something of their story in my photographs so I can
share it with others. My hope is that by sharing those stories, we might become a little more understanding
and empathetic toward one another.”
Gillespie’s approach remains rooted in the idea of photography as capturing a moment that existed in front
of his camera. His photographs are, above all, records of moments he encountered and chose to preserve.
At the center of much of his work are the people he meets and the stories they carry, with each photograph
an attempt to convey something of who they are and what makes them worth seeing.
That approach is particularly evident in Gillespie’s street portraits, many of which began with encounters
that developed into relationships over time. Rather than simply documenting a face, he looks for a
photograph that can give viewers a glimpse of the person behind it.
The exhibition’s title reflects Gillespie’s belief that photographs can carry stories beyond the moment in
which they were made. Sometimes the story is found in the circumstances surrounding the photograph.
Sometimes it is in the person looking back at the camera. And sometimes it is simply the moment itself.
After three decades spent photographing assignments for newspapers, Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t
It? offers Gillespie the opportunity to show viewers what he photographs when nobody is assigning the
story.
Gillespie is also available for an artist talk or panel discussion in connection with the exhibition.

EXHIBITION INFORMATION
Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It? People, Places, and Passing Moments
Paul W. Gillespie
Patricia Barland Gallery
Chesapeake Arts Center
Sept. 10–Nov. 8, 2026
Opening Reception:
Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026
6–8 p.m.