Last week, the late Kenyon Professor Denis Baly’s vivid photography transported the Gambier community around the world to Turkey, Iran, Palestine, Morocco, Syria and Croatia in The Gund’s exhibit, The Man in the Street. As visitors stepped into The Gund’s curatorial classroom, beautiful snapshots of religious sites, aerial views of neighbourhoods and images of detailed mosaics greeted them. In the heart of the College’s museum, visitors had the opportunity to peer into slice-of-life moments from overseas. 

 A former professor of religious studies and lecturer in political science, Baly spent his breaks and sabbaticals traveling the world and learning about European, Arab and Persian cultures. He was interested in discovering the inner workings of the cultural history and rural life of these places. The last time Baly’s photos were displayed at The Gund was 10 years ago, and this time, Braeden Singleton ’25, Annika Schultz ’26 and Moe Belghith ’26 worked together to curate his photos in a public setting and digitize them in an organized online collection.

 In this new digital gallery, users can browse through Baly’s slide collection by the location and year a photo was taken. The website also guides visitors through the timeline of Baly’s life, from his teaching career in Palestine to his life at Kenyon as a professor. After his death, the slide collection became available to professors for academic use. “When a professor wanted to show an image in class, they contacted the [Visual Resources Center] and someone there would locate the slides for them to borrow,” the ‘About’ section of the Denis Baly Slide Collection website states. At Kenyon, his landscapes have been the subject of religious studies and art history lessons, and his affinity for finding beauty in global cultures lives on. 

 As for the names of the photos that appeared in the curatorial classroom, Singleton admits that some logistical data about the collection remains a mystery. Only the physical slides — which were projected on the wall in the curatorial classroom not decorated with large versions of the photos — and the slide index pages are available to allow curators like Singleton to track down when and where each picture was taken. Some of the slides include titles of the photo, and some only include some sort of identification number. In the digital gallery, the example Singleton explores in the Sources section is Baly’s photo of the Gates of Xerxes, located in Iran. This slide includes a date, title and identification number. 

 Baly’s work is illustrative and vibrant — walking into The Gund at any time last week presented visitors with the opportunity to engage with true passion for photography and travel. Currently, VRC staff are in the process of digitizing Baly’s over 17,000 slides to ensure that his work can be utilized by Kenyon students.