For Bill Carner, it's been a decades-long career surrounded in nostalgia -- black and white photos, often, of a Louisville that may be forgotten without the visual evidence he's spent a career collecting.Carner is ending a 35-year run as the curator -- or, as he's called, "photo wrangler" -- for the University of Louisville Photographic Archives. To celebrate, the exhibit "Bill Carner's Swan Song: A Final Curatorial Exercise" will open Thursday and run through Jan. 25 at U of L's Ekstrom Library.In producing the exhibit, Carner gathered favorite photographs from friends and colleagues that have inspired him and contributed to his own development as a photographer. Carner speaks of each image in the collection with warmth and recollection.“It’s an homage to some of my friends and some of my favorite photographers," Carner said. "I put together an exhibit of around 40 really great photographs to look at. I think people will enjoy it. I know I’m enjoying putting it together.”Carner applied for his position at the University of Louisville while completing his Masters degree. He moved to Louisville from Reddington, Pa., to enroll in the Center for Photographic Studies ,where C.J. Pressma became his mentor.Carner went on to develop relationships with other prominent Louisville photographers. For example, Carner met Stern Bramson in the 1980s after Courier-Journal Publisher Barry Bingham made a donation of photos from the Royal Photo Company -- a Louisville commercial photo company founded in 1904 -- to the University of Louisville Archives. Carner said of his relationship with Bramson, “We had a splendid time, a real nice ride.” A photo taken by Bramson appears in the exhibit. The picture shows a nun in a walk in cooler stocked with locally brewed beer.“I had to put something in there for Stern,” Carner said.Carner described how he came by some of the photos in the archive:
