Edgar Ailor This year, the image symbolizing Columbia will be a local storefront, colorful and nostalgic. From the bright turquoise awning to the reflections of passing cars, it’s a portrait of one of The District’s oldest restaurants, frozen in time.
I
n 2006, a client commissioned Edgar Ailor to photograph some of Columbia’s historically significant places. Booches stood out in Ailor’s mind as one of the most historically significant places in Columbia. After all, he says, it has been around for 127 years. The Commission of Cultural Affairs agreed, and Ailor’s impressionist version of the Booches storefront is now the 2011 City of Columbia Commemorative Poster. There was something special about the entrance to Booches that caught his eye, and he had to take the picture. “That’s something you would like to capture — that flyswatter in the window and that writing on the door that says ‘see you at
By Nichole Ballard Photos by Edgar Ailor
church on Sunday,’” he says. “To me that is the heart of that picture.” For more than 30 years Ailor was an otolaryngologist: doctor, for short. Always holding on to photography and idolizing artists such as Ansel Adams, he finally retired in 2005, at the urging of his wife to pursue his hobby professionally. Today he is enjoying a successful career for the second time in his life. Ailor began photographing for his high school yearbook in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Never pursuing formal training in photography, he studied chemistry at Southeast Missouri State University. He met his wife there, after giving her some grief over a bad grade on an organic chemistry assignment, which
Opposite Page: Booches storefront, downtown Columbia. Above Left: Edgar Ailor, New Mexico Route 146, north of Hachita. Above Right: Burnham School, five miles east of Kremlin, Mont., just off U.S. 2. columbiahomemagazine.com | 75