Marking End Of An Era, Showcase Photo And Video To Close
Mary Claire Kelly / WABE
Showcase Photo and Video has served Atlanta’s photo needs for 40 years. It is also home to the Showcase School, which has offered photography classes to Atlantans since 1996.
It was the last surviving photo and video store in Atlanta, but the store and the school are closing next month.
“Our business model is unsustainable in today’s market,” said founder and owner Robert Khoury in an interview with Lois Reitzes. “A lot of it is the competition with the internet. A lot people do an exercise called ‘showrooming,’ where they will look at an item and have my employees explain it to them … and then will go online in the stores on their phones and find it someplace else.”
Khoury cited the fact that retailers out-of-state do not have to put sales taxes on their products and said that photo stores closing is a national trend.
While the school is closing, school director Jan Fields said that the Atlanta School of Photography will take over the building and offer classes to Atlantans interested in photography.
“There’s still a very thriving community of photography in Atlanta,” said Fields, adding that the students celebrated the time the school was open. “We learned together, we created great imagery, we had great products to work with, it was a great system.”
Showcase Photo and Video officially closes its doors on Feb. 28.
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