Burns Court Café is currently playing host to an exhibition from the portfolio of retired photojournalist Mike Maple, currently a part-time Sarasota resident. Twelve of his photos, taken from the mid-70s to the early 90s, adorn the walls in sleek black frames, their subjects often in stark black and white, showcasing some of Maple’s most memorable moments in a career spanning several decades and multiple continents. A reception with the artist will be held this Friday at 7pm at Burns Court Café.

Maple caught the photography bug at an early age, in high school in Tennessee. He worked for a horse-show photographer, taking shots and developing them in the traveling camper/darkroom, selling them on the road. It was interesting, but Maple wanted to move on.

“Someone said if you want to be a photographer, go to New York,” said Maple. “I didn’t know any better, so I bought a one-way ticket.”

Arriving in New York, Maple wrangled himself a job at Time-Life through sheer perseverance, showing up at the office without an appointment and calling the homes of photographers he’d seen in the paper.

Maple’s assignments took him around the globe, from the snake-handling preachers of West Virginia to the Ivory Coast of Africa and even to El Salvador in 1981, in the midst of a brutal civil war where many photojournalists met their end. He didn’t stay too long. (“I decided that was not a good way to extend one’s longevity”)

The Burns Court exhibit is a selection of some of the more colorful subjects met and memorable moments had along the way. The famous stoner-comedy duo Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong make an appearance, as does Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail and assassin James Earl Ray.

Not all are celebrities; some are charming bits of Americana, such as the straight on portrait of an old woman eating her lunch of sardines and crackers in an old general store off Memphis’ Beale Street. She stares defiantly into the camera and thus right at the viewer.

And still some are mementos of exotic oddities, like the gas station in Africa that sold gas metered out in salvaged wine bottles, measured one at a time.

“It took an hour and a half to fill up my suburban,” Maple said with a grin.