Paul Caponigro

 He died on the 10th of November, just short of reaching the age of 92.  I have written here a couple times about his work and how he showed what photography is capable of producing, particularly in black and white.  His son, John Paul, posted a brief appreciation of one of his father's great pictures. (I only learned today that he lived in southern New Mexico for twenty years.)

Death Has Its Day

 

Remembering and Forgetting

I don't recall now why I originally placed this post about John Collier Jr. in my Everything Else blog nine years ago.  This great American photographer certainly deserves a place here in my blog about film photography.

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October 24, 2015

John Collier Jr.

I went to a lecture recently which was sponsored by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.  The announcements had indicated the presentation would be about the museums photo archives.  As it turned out, the presenter used some photos from the archives, but mostly as illustrations for discussing theories of photography advanced by European philosophers.  At the end of the talk I asked about the museum's holdings related to the work of John Collier Jr.  The lecturer, currently a curator at the museum, replied that the Maxwell had a very large collection of works by Collier, but that no one had worked with the material.  She said she did not know if anyone in the Anthropology or Education departments at UNM was familar with Collier's work or making use of his techniques in regard to photo analysis and education.

The lecturer's answers to my questions left me discouraged about the state of knowledge about one of Twentieth Century America's photo greats.  John Collier Jr. made a lot of great pictures in the early 1940s while working under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration.  Collier continued making photographs in a similar vein for many more years all over the western hemisphere.  At the same time he also began to develop the concepts of Visual Anthropology and applied those concepts to analyzing teaching and learning processes.  Collier taught photography classes as a full professor for many years at San Francisco State.  His accomplishments as a photographer, researcher and teacher seem all the more extraordinary when you consider that he had very limited formal schooling, due in a large part to injuries sustained as a child which left him with physical impairments, dyslexia, hearing loss and impaired speech.

As it turns out, academic engagement with Collier's work was not as dismally scant as the lecturer had averred.  While browsing the web for information about Collier I stumbled on an interactive presentation about Collier's war-time work with the FSA.  The web pages were the product of a grant project conducted under the auspices of the Maxwell Museum and The College of Education's Technology & Education Center (TEC) at UNM in 2006.  The project's director was Catherine Baudoin, who at the time was the Maxwell's Photographic Collections Curator.  The on line presentation was organized as an interactive lesson plan enabling exercises in interpretation of war-time photo uses by the U.S. government using posters, photo archives and video resources.  To support the lesson plan activities, Baudoin uploaded about 400 of Collier's FSA images to the Flickr photo sharing site where they are still available for viewing.

Unfortunately, Baudoin's web pages had become detached from the Maxwell web site over the years; there is no link there now to the Collier work; the Photo Curator position seems to have evaporated, and Baudoin's name is nowhere to be found.  My guess would be that the skimpy and rather disorganized Maxwell web site is symptomatic of budgetary deficiencies which have focused the institution's efforts more on conservation of holdings rather than on sustaining a coherent educational mission incorporating up-to-date technological communications resources.

Luckily, modern search engine technology compensates for a lot of academic entropy.  Here are some useful  links to information I have come across on the web and elsewhere:

Far from Main Street:Three Photographers in Depression-Era New Mexico (link to Amazon)
A very fine collection of photos along with essays about the FSA/OWI work of  Russell Lee, John Collier Jr. and Jack Delano.  The cover photo is by Collier.  "All photographs are selected from the Pinewood Collection of New Mexico FSA Photographs, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico ... Prints were made from original negatives generously loaned by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division."



Oral History Interview with John Collier, 1965 January 18 Conducted by Richard K. Doud
Amazing insights into the personalities and operations of the FSA/OWI under Stryker.  The first part of the interview is accessible as an on line audio clip, and it gives a good idea of the expressive challenge which Collier over-came and even turned to an advantage during his long career as a photographer, researcher and educator.

John Collier, Jr.: Anthropology, Education and the Quest for Diversity
by Ray Barnhardt, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
An authoritative, first-person appreciation of Collier's work with Eskimo and Navajo students and teachers as well as with a diverse urban school system in San Francisco.

Photographing Navajos: John Collier Jr. on the Reservation, 1948-1953
by C. Stewart Doty, Dale Sperry Mudge, and Herbert John Benally Photographs by John Collier Jr.
(link to Amazon)

The authors tracked down photo archives of Collier's Navajo work in Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia and then interviewed family members of the people depicted by Collier in the Four Corners area.  The photos in the book illustrate the techniques developed by Collier to elicit social and cultural information by showing photographs to informants depicting their own social and physical environments.  The text and illustrations provide a nice followup to the study of the Navajo conducted by Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton in the 1930s and 1940s.  Right after the publication of Photographing Navajos the Collier family made the decision to donate their collection of Collier's work to the Maxwell Museum.  The book's introduction notes that "The collection includes fifty years of photographs, film and video, field notes, daybooks, and correspondence."

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John Collier Jr., Bureau with Portraits and Mementos
(and self portrait), Picuris Pueblo, NM, ca. 1945

Want a Leica?

 I got an email this morning advertising another big OstLicht Auction with 164 listings for Leicas, etc.  The prices seem astounding, particularly as many of the models are pretty recent.  There are also 92 photographs to be auctioned, mostly images of celebrities by well-known photographers.

Start price: € 14,000

Baila Baila

 The folk dance group, Baila Baila, puts on an elaborate show each year in Old Town during the Balloon Fiesta with children in traditional Mexican costumes and a lot of makeup.  The large number of participants offers many opportunities for photographers.

I am still not getting the tonal qualities I would like from the expired Acros 400.  The balance of shadows and highlights presents a difficult challenge for scanning and only approach acceptability with considerable photoshopping.  I tried semi-stand development in hc110 with this roll, so will probably go to dilution B or E for the next.

Spanish Broom 2

As I have said many times before, what I enjoy the most about Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta is the afternoon musical performances which take place in Old Town.  On Saturday we had the opportunity to enjoy a second encounter with the Spanish Broom Flamenco group. 

 

What this experience revealed to me was the importance of the performance venue to  Flamenco style.  We watched, along with a large audience, the group this time dancing on the stage of the gazebo in the Plaza Vieja.  The strong voice of the cantaora along with the guitar, the cajón and dancers' footwork produced the expected irresistible rhythm.

The Spanish Broom group delivered a very polished performance as was true of the first time we saw them.  However, the effect was much less impactful on the stage than it had been in the small plaza where we had first encountered the group.  Flamenco is a musical style that is really best suited to intimate settings.  On a stage surrounded by a large audience the nuances of tapping feet, cajón and hand clapping become hard to perceive.

  In the intimate setting of a small cafe or a little plaza the performers can better show off their individual styles and techniques, and the audience can fully appreciate the gestures and expressions which are an essential part of the performance.

In the Neighborhood

 Unsettled Fall weather has often been a problem for Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta.  This year, though, it looks like good flying weather for all nine days of the event.

 I thought I might not see any balloons up close this year, but on Monday morning a gentle wind from the north brought quite  few over our neighborhood.  Close to the ground there was just a very slight current of air which allowed several balloons to easily land on nearby streets.

I followed the descending craft as best I could on foot, but was not quick enough to catch any actually touching down.

 The balloons got me out on the streets of the neighborhood early in the day while the sun was low in the sky and the coolness of the night still lingered in the shadows

Spanish Broom

 We enjoyed a flamenco performance in Old Town's Plaza Don Luis by the Spanish Broom group on Saturday.  The dancers, singers and guitarists all performed at a high level of skill.  They will do another performance at the Casa Rondeña Winery on October 6th and will be  back in Plaza Don Luis on the 10th.  The informal setting of the little plaza combined with the excellent skills on display lent a note of authenticity to the event.

 

Photographing the action was quite a challenge due to the group's highly kinetic style; they are seldom still for even a moment.

I shot the pictures with both the normal and telephoto lenses for my Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera.  The film was some slightly outdated Acros 400 shared with me by fellow film enthusiast, Jim Grey.  His work with the film looked quite a bit better than mine, possibly because of the choice of developers.  I used the same PMK Pyro I normally use with Kentmere, and at the same time and temperature.  I think I'll try some HC110 for the next roll.

Update:

Margaret recorded a short video of the Old Town performance of Spanish Broom.

My Story

 Film photographer, Chip Greenberg, has done a marvelous job of hosting monthly Zoom meetings of our New Mexico Film Photographers group. For our September meeting he asked me to do a presentation about my history in photography. 

My Story

 (A recording of the first 30 minutes of the September meeting of the New Mexico Film Photographers.)

Photography at Museums

 I have made a lot of photographs in and around museums. That was brought home to me not long ago when I started following and contributing to the Analog Museums group on Flickr. To start that I did a search on the term "museum" in Flickr and was surprised to find I was approaching a hundred images on the subject at that photo sharing site. I made a selection of what I considered the best of those and put them in an album on the Flickr site.

Albuquerque Art Museum

My interest in museums developed early; the first book I can remember reading was one by Roy Chapman Andrews about his explorations in Mongolia and his work as a exhibit designer, curator, and ultimately the director of the Museum of Natural History in New York. My own practical awareness of museums became a reality when I lived for a time in New York.  I had an apartment just across the street from the Brooklyn Museum and visited it often.  Photographing the children of some friends earned me a membership with the Museum of Modern Art and I thereafter visited the MOMA almost weekly.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Albuquerque, where we now live, has a good number of well designed and well run museums for a city of its small size and economic resources. There are three museums within walking distance of our home.  Of those, I visit the Albuquerque Art Museum nearly every Sunday.  The Art Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History offer free entry several times monthly and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM is always free to visitors. UNM has had an impressive place in the history of photography in America and it has an extensive archive of photographic works.  In recent years however the UNM Art Museum has done very little of note with the available resources.

New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center

Restrictions on photography in museums was common in the past, but most now permit visitors to make photos with the only prohibitions being on the use of flash and tripods. In my own museum photo efforts I tend to focus mostly on making pictures which incorporate a portrayal of the museum experience by visitors.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

 In regard to photographic techniques I have found that a wide-angle lens is often very useful when exhibits are confined to tight spaces, as well as in capturing the subjects in their over-all context.  Museum lighting is often kept at a low level in an effort to minimize light damage to objects on display, so fast films and wide apertures are helpful.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Photography as a subject of museum displays has become of increased importance in most museums over the years.  I always hope for a bit more, but our local museums have actually brought some impressive shows to town.  One of the best in recent memory was the big retrospective of Danny Lyon's work at the Art Museum which provided an opportunity to appreciate the uniquely immersive style of this long-time New Mexico resident.

PIMA Air and Space Museum, Tucson

 All of the museums in town include photo exhibits among their  offerings, and both the Natural History Museum and the Nuclear Museum  conduct yearly contests open to the participation of  local photographers.

One of my pinhole images on display at the Nuclear Museum

Broken Boxes

 The large fabric and metal sculpture near the entrance to the current exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum drew a lot of favorable attention from visitors.  All of the pieces exhibited were expertly crafted, though their meaning  and relatability  often seemed obscure to me.

 I first photographed the mother wolf figure with the Elmar 3.5/50 lens on my Leica IIIa.  I thought the resultant image on Kentmere 400 was quite good.  However, I wanted to better show the large scale of the piece, so I went back on another day with the Jupiter 12 2.8/35mm.  That did give me some images that better illustrated the liveliness and the context and proportionality compared to human dimensions.  The very low light level made it a challenging undertaking.

 The "Broken Boxes" title of the exhibit came from a podcast consisting of ten years of interviews with artists, including those in the current exhibition.  Even after reading some of the explanations on site, the show title still required some clarification for me.  A friend who is a docent at the museum suggested that the title terms could be similar to the concept of "out of the box" as the artists were all indigenous and were challenging prevalent ideas about their cultures.

The artists that created the wolf sculpture are Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt.

Encounters in Old Town

 The first thing I noticed strolling into the Plaza Vieja on Friday morning was some very loud music and this dog sitting beside the gazebo.  The vest indicated he was a service dog and it appeared one of his service talents was musical appreciation.

I stopped to pet the dog, and got talking with his owner who was wielding the highly amplified guitar.  I learned the dog's name was Papito, and his real mission in life was the pursuit of the cloth frisbee seen lying in the shadow to the lower right.  I tossed the frisbee as instructed and it was clear that this was an activity with unlimited possibilities.

Papito's owner related a bit of his life story, including an addiction to gambling which had resulted in a recent large loss and some thought of putting out his hat next to the gazebo for some grocery money.  I snapped a quick shot up through the railing of the gazebo and then walked past a funeral in progress at San Felipe de Neri and on to Church Street.  

I heard my name called and there was our friend, Mary, with her four sisters from Silver City, mid-way through their own Old Town stroll.  It seemed an extraordinary event.  I had not recalled that she had mentioned coming from such a large family of sisters.  They must have been a phenomenon while growing up in that little New Mexico town.

Back to the Rail Yards (and beyond)

 There is some intense construction activity at this large building behind those which accommodate the Sunday farmers' market.  I believe it to be the one destined to house the new film-making school.

 My purpose on a Tuesday morning was to visit the Wheels Museum which occupies a long, low building at the south end of the Rail Yards.  The narrow, high-ceiling rooms are not particularly well suited to housing the bulky transportation machinery on display.

 The collection contains plenty of documents and images to satisfy those with an interest in the fine details of the region's transportation history.  For most visitors though I think the personal memories triggered by the vehicles on display are the main attraction.

 The Dodge Power Wagon was my trigger. It seemed very like one of a long string of vehicles in which I travelled in 1959 from near Seattle to Leticia in southern Colombia.  That adventure, which has often come to mind lately, started with a single-engine plane taking off from the Bellevue airfield, and progressed to other large and small aircraft, some river launches and a series of ever-smaller dugout canoes which eventually got me to the headwaters of a minor tributary of the Amazon River in southern Colombia.

After landing at Leticia's airfield in a two-engine Curtiss C-46 my three companions and I hitched a ride into the little Amazon port town, seated in the Power Wagon's bed with all our gear.  I vividly recall our entry into the town right after a tropical downpour which left the dirt road under two feet of water.  A number of the town's residents stood in front of their modest homes watching us pass by, up to their knees in water.

Michael Tsalickis Obituary (2018) - St. Petersburg, FL - Tampa Bay Times

 The Power Wagon belonged to Leticia's most prominent resident, Mike Tsalickis, an American expatriate who had founded a business there exporting wild animals and tropical fish. Mike generously gave us space in his warehouse to hang our hammocks, as well as free run of his house. He also was a great help in introducing us to the region and assisting with arrangements to get to our final destination on the Rio Miriti-Parana where we filmed an indigenous harvest celebration.

The Tsalickis business seemed at the time to be a very successful enterprise.  Mike often staged publicity pictures of himself wrestling in the river with large Anacondas, but the  wild animal trapping and fish catching was actually accomplished by villagers throughout the region, including many indigenous people. Cages and tanks at the Leticia facility held the captives until they could be transported to Miami, usually in WWII-era surplus bombers. That all went well for about two decades and resulted in a great many municipal improvements to the town promoted by Mike, including the building of a hospital and expansion of the airport.

The Tsalickis empire was eventually brought to an end, partly by the decision of the Colombian government to forbid the export of native animals. Also, the real economic engine of the region by then was the illicit drug trade which paid much higher wages than did wild animal trapping.  Mike and his family moved back to Florida where he started a shipping business.  Unfortunately for Mike, one of his warehoused shipments of lumber was found also to contain 9,000 pounds of cocaine.  A jury found Mike culpable of involvement in the drug smuggling and he got twenty years in a federal prison.

The Albuquerque Rail Yards

  I visited the Rail Yards which hosts a craft and farmers' market on Sundays.  Margaret was looking for some fresh corn and garlic, but my interest is always in exploring the massive old locomotive repair shops.  The City has invested millions in the location with several proposals to make use of the site.  Extensive restorations are now in progress to devote one of the big buildings to a new media school.  There has also been a building housing the Wheels Museum at the site for some time.

The site was active for about a century, used primarily for the repair and periodic rebuilding of steam locomotives.  

My camera on this occasion was my Minolta X-700 with the Minolta MD 1.7/50mm lens. I shot a roll of Kentmere 400 and processed that in PMK Pyro.

More from the Felica

 

The Felica is compact and easy to carry.  The focusing and exposure adjustments are limited, but adequate for dealing with a pretty good range of circumstances.  I haven't yet made much use of the built-in yellow filter, so I'll try to look for opportunities for using it with my next roll through the camera.