Maureen Muldaur's documentary proposal for "The Eye of The Storm" has been accepted into Westdoc, the the “go-to” conference for Documentary and Reality Filmmakers." The conference takes place in Santa Monica, California, September 13 - 15.
The Eye of the Storm tells the story of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy through the eyes of five photojournalists, four of whom were in the room when he was shot. The other was still in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where Bobby had just finished giving his victory speech for his win in the California Primary for President, a win that would probably take him to the White House.
Only these five photojournalists will tell the story of that night; we will experience an inherently dramatic event as it unfolds moment by moment. These five men will not only tell their personal stories as human beings but they will speak directly of that experience through being a photojournalist. Bobby was a man they had come to love and once he was shot, they had to bury their grief to perform the task at hand and chronicle a national tragedy. They had originally gone to the hotel to document a celebration but they had to use their skills instead to document one of the worst tragedies in American history.
The documentary will end when Bobby’s death was announced at 1:44am the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital.
The five photographers include:
Bill Eppridge of Life Magazine
Boris Yaro of The Los Angeles Times
Ron Bennett of UPI
David Kennerly of UPI
Richard Drew of the Pasadena Star News
Many of their photographs live on as icons of American History.
Muldaur Media filmed Bill Eppridge at the opening of his exhibition "Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure" at Monroe Gallery of Photography, as well as in a lengthy interview over the July Fourth weekend. The exhibition continues through September 26.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
NPR PICTURE SHOW: EERIE ELLIS ISLAND with photos by Stephen Wilkes
Nation Public Radio
August 20, 2010
In grade school, I was obsessed with Ellis Island, which I attribute to a fascination with my grandmother's Irish accent. In my mind, it was a bustling, brimming, turn of the century checkpoint for immigrants in search of brighter prospects.
In Stephen Wilkes' mind, on the other hand, Ellis Island means decay. He discovered the island's abandoned hospitals while on a photo assignment in the 1990s, and it quickly devolved into obsession (of course, I can sympathize). For five years he had free reign of the island's ghostly buildings.
Wilkes' photo project, Ellis Island: Ghosts Of Freedom, shows the somber side of immigration — the side you don't see while on island tours. For many, the dream of a better life terminated in Ellis Island hospitals, where they were detained at any sign of disease. In one of Wilkes' images, the Statue of Liberty is reflected in a mirror. "I suddenly imagined a petite Eastern European woman rising out of her bed every morning," he writes in the caption."Seeing the reflection would be the closest she'd ever come to freedom."
The hospitals were closed in 1954 and basically left untouched, except by the elements of nature, and unseen, until Wilkes came along. Empty rooms, peeling paint, a lonely shoe left on a table — this deterioration is what Wilkes finds beautiful. His meditative studies of light and composition guide the viewer through Ellis Island's dark side, oddly illuminated by an afternoon glow.
His book was featured on Weekend Edition Saturday in 2006; and now, his photographs are part of a new exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum outside of Philadelphia. (Related review here) Brian Peterson, the exhibition curator, has made an interesting contrast by pairing Wilkes' color prints with the early documentary photographs of Lewis Hine.
I've never actually visited Ellis Island, but after seeing Wilkes photographs, I just might have to revisit and old obsession.
Original post here with slide show of photographs.
©National Public Radio
by Claire O'Neill
August 20, 2010
In grade school, I was obsessed with Ellis Island, which I attribute to a fascination with my grandmother's Irish accent. In my mind, it was a bustling, brimming, turn of the century checkpoint for immigrants in search of brighter prospects.
Corridor #9, Island 3: "There was a palatable sense of collaboration with an unknown force when I made this photograph. Red afternoon sunlight created an aura at the end of the corridor unlike any light I have ever seen"--Stephen Wilkes
Wilkes' photo project, Ellis Island: Ghosts Of Freedom, shows the somber side of immigration — the side you don't see while on island tours. For many, the dream of a better life terminated in Ellis Island hospitals, where they were detained at any sign of disease. In one of Wilkes' images, the Statue of Liberty is reflected in a mirror. "I suddenly imagined a petite Eastern European woman rising out of her bed every morning," he writes in the caption."Seeing the reflection would be the closest she'd ever come to freedom."
The hospitals were closed in 1954 and basically left untouched, except by the elements of nature, and unseen, until Wilkes came along. Empty rooms, peeling paint, a lonely shoe left on a table — this deterioration is what Wilkes finds beautiful. His meditative studies of light and composition guide the viewer through Ellis Island's dark side, oddly illuminated by an afternoon glow.
His book was featured on Weekend Edition Saturday in 2006; and now, his photographs are part of a new exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum outside of Philadelphia. (Related review here) Brian Peterson, the exhibition curator, has made an interesting contrast by pairing Wilkes' color prints with the early documentary photographs of Lewis Hine.
Ellis Island, 1926
Lewis W. Hine/Courtesy of George Eastman House
I've never actually visited Ellis Island, but after seeing Wilkes photographs, I just might have to revisit and old obsession.
Original post here with slide show of photographs.
©National Public Radio
Monday, August 16, 2010
BERNIE ABRAMSON 1923 - 2010
Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole at the Villa Capri, 1955 by Bernie Abramson
We are very saddened to learn of the death of Bernie Abramson.
Born in Los Angeles, California, he started his photography in junior high school. He joined the United States Navy in 1942 as an aerial cameraman and was the first photographer to photograph the Japanese fleet at the island of Palau. His aerial photos resulted in the sinking of in excess of 50 ships and the destruction of 150 of their aircraft for which he received numerous decorations. His plane was shot down in 1945 and he spent 2 1/2 days in the water before being rescued by the USS Bowers. After being released from a Naval hospital and at the end of the war, Abramson resumed his photographic activities as a photographer in the motion picture industry. Among the productions to his credit as a photographer are to name a few The Alamo, West Side Story, Dirty Harry, The War Wagon, Cleopatra, Oceans Eleven, Sergeants Three, Donovan's Reef, The Wild Bunch, and Some Like It Hot. It was on the production of "Oceans 11" that Bernie became the favorite of the "Rat Pack" and was always invited (with cameras) to the private functions. In 1977 Bernie gave up still photography and became a Director of Photography and his first credit as a Director of Photography was Up the Sandbox (1972) with Barbra Streisand.
We are pleased to share some shots of him back in the day palling it around with his subjects.
AS TIME GOES BY: Woodstock, August 15 - 17, 1969
A gallery of photographs by Bill Eppridge and John Dominis, “Woodstock: Life’s Best Photos,” was published this time last year by Life.com.
Bill Eppridge, who photographed the Woodstock Music and Art Fair 41 years ago, remembers it as a beautiful coda to a painful decade.
"For me, it was a visual feast, a never-ending succession of moments that is impossible to forget,” he says.
Mr. Eppridge, now 71 and renowned as a teacher and mentor, joined Life magazine as a staff photographer in the early ’60s and stayed until the magazine folded in 1972. He covered many of the most important stories of the time, including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. It was Mr. Eppridge who made the iconic image of a stunned busboy holding the senator moments after he was shot. He collaborated with the reporter James Mills on a picture essay and article in 1965 that followed the lives of two young drug addicts in New York. (The next year, Mr. Mills published his account as “The Panic in Needle Park,” which was made into a movie in 1971.)
In the accompanying audio slide show, Mr. Eppridge speaks about being accepted at Woodstock even though he represented an established and powerful institution — as Life was in its day. “They knew who I was but they didn’t care,” he recalls.
It was not the first time he’d been accepted under unorthodox circumstances. George P. Hunt, the managing editor of Life magazine, told this story behind “Needle Park” in 1965, when Mr. Mills and Mr. Eppridge briefly became “denizens of the junkie world”:
Eppridge, in fact, came so much to look the part that he was picked up by the narcos in a hotel lobby; they thought he had stolen both his cameras and Life credentials and were about to haul him off when Mills (who looks more like a cop) came up to straighten things out.
©The New York Times
Bill Eppridge: "An American Treasure" is on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 27. See a related review from the Albuquerque Journal here.
Bill Eppridge, who photographed the Woodstock Music and Art Fair 41 years ago, remembers it as a beautiful coda to a painful decade.
"For me, it was a visual feast, a never-ending succession of moments that is impossible to forget,” he says.
Mr. Eppridge, now 71 and renowned as a teacher and mentor, joined Life magazine as a staff photographer in the early ’60s and stayed until the magazine folded in 1972. He covered many of the most important stories of the time, including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. It was Mr. Eppridge who made the iconic image of a stunned busboy holding the senator moments after he was shot. He collaborated with the reporter James Mills on a picture essay and article in 1965 that followed the lives of two young drug addicts in New York. (The next year, Mr. Mills published his account as “The Panic in Needle Park,” which was made into a movie in 1971.)
In the accompanying audio slide show, Mr. Eppridge speaks about being accepted at Woodstock even though he represented an established and powerful institution — as Life was in its day. “They knew who I was but they didn’t care,” he recalls.
It was not the first time he’d been accepted under unorthodox circumstances. George P. Hunt, the managing editor of Life magazine, told this story behind “Needle Park” in 1965, when Mr. Mills and Mr. Eppridge briefly became “denizens of the junkie world”:
Eppridge, in fact, came so much to look the part that he was picked up by the narcos in a hotel lobby; they thought he had stolen both his cameras and Life credentials and were about to haul him off when Mills (who looks more like a cop) came up to straighten things out.
©The New York Times
Bill Eppridge: "An American Treasure" is on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 27. See a related review from the Albuquerque Journal here.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
VJ-DAY, TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, AUGUST 14, 1945
The V-J Day picture of the white-clad nurse by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.
Related: THEN AND NOW: VJ-Day and the death of Osama bin Laden
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AQUIRES BOB GOMEL'S ICONIC PHOTOGRAPH OF MALCOLM X AND CASSIUS CLAY
Monroe Gallery of Photography is very pleased to announce that the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has acquired Bob Gomel's classic photograph of “Black Muslim Leader Malcolm X Photographing Cassius Clay Surrounded by Fans After He Beat Sonny Liston for the Heavy Weight Championship, Miami, February, 1964".
Bob Gomel worked extensively during the Kennedy administration as a photojournalist for LIFE magazine. He was frequently assigned to photograph political events, although he perhaps most remembered for his photograph of then 8 - year old John F. Kennedy Jr. standing solemnly at the funeral of his uncle, Robert Kennedy, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. This photograph appeared in a two-page spread in the June 1968 “Special Kennedy Issue” of LIFE magazine.
Recently, speaking about the circumstances of making the now-classic photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius Clay, Bob recalled: It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali. Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.” The following day, bolstered by his mentor Malcom X, Clay stepped in front of a room of journalists to declare his conversion to the Nation of Islam. After fielding hostile questions, he voiced the words that would become his lifelong anthem and would forever change the world of sports: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.”
Bob continues: “Mr. Fields was my grade school science teacher. His classroom was decorated with beautiful sepia-toned examples of his photography. The image closest to me was a back-lit nightview of a manhole cover on a cobblestone street. It was irresistible. I joined his photography club. I was hooked. WWII ended and I delivered groceries to pay for the first post war camera: a Ciroflex. In no time I took over a closet/cum darkroom in our apartment and began a great adventure which was to last the rest of my life. The French have a expression “joie de vivre”. For me that includes the thrill of making a compelling photograph. That has not diminished over time. I suspect it never will.”
For more, read an interview with Bob Gomel here: "Photographer's Life in Pictures, and Vice Versa".
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE McNALLY!
Joe McNally: Empire State Building, New York
Joe McNally just finished his "Traveling Light: Location Lighting with Small Flash" workshop at the Santa Fe Workshops, which offers "state-of-the-art photographic education that supports participants of all levels". The roster of instructors at the Workshops reads like a "who's who" of photography, including Sam Abell, Rick Allred, Keith Carter, Jay Maisel, Jock Sturges, Joyce Tenneson, and Stephen Wilkes.
Joe McNally is an internationally acclaimed American photographer and long-time photojournalist. From 1994 until 1998, he was LIFE magazine's staff photographer, the first one in 23 years. He has completed assignments in over 50 counties for prestigious publications, including Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, Life, Time, Fortune, National Geographic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, GEO, Golf Digest, Discover, and Men’s Journal.
His most well known series is the "Faces of Ground Zero" Giant Polaroid Collection, a collection of 246 giant Polaroid portraits shot in the Moby c Studio near Ground Zero in a three-week period shortly after 9/11. A large group of these historic, compelling life-size (9x4) photos were exhibited in seven cities in 2002, seen by almost a million people. The sale of 55,000 copies of the exhibit book, printed by LIFE, raised over $2 million for the 9/11 relief effort. This collection is considered by many museum and art professionals to be the most significant artistic endeavor to evolve to date from the 9/11 tragedy.
McNally is known worldwide for his ability to produce technically and logistically complex assignments with expert use of color and light. He conducts numerous workshops around the world as part of his teaching activities, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Alfred Eisenstadt Award for outstanding magazine photography, as well as Pictures of the Year International, and World Press Photo Foundation Award (awarded first place in Portraits in 1997). Recently, Joe has completed major stories for National geographic, including "The Future of Flying" and "The Electrical Grid".
It is always a special treat for us to spend time with Joe. During his time with LIFE magazine, he became very close with the giants of "The Golden Age" of photojournalism, such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, and John Loengard - some of our heroes. He is certainly one of the hardest-working photographers in the business (follow his blog or Twitter, at any given moment he might be in New York, Santa Fe, Asia, The Pacific Northwest, at the Albuquerque airport at 4 AM, or just about anywhere.) Last we knew, Joe was on his way to dangle from a helicopter while hoovering over giant electric transmission towers.
Joe is the author of the best-selling boks, "Flying West to Go East: New York City Opera on Tour in Japan", "The Moment It Clicks"; and "The Hotshoe Diaries". In October, Time books will pubish Joe's newest book, "Life Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need to Shoot Like the Pros". Joe will be in Santa Fe in early December for a special book signing and exhibit, watch this blog for details!
Meantime, Happy Birthday to Joe!
Joe McNally and Michelle Monroe discuss Bill Eppridge's exhibition
Photo by Carol Mackay
Monday, August 9, 2010
The Philadelphia Inquirer Review: Stephen Wilkes' evocative photographs of Ellis Island at James A. Michener Art Museum
Art: Stephen Wilkes' evocative photographs of Ellis Island at James A. Michener Art Museum
Sunday, August 8, 2010
By Edward Sozanski
©The Phildelphia Inquirer
"Isolation Ward, Curved Corridor, Island 3, Ellis Island," is one of the 28 images on view at the Michener, made by Stephen Wilkes between 1998 and 2003, long after the facility had closed
Ellis Island figures in so many American family histories that any artist who addresses the last century's great wave of European immigration plugs into a ready-made constituency.
So it is with the 28 striking color images, now on display at Doylestown's Michener Art Museum, that New York photographer Stephen Wilkes made at the immigrant gateway between 1998 and 2003.
Wilkes worked not in the vast arrivals hall where the intrepid newcomers were processed but in the sprawling 29-building hospital complex. Here passengers who were either ill or pregnant were cared for until they healed, gave birth, or, in a tiny fraction of cases, died or were denied entry into the country and sent home.
Ellis Island closed in 1954, so by the time Wilkes arrived 44 years later the hospital buildings were in an advanced state of decrepitude. (Most have since been stabilized, to prevent further deterioration.)
Wilkes says he was struck so powerfully by the spirit of the place that he became obsessed, returning many times over five years to enrich his portfolio. Rather than being depressed by the physical decay, he was inspired by a residual spirit of humanity: "Mainly, I saw life."
The scenes he captured are of a type that will be familiar to anyone who has visited Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary - empty rooms, peeling paint, drifts of dead leaves, vines insinuating themselves everywhere.
Occasional resonant artifacts such as shoes and an abandoned suitcase humanize these melancholy interiors; the most poignant image, though, is a reflection of the Statue of Liberty in a mirror.
Yet objects and symbols energize Wilkes' pictures less than the mellow, honey-colored light that floods many views. He photographed only with available light, which intensifies the romantic aura of the hospital complex that so enchanted him.
These lush, large-format prints function as canvases onto which viewers can project meditations about what their own forebears might have experienced.
Did they walk these deserted corridors, did they know firsthand the tuberculosis, measles, or isolation wards, could they see the Statue of Liberty from their window, were they consumed by anxiety about whether they would escape the hospital into America proper?
By contrast, Lewis Hine's black-and-white photographs made during Ellis Island's heyday, from 1905 to the mid-1920s, show a more benign, even hopeful immigrant situation.
The Michener has placed 15 of these documentary photos at the core of the exhibition, separate from Wilkes' pictures, which wrap around them in counterpoint.
A prominent social activist remembered for photographing blue-collar workers and egregiously exploited child laborers, Hine introduces us to immigrants such as an "Italian Madonna" whose child gazes at her beatifically.
The "Madonna" and a portrait of a soulful Armenian Jew typify Hine's tendency to gild reality with a softening glaze of sentimentality. Instead of the tumult and bureaucratic bustle of Ellis Island, Hine shows us individuals apparently chosen as exotic, representative types.
"Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom" is a curatorial construct that juxtaposes "then" against "now." Yet the pairing works because each photographer has created a historical document about the renewal of lives and the importance of remembrance.
The exhibition continues through October 10. See the full Ellis Island collection here. Monroe Gallery of Photography will host Stephen Wilkes in October for a special presentation, exhibition, and book signing of Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom. Watch this blog for more details.
Friday, August 6, 2010
THE Magazine: "Eppridge's work was as epic at the times themselves"
THE Magazine
Santa Fe's Monthly Magazine of and for the Arts
August, 2010
BILL EPPRIDGE: AN AMERICAN TREASURE
Exhibition continues through September 26
Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM. 992-0800
More than 50 images in color and black and white by eminent photojournalist Bill Eppridge are guaranteed to awaken memories of the sixties: family members attending the funeral of a civil rights victim, the Beatles arriving stateside, marines in Vietnam. By far, however, Eppridge's name is associated with the picture of Bobbie Kennedy campaigning for the presidency. His photographs of RFK's life bleeding out while a busboy tries to comfort him in June, 1968. is. like so many images from the late sixties, sadly iconic. Eppridge's first professional assignment was a nine-month, worldwide shoot for National Geographic. That story ran thirty-two pages. The magazine wanted to put him on staff, but on advice from the soon-to-become Geographic editor, Eppridge went to New York City to renew some friendships he had made at LIFE. Eppridge's work in LIFE, beginning in 1962, was as epic at the times themselves.
Copyright THE Magazine
Santa Fe's Monthly Magazine of and for the Arts
August, 2010
Exhibition continues through September 26
Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM. 992-0800
More than 50 images in color and black and white by eminent photojournalist Bill Eppridge are guaranteed to awaken memories of the sixties: family members attending the funeral of a civil rights victim, the Beatles arriving stateside, marines in Vietnam. By far, however, Eppridge's name is associated with the picture of Bobbie Kennedy campaigning for the presidency. His photographs of RFK's life bleeding out while a busboy tries to comfort him in June, 1968. is. like so many images from the late sixties, sadly iconic. Eppridge's first professional assignment was a nine-month, worldwide shoot for National Geographic. That story ran thirty-two pages. The magazine wanted to put him on staff, but on advice from the soon-to-become Geographic editor, Eppridge went to New York City to renew some friendships he had made at LIFE. Eppridge's work in LIFE, beginning in 1962, was as epic at the times themselves.
Copyright THE Magazine
Thursday, August 5, 2010
DOROTHEA LANGE'S GRANDAUGHTER TO GIVE PRESENTATION IN SANTA FE
Thursday, August 05, 2010
©The Albuquerque Journal
By Kathaleen Roberts
Journal Staff Writer
The Santa Fe filmmaker is the grandchild of Dorothea Lange, the great Depression-era photographer famous for her poignant and compelling images of migrant workers, sharecroppers and residents of Japanese internment camps. Taylor, now working on a documentary about her famous grandmother, will talk about Lange's work and her memories at 5 p.m. Friday at the National Park Service Building, 1100 Old Santa Fe Trail.
The fiercely independent Lange was born in Hoboken, N.J., her life forged by two traumatic events: the abandonment by her father when she was 12 years old, and her contraction of polio when she was 7, which left her with a limp.
Instead of moving into the teaching career her mother envisioned for her, she went to work for a famous portrait photographer in Manhattan named Arnold Genthe. She absorbed his artistry, the pain of her childhood feeding her sense of what suffering meant. When the U.S. government hired her to document the Depression, she produced masterworks such as the famous "Migrant Mother," shot in 1936, and now hanging in the Library of Congress collection.
"She was a challenge, and she was a charismatic woman," Taylor said. "She was quite brilliant."
Taylor's film is slated for the PBS "American Masters" series. She's still working on the documentary and hopes to see it air in 2012. It will include previously unseen footage of the photographer, as well as interviews with her still-living assistants. Lange died of esophageal cancer in 1965 at age 70.
"She was magical," Taylor said. "Everything about her was exotic. She dressed in an interesting and unique way. She wore capes; she wore berets, always heavy silver jewelry. This was not what people were wearing in the early '50s."
Lange lived in Taos for about a year with her first husband, the painter Maynard Dixon. Then a young mother, she spoke of watching the photographer Paul Strand drive by the small adobe house lent to her by Mabel Dodge Luhan. It was her second husband (Taylor's grandfather) Paul Taylor, a labor economist, who got her work documenting the Dust Bowl and Depression refugees.
Lange was the antithesis of the doting grandmother who was eager to praise the slightest accomplishment, Taylor said.
"You couldn't be a lightweight around her," she explained. "You really had to put your thinking cap on.
I learned from her as a photographer. She taught me to look twice at what was in front of me."
Taylor remembers proudly bringing Lange a handful of stones, anticipating praise. Instead of thanking her, Lange asked her if she really saw them.
"I was feeling slightly hurt and rejected," she said.
But the incident taught Taylor to look beyond the surface, a skill that fueled her own photographic career. The family often spent holidays, birthdays and weekends at Lange's cabin north of San Francisco.
"We would hike," Taylor said. "We'd spend time at the beach. We would look for stones. She would insist that we study geometry. She would tutor us in things that weren't necessarily taught in school. She was intimidating and charismatic, and you always wanted to be close to her, even though it was a little scary."
Toward the end of her life, Lange was working on a series about home, "the place where you live." She and her second husband, Paul Taylor, took two international trips, where she photographed Indonesia, Asia, Egypt and Iran. Taylor inherited her grandmother's cameras when she died.
She soon realized she preferred moving images to still photography.
"Also, it was easier than trying to replicate hers, which were so amazing," she added.
If she were alive today, Lange would be horrified by the current economic collapse and on the front lines documenting it, Taylor said.
"She and my grandfather would just be appalled," she continued. "My grandfather would be rolling over in his grave. He fought his whole career to keep the family farm alive. Dorothea would be right in there with everything happening during the recession — people losing their homes."
Taylor tried following in her grandmother's lens by filming newly homeless people camping beneath bridges and highway ramps near Sacramento last year.
"I went out there," she said. "It was difficult to film. People are angry. People trusted her. They don't trust people with cameras anymore."
Related: Monroe Gallery of Photography will present the comprehensive exhibition "Carl Mydans: The Early Years" October 1 - November 25. Mydans was a contemporary of Dorothea Lange and was also employed by the Farm Security Administration, prior to joining LIFE magazine in 1936.
©The Albuquerque Journal
By Kathaleen Roberts
Journal Staff Writer
Dyanna Taylor grew up thinking all grandmothers took photographs.
But what pictures.
The Santa Fe filmmaker is the grandchild of Dorothea Lange, the great Depression-era photographer famous for her poignant and compelling images of migrant workers, sharecroppers and residents of Japanese internment camps. Taylor, now working on a documentary about her famous grandmother, will talk about Lange's work and her memories at 5 p.m. Friday at the National Park Service Building, 1100 Old Santa Fe Trail.
The fiercely independent Lange was born in Hoboken, N.J., her life forged by two traumatic events: the abandonment by her father when she was 12 years old, and her contraction of polio when she was 7, which left her with a limp.
Instead of moving into the teaching career her mother envisioned for her, she went to work for a famous portrait photographer in Manhattan named Arnold Genthe. She absorbed his artistry, the pain of her childhood feeding her sense of what suffering meant. When the U.S. government hired her to document the Depression, she produced masterworks such as the famous "Migrant Mother," shot in 1936, and now hanging in the Library of Congress collection.
"She was a challenge, and she was a charismatic woman," Taylor said. "She was quite brilliant."
Taylor's film is slated for the PBS "American Masters" series. She's still working on the documentary and hopes to see it air in 2012. It will include previously unseen footage of the photographer, as well as interviews with her still-living assistants. Lange died of esophageal cancer in 1965 at age 70.
"She was magical," Taylor said. "Everything about her was exotic. She dressed in an interesting and unique way. She wore capes; she wore berets, always heavy silver jewelry. This was not what people were wearing in the early '50s."
Lange lived in Taos for about a year with her first husband, the painter Maynard Dixon. Then a young mother, she spoke of watching the photographer Paul Strand drive by the small adobe house lent to her by Mabel Dodge Luhan. It was her second husband (Taylor's grandfather) Paul Taylor, a labor economist, who got her work documenting the Dust Bowl and Depression refugees.
Lange was the antithesis of the doting grandmother who was eager to praise the slightest accomplishment, Taylor said.
"You couldn't be a lightweight around her," she explained. "You really had to put your thinking cap on.
I learned from her as a photographer. She taught me to look twice at what was in front of me."
Taylor remembers proudly bringing Lange a handful of stones, anticipating praise. Instead of thanking her, Lange asked her if she really saw them.
"I was feeling slightly hurt and rejected," she said.
But the incident taught Taylor to look beyond the surface, a skill that fueled her own photographic career. The family often spent holidays, birthdays and weekends at Lange's cabin north of San Francisco.
"We would hike," Taylor said. "We'd spend time at the beach. We would look for stones. She would insist that we study geometry. She would tutor us in things that weren't necessarily taught in school. She was intimidating and charismatic, and you always wanted to be close to her, even though it was a little scary."
Toward the end of her life, Lange was working on a series about home, "the place where you live." She and her second husband, Paul Taylor, took two international trips, where she photographed Indonesia, Asia, Egypt and Iran. Taylor inherited her grandmother's cameras when she died.
She soon realized she preferred moving images to still photography.
"Also, it was easier than trying to replicate hers, which were so amazing," she added.
If she were alive today, Lange would be horrified by the current economic collapse and on the front lines documenting it, Taylor said.
"She and my grandfather would just be appalled," she continued. "My grandfather would be rolling over in his grave. He fought his whole career to keep the family farm alive. Dorothea would be right in there with everything happening during the recession — people losing their homes."
Taylor tried following in her grandmother's lens by filming newly homeless people camping beneath bridges and highway ramps near Sacramento last year.
"I went out there," she said. "It was difficult to film. People are angry. People trusted her. They don't trust people with cameras anymore."
Related: Monroe Gallery of Photography will present the comprehensive exhibition "Carl Mydans: The Early Years" October 1 - November 25. Mydans was a contemporary of Dorothea Lange and was also employed by the Farm Security Administration, prior to joining LIFE magazine in 1936.
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