EDNA BULLOCK

Archive Contact: Barbara Bullock-Wilson (bbw@wynnbullockphotography.com)

Edna Bullock (1915-1997) was born and raised in the small rural community of Hollister, California.  She was a girl of high energy, good at a wide variety of sports, but without a sharp competitive edge.  Her first love was dance.  Although she had dreams of becoming a professional dancer, she was persuaded by her family not to pursue the life of a performer.  Her passion for dance never left her, however, and she found ways to manifest it throughout her life.

After college, Edna taught physical education at Fresno High School until her marriage in 1943 to former concert singer and budding photographer Wynn Bullock.  She devoted the next 15 years of her life to being a full-time housewife and mother, raising two daughters, Barbara and Lynne, along with stepdaughter, Mimi.  She then resumed her teaching career, first in P.E. and dance and then in home economics.  In 1974, she retired from teaching to care for her beloved husband, who died of cancer in November 1975.

Edna began her own career in photography in 1976, the year she turned 61.  As she explained, “I had inherited a darkroom, camera equipment, and supplies.  For more than 30 years, I had been immersed in the world of photography.  My own needs to be artistically creative were strong, so I decided to enroll in beginning photography at Monterey Peninsula College and see what I could do.”  She tackled her new venture with typical zeal and, in an amazingly short time, friends such as Ansel Adams, Morley Baer, and Ruth Bernhard witnessed her evolution from student to workshop assistant to fellow teacher and exhibitor.

An exceptionally prolific artist for two decades, Edna produced a wide variety of black and white imagery, including an extensive series on flea markets.  She is probably best known for her photographs of nudes, many of which can be found in a book released on her 80^th birthday titled simply Edna’s Nudes (Capra Press, 1995).  Reflecting her character, her work is intuitive, direct, zesty, graceful (she saw with a dancer’s eye), and touched with humor.

What turned out to be her final exhibition project was titled Edna’s Portraits, an interesting collection of photographs that spanned the entire range of her artistry and gave a fresh glimpse into what portraiture can be.  In her Artist’s Statement, she wrote, “I’m not a deep thinker like Wynn was, but like it was for Wynn, photography has become the best way I have to experience and know things.  When I’m out with a camera, I feel most alive…. I see and understand things I’m not ordinarily aware of.  Mind you, this doesn’t happen every time I photograph…but the magic that I’m talking about makes me want to photograph until I die.”

During her relatively short photographic career, Edna’s images were displayed in over 100 individual and group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and abroad, reproduced in numerous publications, and included in the permanent collections of such institutions as Bibliotheque Nationale, Kyoto’s National Museum of Modern Art, Monterey Museum of Art, University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, and University of California, Santa Cruz.

As the wife of renowned photographer Wynn Bullock, Edna was an important part of her husband’s story for 32 years.  As a woman who began a new career at age 61, she created an inspiring story totally her own.

WYNN BULLOCK

Archive Contact: Barbara Bullock-Wilson (bbw@wynnbullockphotography.com)

http://www.wynnbullockphotography.com/

Wynn Bullock (1902-1975) was born in Chicago and raised in South Pasadena, California.  His boyhood passions were athletics and singing.  The latter became his first career, and it was not until he was giving concerts in Europe in the mid-1920s that he became intrigued with the visual arts.  He bought himself a simple camera and began taking pictures.  Photography remained a hobby, however, until 1938 when he enrolled in the Los Angeles Art Center School.  There he concentrated his efforts in experimental imagery.  Three years later, his work was showcased in one of the early solo photography exhibitions at the L.A. County Museum of Art.

Shortly after World War II, Wynn moved his family to the Monterey Peninsula where he had obtained the photographic concession at Fort Ord.  Although Wynn earned a good living as a commercial photographer, it was in his personal work that he found his greatest fulfillment.

A major turning point in Wynn’s life as an artist occurred in 1948 when he met Edward Weston and was inspired to pursue new avenues of photographic exploration and expression.  Throughout the decade of the 50s, Wynn devoted himself to establishing deep, direct connections with nature in and around the Central Coast of California.  A lifelong learner, he also read widely in the areas of theoretical physics, General Semantics, philosophy, psychology, eastern spirituality, and art.  Studying the work of such people as Albert Einstein, Lao Tzu, and Paul Klee, he kept evolving his own dynamic system of principles and concepts that both reflected and nurtured his creative journey.  In the mid-1950s, two of his photographs were included in the famous Family of Man exhibition and his reputation as a master photographer spread worldwide.

Between 1959 and 1965, Wynn departed from black and white imagery and produced a body of work he referred to as “color light abstractions.”  For him, these photographs represented an in-depth exploration of the phenomenon of light, manifesting his belief that light is a great force at the heart of all being, “perhaps,” as he said, “the most profound truth in the universe.”

By the mid-60s, Wynn was ready to explore the mysteries of light and life from new perspectives.  Developing the means to visually manifest the dynamic qualities of time through long time exposures and multiple images became a key aspect of his work.  This was followed by a relatively brief period of imagery similar in feeling and power to the quiet essence of Haiku poetry.

At the end of the 1960s, Wynn embarked on what was to become the last leg of his creative journey.  Although he included upside-down and negative printing in his repertoire of techniques, it was not their unusual effects that interested him.  What was important was how they served to symbolize new ways of relating to and knowing the world.  Many of his photographs from this period reveal light emanating from within the heart of things, life glowing and pulsing with energy and vitality.  Other photographs are of natural forms that depict or suggest universal human qualities, humanity “deeply embedded in” and re-united with nature.

Shortly before his death in 1975, Wynn became one of the five founding artists whose archives established the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography.  His work is also featured in the permanent collections of over one hundred other institutions throughout the world as well as in three films and numerous publications.   More detailed information may be found at www.wynnbullockphotography.com.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

The Paula Barr Archive representative is Dr. August Krueger.

To contact, please email info@paulabarr.com or visit the website, www.paulabarr.com

Paula Barr was born in Pennsylvania.  She was raised in Mobile, Alabama during the tumultuous times of the 1960’s.  Barr studied painting at Boston University and gained a BFA with honors. Upon graduation, she went directly to New York City to set up her first studio in Little Italy.  It was a magical time in New York City – the late 60’s, 70’s and 80’s – it was a small bourgeoning community of artists’ sharing ideas. An ideal day was spent in the studio making art and a nightcap at Max’s Kansas City to connect with friends.

In 1974 Barr was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.  She received grants from the Z.B.S Foundation and the A.I.R Committee for the Visual Arts in 1976.  In 1985 with the birth of her son, Barr broadened her palette to include photography and alternative media. She was an innovator in creating site-specific public art installations.

In 1995 Barr was commissioned to create “Twilight Interlude”. The 10’ x 74’ photo-mural is composed of glass-photo tiles for which she holds a patent. Her public commissions are found at; JFK Airport, Penn Station, NYC, Columbus Circle MTA subway, Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, Alabama, Bellevue and Goldwater Hospitals.  In 2008 Barr was invited by the World Economic Forum to exhibit at their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. She presented “Gulf Coast Echo Pre and Post Hurricane Katrina”. The mural size images showed the international leaders the reality of a natural disaster after it is no longer reported in the news.  Since 2011, Barr has worked with the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Presently the 9/11 Museum has commissioned two silk scarves of the Twin Towers, which may be purchased exclusively at the Museum’s shops.

From 1967 until the present, Barr has exhibited and is in the following public collections that include; Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum and the Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Bykert Gallery, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, New York Public Library, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Chase Manhattan Bank, Getty Museum, Bill Gates, Henri Gallery, Neikrug Gallery, Newark Museum, Indianapolis Museum, Cincinnati Museum, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, International Photography Museum, New York State Museum, One World Trade Center, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Penn State University Gallery, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Huntsville Museum, Mobile Museum of Art and the John Samuels Collection. Paula has been a Guest Lecturer at New York University, School of Visual Arts, The New School, Penn State University, and Spring Hill College.

Please contact Sharon Kaplan with any questions, or to license or purchase any photos sharonrkaplan@gmail.com

Peter B. Kaplan – bio

Peter has been featured numerous times on shows such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt, Real People, and CNN. He has appeared as a spokesperson for Eastman Kodak, Nimslo 3D Camera, Soligar Lens and Nikon Cameras. His photographs have appeared in almost every major magazine in the world and have hung in shows at the Canton Art Institute, Ohio, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NYC, Municipal Arts Society of New York City, New York Historical Society, NYC; N.Y. State Museum, Albany: Nikon House, NYC; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Smithsonian, Washington DC and International Center for Photography, NYC; to name a few.

He was honored when the United States and French Governments selected his image for the Statue of Liberty 100th Anniversary Commemorative Stamp issued July 4, 1986. His images of the Statue of Liberty restoration and celebration were also selected to appear on 170 different commemorative stamps in thirteen other nations.

Harry N. Abrams published his first book, ‘High on New York’ in 1985. “These unusual pictures combine the skill of a professional photographer, the perception of a fine painter and the daring of a trapeze artist.” said Paul Goldberger, Architectural critic for The New York Times. Kaplan went on to produce several other books. His next two concentrated on the Statue of Liberty, and were published for the Statue’s centennial, ‘A Celebration of Freedom and Liberty, The Statue And The American Dream,’ published by the National Geographic Society.

In May of 1987, the Friends of the Golden Gate Bridge appointed Mr. Kaplan the “Official Photographer” for the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge. Eastman Kodak created a limited edition of dye transfer prints from this assignment and presented these to various dignitaries.

In 1990 he was sponsored by Eastman Kodak to produce a one-man show called ‘Three Coasts’, which was on display for over a year at the Museum in the St. Louis Arch for their 25th Anniversary. In the summer of 1991, the Operation Welcome Home NYC committee named him the Official Photographer for the parade. In 1992, he created the advertising photos for the World’s Fair in Seville, Spain. The following year he created advertising photos for the German Bundapost in Berlin, Germany. Both of these images were created from cranes with his signature 16 mm fisheye overview lens.

In 1985, he married his wife in a ceremony held on the 96th story ledge of the Empire State Building. Their wedding bands were created from scrap copper of the new torch of the Statue of Liberty. They have a daughter, Ricki Liberty, and a son, Gabriel Liberty. In 1995, Mr. Kaplan moved his corporate headquarters to Hockessin, Delaware where at present he resides with his family. Since moving to Delaware, he has had several one-man shows, worked on many book projects, and received numerous honors for his achievements. He created and self published a book for Turner Construction titled “Citigroup LIC 2.” At present he has been working on another book for Turner Construction that he started in 2008 on Tower # 2 at Ground Zero.

In 1997 he was awarded a State Fellowship and a NEA Grant to work on his newest Statue of Liberty book, called ‘Liberty for All,’ written by his co-author Lee Iacocca. In the spring of 1998, the U.S. Postal Service released the Art Deco Commemorative Stamps in the Century Series using Mr. Kaplan’s Chrysler Building image. In November 1998, he did the first pull out cover for the 90th Anniversary issue of Philadelphia Magazine, along with an eight-page essay inside showing his signature heights technique called “Pole Shots.” In 2002 he had more images selected then any other photographer to use in the one-year commemorative book of 9/11 titled ‘Eleven,’ published by Rizzoli. In 2003, his work was selected for the book series ‘America 24/7,’ as well as the Delaware state version where his image was chosen to be used on the cover along with many inside. In 2007 Turner Construction published a special edition book called “CitiGroup LIC #2” featuring Kaplan’s photographs of their construction property. In 2008 one of Kaplan’s images was chosen to hang along with Gordon Parks Show at the Delaware Art Museum and in 2010, Mr. Kaplan was given the honor of being one of the guest speakers at the opening ceremonies of the Gordon Parks Museum in Ft. Scott, KS.

ELIOT ELISOFON 1911-1973

Eliot Elisofon was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1911 to immigrant parents of modest means. His mother ensured that he was well-educated and took him to museums, concerts and parks. Elisofon’s childhood struggles inspired his mission as a photographer; whether photographing the neighborhood he grew up in, the poor communities in the South, or exploring other countries, the human condition remained central to his work. His humble upbringing drove Elisofon to succeed and to improve the world around him. From his perspective: “art, to be true art, must grow out of human beings and it must help human beings live a better and fuller life. It must extend the field of feeling and vision we are born with.” He became one of the most important LIFE magazine photographers, shooting for the magazine during its heyday. This exhibition presents a broad range of subject matter and aesthetic concern, including a selection of Elisofon’s humanitarian photographs, which underline his mission “to help the world to see” as well as a group of rare photographs of the sculptor David Smith from 1938.

After attending Fordham University, Elisofon opened a commercial photography studio with a childhood friend in 1935, making photographs for advertising and fashion. Elisofon pursued his personal work on the side and studied the work of photographers he admired. Early in his career, Elisofon made it his mission to “point his camera at things that needed attention.” He initially turned his camera to the neighborhood he grew up in, often creating abstract compositions. He joined the Photo League in 1936, eventually becoming its president. In 1937 he met the photographer and filmmaker Willard Van Dyke who introduced him to Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch, who in turn introduced him to Beaumont Newhall, the curator of photography at MoMA and Tom Maloney, the editor of U.S. Camera. His New York street work was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art and the Julien Levy Gallery. In 1938 his series Playgrounds of Manhattan was exhibited at the New School; for Elisofon the series was a way to bring attention to playground conditions for children in poor neighborhoods. Elisofon befriended and photographed many artists of the period, including Chaim Gross, Isamu Noguchi and David Smith, and his studio across from the Museum of Modern Art served as a gathering place for artists.

Elisofon’s first assignments for LIFE magazine appeared in 1937, Tin Type Photographer and Jewish New Year, and in 1941 his image of General Patton was the first color cover of LIFE. Patton was intrigued by Elisofon’s desire to get as close to the action as possible and nicknamed him “Hellsapopin.” In 1942 Elisofon talked his way into a French Moroccan concentration camp, Sidi El Agachei. The camp held a diverse group of people unfit for labor, including Central European Jews, Spanish Republicans, and foreign members of the French Foreign Legion as well as Italian and French women who had relations with members of the German Armistice Commission. Despite Elisofon’s persistence and protests, French and American authorities ensured that the images were never published. His other photographs of the North African Campaign during WWII became an exhibition titled The Tunisian Triumph, which opened in June of 1943 at MoMA and traveled to 20 cities in the United States.

In 1941 while on assignment for LIFE in Hollywood, Elisofon discovered the potential to use motion picture color filters for expressive use in still photography. While photographing the making of African Queen, Elisofon shared his theories on color photography with John Huston who then hired him as the color consultant on Moulin Rouge.

Over the years, Elisofon travelled to six continents, covering an estimated 2,000,000 miles. His work appeared in LIFE for almost 30 years and 19 books of his work were published during his lifetime. He made 11 trips to Africa, photographing, making films and collecting art and donated his extensive collection of African art and photographic archive of over 80,000 images to what became the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. In 2013 the museum celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives and art collection with the exhibition Africa Re-Viewed: The Photographic Legacy of Eliot Elisofon.

Contact Elin Elisofon for more information: eelisofon@gmail.com 

Susie Fitzhugh
Susie Fitzhugh (b.1942) is a self-taught documentary photographer of
education, social issues, children and families. Over the course of her
career, she worked with foundations and nonprofits concerned with
education, healthcare, the effects of poverty, and of society in general.
Her later work focuses on education in Seattle’s public schools and
on the natural world around her present home on Vashon Island,
Washington.

Exhibitions of her photography have been shown in Maryland,
Washington, D.C., and Seattle in such venues as the Maryland State
Arts Council, the Cloisters Children’s Museum, the Maryland Hall of
Records, and the Seattle City Hall Galleries. Her work is also in the
collections of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Abell
Foundation, both in Baltimore; and the Casey Family Programs,
Pyramid Communications, the Seattle Foundation, and the
University of Washington Medical Center, in Seattle.

Fitzhugh’s editorial work has been published in Life, People, Pacific
Northwest, and Maryland magazines, among others, and has illustrated
the books Dooryard Garden, Changes Everywhere, and Raising a Happy
Child. Her work has been included in the books The Family of Children,
Time-Life Books’ Photographing Children, LIFE Classic Photographs, The
Story of Mothers & Daughters and many others.
If a more extensive c.v. is needed, please request it from me at
susiefitzhugh@icloud.com

Ernest Lowe (b 1934) studied photography in the late 50’s with the noted social documentarian, John Collier Jr. His other models included Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and other Farm Security Administration photographers. In 1960 Lowe joined the staff of Pacifica radio station KPFA and almost immediately began documenting the lives of migrant farm workers.

“It was natural for me to combine interviewing for a radio documentary with photography,” Lowe recalled. “I’d just walk up to people in a camp or an orchard and say, ‘I hear you folks are getting a raw deal. I’d like to take your pictures and talk with you so people back in the city can do something about it.’” They very seldom turned him down. (Many of these recorded interviews and finished documentaries are in the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University.) Working before conflict erupted, Lowe enjoyed access to vineyards, migrant camps and the inner workings of agribusiness that later photographers were denied. These early pictures also reveal the multi-racial face of migrant labor. Blacks, Anglos, Japanese and Filipinos are pictured, as well as Latinos.

At the end of the first year, Lowe showed his work to Dorothea Lange, who declared, “This is my family album,” and loaned the photographer a 35mm Contax and a gift to cover film and expenses. He traveled up and down the San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys in 1960 to 1963, and 1966, documenting labor camps and shack towns and the grueling work in the rich fields and orchards.

In the fall of 1964, Lowe moved his family to the San Joaquin Valley and spent two months photographing and recording interviews in the unincorporated African-American community of Teviston. This was the first time anyone had documented any of the little known fourteen or more African-American settlements up and down the Central Valley. He also created iconic images of workers picking cotton, some of the last before the mechanical cotton picker displaced them.

In 2015 Lowe returned to two of the Black communities to see if he could find any of the people he’d photographed. He reports the response in South Dos Palos, “At the first house I visited folks came out and started puzzling over my fifty-four year old photos. Soon the front yard was crowded with relatives from the neighborhood and they had named most of the kids in the photos I brought. Laughing about the time capsule I’d brought to them, they photographed my prints with phones and iPads and called distant relatives about their discovery.” In Teviston and Pixley he also found many of the youth he’d photographed in the 60s and their response was equally enthusiastic.

Captured mostly in medium format, Lowe’s images are carefully composed, quiet moments, seemingly frozen in time. Lowe’s people can be monumental—icons of migrant life—but the images are also respectful, intensely personal portraits.

His work in the 60s culminated in a major multi-media exhibit at San Francisco’s deYoung Museum in 1966.

In 2013-14 the UC Berkeley School of Journalism gallery hosted a show of his work focusing on farm worker children.

In 2015 his photos were featured in an exhibition and slide shows at Santa Rosa Junior College.

In July 2018 the Fresno Art Museum opened Black Migrants, an exhibition of Lowe’s photos that will be on the walls until January 6, 2019. 

His images also appear in two PBS documentaries: The Fight in the Fields, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle and Adios Amor, the story of Maria Moreno, a charismatic farm worker organizer (PBS broadcast in Fall 2018).

Since the sixties Lowe has worked in varied roles: producer-director in public tv, transpersonal counselor, peace and environmental activist, organizational and sustainable development consultant, and always, photographer and poet. He is currently “harvesting” his life at ernestlowe.com. Contact him at indigoernie at gmail.com