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Philip Hyde At Home In The Wilds 2

July 28th, 2010

The Now Defunct Darkroom Photography Magazine: Masters of the Darkroom Series Presents Part Two Of An Interview With Philip Hyde By Merry Selk Blodgett

At Home In The Wilds

CONTINUED FROM THE BLOG POST, “Philip Hyde At Home In The Wilds 1.” For more on early color printing and the dye transfer process, see also the blog posts, “The Legend Of Dye Transfer Printing 1,” and “The Legend of Dye Transfer Printing 2.”)

“Even after five years, I haven’t been able to get into all the refinements of the dye transfer process.”

Mt. Brooks, Brooks Range, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1971 by Philip Hyde. This photograph Philip Hyde made with the same tripod setup as his horizontal of "Mt. Denali, Wonder Lake." After he triggered the shutter on the Mt. Denali image, he swiveled the camera about one frame's width to the left and made this photograph. Edward Weston used to do this too. Actually, the two Philip Hyde Alaska photographs overlap. David Leland Hyde at age six was present for both on this rare sunny day in Denali National Park. This digital image and the prints made from it so far were from a flatbed Creo scan of a dye transfer print. You would think that scanning the print directly would cause the scan to match the dye transfer print. However, this image took more photoshop work to match the color balance, contrast and other qualities, particularly the sharpness of the original print than did "Mt. Denali, Wonder Lake, Alaska," which we drum scanned from a transparency. Recently we made a drum scan of the original transparency of the photograph above, "Mt. Brooks, Brooks Range, Alaska." The resulting file will help assure that future large archival fine art digital prints of this photograph will maintain Philip Hyde's high standards of sharpness, detail and color fidelity.

(To see the photograph full size, Click Here.)

(To see “Mt. Denali, Wonder Lake (Horizontal)” full size Click Here.)

(To see “Mt. Denali, Reflection Pond (Vertical)” full size Click Here.)

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: How does your dye transfer printing relate to your primary objective of portraying nature?

PHILIP HYDE: I have always wanted to interpret and express the beauty of what I see in nature. My major objective is producing a print that, as Ansel Adams says, carries out the score of the negative. So I orchestrate the dye transfer process to produce a print that conveys the colors and beauty of the original transparencies. Sometimes getting everything just right can be very time-consuming.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Are you ever tempted to go back out into the field and let a custom lab do the darkroom work for you?

PHILIP HYDE: No…it would be very hard for me to sell a print made by a lab as my own work. That’s really why I’m doing dye transfer printing, because I can carry the process all the way from start to finish. I make the print the way I want. Also, there’s a cost factor. A single dye transfer print from a custom lab costs $200 and up.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: You mentioned before that the longevity of the dye transfer process appealed to you. How long do you expect your prints to last?

PHILIP HYDE: Well, that’s hard to say; hundreds of years I’d hope. The nice thing about dye transfer is that not only is the final color image quite stable, but the intermediate films, the separations, which contain all the color information, are actually black and white. So a basic record of the color image exists on black and white film, which, if archivally processed and stored, can last for thousands of years. That’s more than permanent enough for me. Another reason I’m into making dye transfers of my transparencies is that I have to send out my originals for reproduction in books and magazines, and they are often returned after reproduction with thumbprints or dirt all over them. If I’ve made dye transfer separations beforehand, I’m protected.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: How did you first get interested in photography?

PHILIP HYDE: When I was 16, I went backpacking in the Sierra with the Scouts. I took a folding Kodak with me, and I got hooked on it. I guess it’s just like falling in love with anything. When I sent the films to the druggist, I thought the results were completely inadequate, so at age 17, I set up a darkroom and started working. Though I now work in color, most of my early work was black and white.

“Imogen Cunningham is a wonderful example—she just kept on being a photographer until she faded away.”

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Over the years, you’ve collaborated with the Sierra Club to produce books that have been instrumental in saving wildernesses, books like Slickrock, about the southwestern Canyonlands, and Alaska: The Great Land. How did you first become involved with the Sierra Club?

PHILIP HYDE:  When I returned to San Francisco from the service in 1946, I enrolled in Ansel Adams’ new photography program at the California School of Fine Arts now the San Francisco Art Institute. I became interested in what the Sierra Club was doing at that time, so Ansel introduced me to Dave Brower (then Sierra Club Executive Director), and that was the beginning of a life-long relationship.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Do you ever think of retiring from photography?

PHILIP HYDE: I can’t think of what I’d retire from, or for, or to. It disturbs me to slow down when there’s so much more to be done. Imogen Cunningham is a wonderful example—she just kept on being a photographer until she faded away. That’s a great way to go.

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Photography’s Golden Era 6

July 22nd, 2010

The Early Days Of Ansel Adam’s Photography Department At The California School Of Fine Arts

(Continued from the blog post, “Photography’s Golden Era 5.”)

The Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza, Minarets Wilderness (now the Ansel Adams Wilderness), Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, California, 1950 by Philip Hyde. This photograph Ansel Adams said he liked better than his own of the Minarets. Philip Hyde during and after photography school at the California School of Fine Art was invited by his teachers and mentors, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Dorothea Lange to exhibit his photographs with theirs in major exhibitions. He exibited on several occasions with Edward Weston in a two-man show, once with Minor White in a two-man show, and in group shows with members of Group f.64. This photograph of the Minarets was chosen for a number of the exhibitions and now resides in national collections such as the Eastman Kodak House and others.

The Dispersion of Group f.64 Members

From Group f.64’s beginnings in the San Francisco Bay Area, members dispersed in various directions, setting out to show the world that this “new” form of photography would not only take, it would become the prevailing form. Today in the Twenty-first century people all over the world study the work of the members of Group f.64 and similar greats of the Modern Era, which lasted roughly from 1930 through the 1950s in the United States.

Many members of Group f.64 left the Bay Area in pursuit of a change in public perception of what made a photograph art. Willard Van Dyke moved to New York and became an avant garde filmmaker believing “film could promote change faster than still photography.” Ansel Adams also spent time in New York and mounted exhibitions of his work there. Edward Weston went to Santa Barbara to be with his son. Many accounts agree that Group f.64 was mainly social and short-lived. “Yet in interviews with these now famous photographers,” Therese Thau Heyman in Seeing Straight: The F.64 Revolution in Photography pointed out,  “In their notes and letters, and in newspaper reviews beginning with the (De Young Museum) exhibition, there are indications that these assumptions are hasty. Hurried notes, a few initials in exhibition lists, and recently discovered letters refer not to one but to a series of shows. Los Angeles, Portland, Carmel, Seattle, and still other sites are mentioned as venues at which the photographs were seen…”

Photography Obtains Status With Other Arts: A Photography Department At The Museum Of Modern Art

In 1940 David McAlpin, a Rockefeller heir and trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, abbreviated MoMA, financed the founding of a department of photography at the museum. A Harvard-trained art historian, MoMA librarian and curator of MoMA’s first photographic exhibition in 1937, Beaumont Newhall was the department’s curator. McAlpin’s gift was contingent on Ansel Adams consenting to be vice-chairman and agreeing to come to New York for six months to advise the launch. Over 500 New Yorkers turned out for the first opening. This was regarded as a large crowd for such an event and Time Magazine asserted that such a department gave photography equal status to painting and sculpture. However, most other press failed to recognize its significance.

Ansel Adams Develops The Zone System

With the idea of furthering photography as an art form Ansel Adams began to teach workshops and classes. Others have been credited with its invention but Ansel Adams called it the ‘Zone System’ and developed it while teaching at the Art Center School in Los Angeles in 1941. The ‘Zone System’ enabled even inexperienced photographers to make quality photographs. Simplified, the ‘Zone System’ is a method for measuring light and dark tones in the photograph’s subject and corresponding values in the final print. Assigning Roman numerals from one at near-white to ten at near-black becomes what Ansel Adams called, “A framework for understanding exposure and development, and visualizing their effect in advance.”

The Controversy Over Photography At The California School Of Fine Arts

The California School of Fine Arts, where my father Philip Hyde studied under Group f.64 members Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham, by 1945 had a prestigious reputation as an art school with painting faculty including Elmer Bischoff, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. Ted Spencer, president of the San Francisco Art Association that owned the controlling interest in the California School of Fine Arts, asked Ansel Adams to set up a Department of Photography. Spencer set aside the greater part of the main basement and one of the large studios for the new department. With Advice from Ted Spencer, Ansel Adams designed three darkrooms and a large demonstration area. The lowest estimate for the construction came in at $9,500. Following a search elsewhere, Adams finally received $10,000 from the Columbia Foundation and raised another $2,500 for equipment. After many delays and complications, California School of Fine Art students from other art departments surprised Ansel Adams. “The painters, sculptors, printmakers, and ceramicists arose in wrath and protest; photography is not an art, they claimed, and had no place in an art school,” Ansel Adams said. Additionally they asserted that space was already too limited in school facilities and classrooms. Ted Spencer insisted photography deserved a program and prevailed though objection bubbled just beneath the surface, particularly in the painting department, where both student and faculty continued to conspire against the new department. Ansel Adams said he was “unpopular,” until he proved that his “basic teaching in that medium, in both craft and aesthetic direction, was agreeable and progressive.”

Philip Hyde Writes Ansel Adams For Advice

In 1945, Sargeant Philip Hyde, while awaiting “separation” from the Army Air Corp was stationed at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama. Having heard of Ansel Adams before World War II, he wrote to the master landscape photographer in San Francisco and asked for advice on choosing good photography schools. Ansel Adams replied to Philip Hyde with a four-page letter discussing the pros and cons of various types of training. Near the end he mentioned that he just then happened to be working to obtain funding for the first college-level photography department ever at the California School of Fine Arts. Besides his extensive good advice to the young Sargeant, Ansel Adams wrote Philip Hyde, “This is confidential but…. We are hoping to establish the most advanced and effective photographic school in the country…. Do not be taken with the idea that technique is the only requirement, or that photography can be mastered in a year. It is just as tough as music, architecture, or painting–if it is going to be good.”

Philip Hyde was honorably discharged in December 1945 and made it home to San Francisco by Christmas. Philip Hyde briefly met his future wife, my mother Ardis King at a New Year’s Eve Party in San Francisco. They did not each other again until that Fall 1946, when Philip Hyde took some classes at the University of California Berkeley through a twist of fate. Ansel Adams taught a one-month course in January 1946 and a Summer Session from June 24 through August 2. The first regular semester day class was to start in September 1946.

Philip Hyde Looses His Place In Class But Gains His Life Long Companion

Philip Hyde attended the Summer Session with Ansel Adams waiting eagerly for the Fall class. However, a surprise awaited him. “Nearly 500 students applied to the photography program,” wrote Jeff Gunderson in The Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts. “The capacity of the laboratory facilities limited the number of students to 36.” Philip Hyde had written and applied early but due to some mix-up in his paperwork or confusion over the date of his application, Ansel Adams had to write to let him know that he “headed the waiting list” for the next regular semester day class to start the following Fall 1947. He would have to wait a year. He was upset at the time but Minor White suggested it was an opportunity to get some broader education using his G.I. Bill.

Philip Hyde applied to U. C. Berkeley and took a design class, a painting class with the famous Japanese painter Chiura Obata and several other classes over two semesters. He also ran across Ardis King again, who was studying for her teaching credential. They eventually were married in June 1947 (More in a future blog post and in the book.) “If it weren’t for the mix-up at CSFA,” Dad said. “I never would have become acquainted with my future wife. Thus the year he waited to go to photography school became one of the happiest years of his life. However, when he joined the second regular class in September 1947, something else had changed.

Ansel Adams Leaves Minor White In Charge Of The New Photography Department

In 1946 Ansel Adams received his first Guggenheim Fellowships to photograph national parks. During the Summer Session he trained photographer Minor White, imported from Princeton, to take his place as lead instructor. This freed Ansel Adams to hit the road. Ansel Adams taught the first three weeks of the course in the Fall of 1947 and then left for Death Valley and on to the Southwest to make landscape photographs. Minor White was left with a somewhat disgruntled crew of students who had expected to learn directly from Ansel Adams. However, the students soon realized that Minor White was a superb teacher and took their studies far beyond mere technique. Philip Hyde did not become disappointed because he had seen Minor White and Ansel Adams work together in the 1946 Summer Session.

Minor White wrote of Ansel Adams in Memorable Fancies, “This morning in his class at the California School of Fine Arts the whole muddled business of exposure and development fell into place. This afternoon I started teaching his Zone System.” Ansel Adams wrote of Minor White in his Biography, “After seeing his photographs and observing his teaching of the students over the space of a few weeks, I quickly recognized that Minor White was a remarkable photographer and a potentially great teacher.”

Despite mutual respect the two men often had opposite views. Ansel Adams said that the craft of photography could be taught but that the art of seeing was not expressible or teachable. Nor did he believe photographs should be psychologically analyzed. In contrast, Minor White had learned Freudian analysis from the eminent art historian Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University. Minor White taught what he called Space Analysis. Benjamen Chinn, Philip Hyde, Bill Heick, David Johnson and what ended up being about 11 other photography students started the second full-time day student class in Fall 1947. Benjamen Chinn said that the students teased Minor White, accusing him of picking subjects out of the morning newspaper and analitically relating them to photographs. Though their approaches differed, Ansel Adams and Minor White developed a mutual respect and became good friends as can be readily seen in their letters to each other. Both instructors and students benefited from the lively interaction of the conflicting perspectives of the two master photographers. For more information on the photographers of the Golden Era see the blog post, “The Golden Decade: California School Of Fine Arts Photography.” This series continues with the blog post, “Photography’s Golden Era 7.”

Related Posts On Ansel Adams, Minor White and Edward Weston

Ansel Adams Photo Plates From Garage Sale Worth $200 Million

Summertime: Yosemite National Park

Hype (Over Ansel Adams Negatives)

Tax Consequences of the Mother of All Yard Sale Bargains ($200 Million for $45)

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Philip Hyde At Home In The Wilds 1

June 17th, 2010

Darkroom Photography Magazine: Masters of the Darkroom Series Presents Part One Of An Interview With Philip Hyde By Merry Selk Blodgett

At Home In The Wilds

One of this century’s premier interpreters of the American wilderness, Philip Hyde has carried his 4X5 to places no camera had been before. Famous for Sierra Club books like Island In Time and The Last Redwoods, Philip Hyde is also a dedicated darkroom “do-it-yourselfer” who uses the complex and beautiful dye transfer process to make color prints. (See the blog posts, “The Legend Of Dye Transfer Printing 1,” and “The Legend of Dye Transfer Printing 2.”) Together with his wife and son, Philip Hyde lives far up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in a house he built himself…

“When I first chose photography, I knew I was choosing the pleasures of creativity over the consolations of wealth.”

Virginia Creeper, Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1977 by Philip Hyde. This photograph made at the home of the artist, became one of his signature images, though it is not in a pure sense a landscape photograph, as it depicts a domesticated vine on the wall of his house. The photograph appeared on more magazine covers than any other Philip Hyde image, starting with the now defunct Darkroom Photography magazine in 1980. Records are incomplete but some other covers included the Audubon Nature Calendar 1986, Scribner's Group Catalog 1986, Photo-Design Magazine 1985, a poster by James Randklev 1986, New York Life Calendar 1987, Fine Print Custom Photo Lab Catalog 1987 and a number of other company catalogs and brochures. Ardis Hyde originally planted the Virginia Creeper. She was locally well-known in Plumas County for her work with the Audubon Society, for organic gardening and because she gave Virginia Creeper starts to many people. Virginia Creeper can be seen growing all over the Feather River country partly due to the gifts of Ardis Hyde.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: It’s very beautiful up here in the mountains; the view from this window could be a Sierra Club calendar. But you’re also very far from any large towns, not to mention cities. Do you ever feel isolated up here?

PHILIP HYDE: I don’t think it’s isolation, I think it’s insulation. We’re insulated from a lot of urban influences that I’m not all that interested in. Don’t get me wrong…I like people. I’m very involved in the photographic workshops I’ve been doing. But I guess I like people best in small quantities. For me, the urban environment is too much of a man-made kind of thing. What’s most important to me is to be able to look out the window and see the changes of the seasons, or the rain pouring down, or the stars at night.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: You’ve got a reputation as one of the top nature photographers in the country. Has your photography made you financially successful?

PHILIP HYDE: I’m not really trying to play the money game. Photography has provided a living, not a bad living at all. But when I left the city in 1959 to come up here, I knew that I was leaving behind the opportunity to make lots of money. I think that when I first chose photography, I knew I was choosing the pleasures of creativity over the consolations of wealth.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: What is your personal definition of success?

PHILIP HYDE: I define success for myself in terms of my lifestyle. Success is freedom and opportunity to do what I want to do. I would say I’m a success in that respect. But some people seem to think that once you’re successful, you can just coast from then on. That’s certainly not true for me; I have to keep working hard, which is a good thing, or I might sit back on the oars and float downstream.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Anyone who makes his own dye transfer color prints certainly isn’t resting on his oars. Frankly, I was surprised to discover that someone as closely associated with outdoor color work as yourself would be spending so much time indoors. Dye transfer color printing is notoriously difficult and time-consuming; it’s usually done only in specially-equipped labs. What made you decide to tackle such a formidable process?

PHILIP HYDE: The beauty of a well-made dye transfer print, for one thing. It’s permanence, for another. I don’t know, maybe it’s lunacy. Or maybe it’s self-punishment and that’s part of my philosophy too. I think that you don’t get something for nothing in this world, and that perhaps struggling for it is a good thing. I’m saying that somewhat facetiously, but I’m not joking. I think there are a lot of aspects of photography now that are so automatic and so easy, and I think that explains the fact that there isn’t an awful lot that’s significant, from a long-term standpoint, being produced.

“Success is freedom and opportunity to do what I want to do.”

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: I take it you’re not partial to motorized, auto-everything 35mm SLRs.

PHILIP HYDE: Well, do you know that old saw about the bunch of monkeys? If you set a bunch of monkeys up at typewriters eventually they would end up typing the Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s a lot of nonsense really, but it’s certainly true that if you run enough film through a camera, sooner or later you’re going to make a significant image. I think an awful lot of people are using 35mm that way. On the other hand, there definitely are people whose work is suited to 35mm…people who can exploit the freedom and flexibility of that format.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: But you’d rather carry around a 4X5 camera and 30 pounds of gear as you hike through the wilderness.

PHILIP HYDE: Yes.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Why?

PHILIP HYDE: For one thing, it would be very hard for me to make high-quality large dye transfer prints from 35mm originals. But deeper than that, I like the 4X5 format because it disciplines you to see carefully. By the time you’ve made the exposure, you are aware of little things you wouldn’t notice in a 35mm viewer. And it’s a discipline in not being profligate with materials; when you’re carrying 30 pounds on your back and have a limited supply of film, you look at everything very critically. You’re less apt to bang away and ask questions later.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Let’s return to your current work with the dye transfer color printing process. How long have you been doing it, and how did you get started?

PHILIP HYDE: I began dye transfer printing in 1974. I had been mulling it over for a few years before; my photographer friend Dennis Brokaw tipped the scales when he said he would help me begin. I can still remember the first dye transfer print I made. I was so excited, after years of seeing bad color prints made from my transparencies.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: Doesn’t the process require a lot of skill and care on your part?

PHILIP HYDE: I suppose so, if you define skill as a reasonably precise manipulation of the material, and having your head together enough so that you do all the intermediate steps in the right order. Dye transfer is a rather complex process, especially when your originals are transparencies, as mine are. But there’s one nice compensation for all the complexity; there are a tremendous number of adjustments and controls at each step of the process, so you can alter the color balance, intensity of colors, and contrast along the way. Even after five years, I haven’t been able to get into all the refinements of the process.

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHY: How does your dye transfer printing relate to your primary objective of portraying nature?

PHILIP HYDE: I have always wanted to interpret and express the beauty of what I see in nature. My major objective is…

CONTINUED IN THE UPCOMING BLOG POST, “Philip Hyde At Home In The Wilds 2.”

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The Battle Over Dinosaur: Birth Of Modern Environmentalism 5

June 3rd, 2010

Philip Hyde On Assignment In Dinosaur National Monument, A Return Without Fanfare And Philip Hyde’s Early Struggles

(Continued from the blog post, “The Battle Over Dinosaur: Birth Of Modern Environmentalism 4.”)

Philip Hyde In Jones Hole, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, 1951 Self-Portrait with 5X7 Linhof View Camera.

In 1950, the same year the Korean War began, Oscar Chapman, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of Interior, recommended Congressional authorization for the Upper Colorado River Storage Project, which to begin with depended on the building of two dams in Dinosaur National Monument.

One proposed dam would be built at the narrow lower end of a wide river oasis called Echo Park and in the process would flood the most scenic part of Dinosaur National Monument. Nearly fully submerged, in Echo Park at the center of the unparalleled scene stood Steamboat Rock. Steamboat Rock rises out of the river on three sides of it, 900 feet of sheer walls like a giant end of a bread loaf. The second dam would be erected at Split Mountain, also on the Green River below the Dinosaur Quarry near Dinosaur National Monument’s southern boundary where the river flows lazily along sculpted sandstone cliffs and birds call through the Cottonwood trees.

The US Bureau of Reclamation proposed Echo Park dam as the “wheelhorse” of the entire Colorado River Storage Project because the sale of its hydroelectric power would finance the construction of other key dams on the Colorado. They proposed Split Mountain dam to modulate flow fluctuations caused by large power-generating releases from Echo Park dam.

For years National Park Service leadership did not quite believe the Bureau of Reclamation would try to invade the national monument, even though a clause in Dinosaur’s legislation permitted it. As the Bureau of Reclamation garnered support from local towns expecting a boom, the National Park Service began to realize the Bureau of Reclamation would go farther than mere surveys. The National Park Service began to reach out for help to young environmental groups like the Sierra Club.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club was getting more organized, growing exponentially and debating a shift to a more national focus. In December 1952, the Sierra Club Board of Directors approved a new position of Executive Director for David Brower to lead the club, act as spokesman and recommend fiscal policy. David Brower had already organized boat trips down both the Yampa River and the Green River. He had concurred with Richard Leonard in sending Philip Hyde in 1951, to explore and photograph Dinosaur National Monument from land.

The Sierra Club bought three sets of Dad’s prints when he returned from Dinosaur. In September 1951, Dad was still seeking additional paying uses of his photographs when he wrote to J. W. Penfold, Western Representative of the Izaak Walton League describing his coverage of the subject:

I have quite a stack of negatives of Dinosaur to print. Though we missed getting into the Canyon of the Ladore, I covered the rest of the monument pretty well and have quite a few pictures of Jones Hole—the upper part you don’t see from the river—and one of the most beautiful areas of the monument, Echo Park, Mantles’ Cave and ranch area, the Quarry area, Split Mountain Gorge, Round Top. Several days before running the river, we flew over most of the monument in a Vernal man’s little Ercoupe—an experience I highly recommend. After having walked and driven over the area, it really puts it together to fly over it. And one gets a marvelous conception of the topography of the whole country. The plateaus and benches all begin to make sense from the air, something that didn’t quite come off when surveyed from the ground. Certainly from the air and on the ground the canyons present a more interesting and beautiful aspect than they could from the surface of a lake which would inundate them. The underwater caverns of Capri may be delightful from a glass-bottomed boat, but what could you see through the turbid waters of the Green and Yampa?

Dad went on to outline the same suggestions he also made to Richard Leonard, how his prints could help raise awareness of Dinosaur’s beauty. He suggested he make a set of prints to travel around to various conservation organizations, another set for use at Dinosaur, another set for the National Park Service, a fourth for Sierra Club use and another for reproduction in pamphlets and magazine articles. Several environmental organizations did use Dad’s photographs, though not to the extent he hoped. Richard Leonard shot down the traveling show idea but was responsible for supporting the purchase of the three sets of prints for the Sierra Club. Dad organized his own traveling Dinosaur Exhibition, that went to libraries and museums all over the country. All of the printing and framing materials added up for the young photographer, who had very little money having just spent nearly four years in photography school.

To help support Dad, Mom taught school for 12 years. She began teaching in 1948 while Dad was still in photography school. She first taught at Colma Kindergarten in Daily City. Mom and Dad moved to the northern Sierra Nevada in 1950. They took up residence at the Fox Farm at Lake Almanor, California. Mom taught kindergarten in Greenville and they moved to the Fredrickson’s Ranch east of town. Dad put together a makeshift darkroom in the Granary at Fredrickson’s. The darkroom had been a single stall closet, about four feet square. Dad could just get inside, tape the door shut and get the lights out to make prints.

Though the young couple were newlywed and happy in the mountains, those years were very bleak financially. Dad’s log entry for May 16, 1952: “Weeks of wondering, doubt. Ansel has been advising me to work toward some solution of economic problem. The two years in Greenville and the mountains seem to be drawing to a close. I have a feeling change is near. Ned Graves in Carmel suggests I work part-time in a photo shop and has provided the impetus. I will look into the possibility the second week of June when we go down below again.”

In one letter Dad told Ansel Adams of his troubles. Ansel Adams recommended that Dad get into another line of work for awhile. Ansel Adams said that it would clear Dad’s head and he could do photography on the side. Ansel Adams said Dad would have a difficult time making a living defending wilderness….

(CONTINUED IN ANOTHER BLOG POST)

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The Legend Of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 2

May 31st, 2010

CONTINUED FROM THE BLOG POST, “The Legend of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 1”

Darkroom Photography Magazine and Dye Transfer

Aspens, Delores River Canyon, San Juan Rockies, Colorado, 1979 by Philip Hyde. One of the photographs featured in the "Images of the Southwest" dye transfer portfolio."

(To see the photograph full screen Click Here)

The now defunct Darkroom Photography Magazine, published Philip Hyde’s “Virginia Creeper, Northern Sierra Nevada, California” on the cover of the March/April 1980 issue. “Virginia Creeper” made more magazine covers than any other Philip Hyde photograph, but Darkroom Photography Magazine also ran an in-depth feature article with the cover photograph. Merry Selk Blodgett of Darkroom Photography Magazine interviewed Philip Hyde about his dye transfer printing process. See the blog post, “Philip Hyde At Home In The Wilds 1.”

The article titled, “At Home In the Wilds” by Merry Selk Blodgett included a sidebar about dye transfer printing that makes a good introduction to the rest of the article, which will appear in a future blog post. Below is an excerpt from the Darkroom Photography Magazine sidebar:

What Dye Transfer Is All About

The color printing process Philip Hyde uses, dye transfer, is one of the finest (and most difficult) techniques currently available for producing a photographic color print. Color quality and tonality are excellent, the final image is relatively immune to degradation over time, and the process offers a degree of control over contrast and color unmatched by other techniques. To make a dye transfer print from one of his 4X5 transparencies, Philip Hyde first makes three black and white separation negatives by contact printing the transparency onto panchromatic sheet film. One separation is made with a blue filter over the light source, another with a red filter and the third with a green filter. Together these three separations comprise a complete “record” of the original color image.

The three separate matrices, one for each color are eventually dunked in their respective color dyes and then rolled carefully onto the paper using a positive register of rectangular-shaped pins that fit precisely into rectangular holes punched into the matrices for a perfect alignment of the three separate color versions of the final single print. Here is Philip Hyde’s complete statement of the process from start to finish as written in his “Images of the Southwest” Dye Transfer Portfolio Introduction:

The following is Dad’s description of his dye transfer printing process from his dye transfer portfolio packaged by Lumina, Palo Alto, California in 1982 called, “Images of the Southwest: Twelve Original Photographic Prints by Philip Hyde.” The plan was to print 50 portfolios but only 31 were made, which still was a huge production considering it adds up to 612 handmade prints.

A Brief Description of the Dye Transfer Color Print Process by Philip Hyde

The prints in this portfolio were made from 4X5 Ektachrome original transparencies by the dye transfer process.

To begin, a set of three separation negatives are made from the original by contact printing onto a black and white film. Exposed to red, green,  and blue light respectively then processed and dried, these three negatives record and translate the color information from the original into silver negative densities.

Film positives are then made from the separations, enlarging them to the finished print size on a special matrix film capable of absorbing and transporting dyes in the precise degree required for the differing portion of the final print. These matrix print films correspond to plates used for printing reproductions in the ink process.

After processing and drying, the three matrices are immersed in their respective dye solutions: cyan, magenta and yellow. The printing paper which is coated with a non-silver-sensitive emulsion to absorb dye, is mordanted then sqeegeed into position on the register printing board. Each matrix in succession is then removed from its dye bath, rinses, then placed on the register pins of the board and rolled into contact with the printing paper, remaining in contact for 3 to 6 minutes depending on dye color. It is then stripped off, washed in warm water and returned to its dye bath to repeat the cycle. When the third matrix has been rolled and removed, the full-color image is revealed on the printing paper, which is then dried, trimmed, and mounted, as in the Portfolio.

This portfolio is issued in a limited edition of 60 copies, of which 50 are for sale. Copyright Philip Hyde 1982.

Archival Statement

All of the prints in this portfolio were made by Philip Hyde in his darkroom, to exacting standards for color, quality, and longevity. They are dry-mounted to acid-free, 100% rag Museum Board, and overlaid with cut-out mats of the same Museum Board attached with acid-free tape. 100% acid-free rag paper interleaves are used to protect the print surfaces. With proper care, the prints should last  a long time, but as with most materials made by man or nature, they should not be subjected to direct sunlight, or high intensity fluorescent lighting.

A future blog post will describe the interesting and challenging process of trial and error, with good help from expert friends, through which Philip Hyde learned dye transfer printing. Also in a future blog post the Darkroom Photography Magazine Interview about Philip Hyde’s printing processes and his life living in the northern Sierra Nevada and travels to photograph mountain scenes and southwestern desert landscapes, see the blog post, “Philip Hyde At Home In the Wilds 1.”

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Galen Rowell And Outdoor Photographer Style

April 30th, 2010

Galen Rowell, Philip Hyde And The Finding Of A Personal Outdoor Photographer Style

Lone Pine Peak, Alabama Hills, East Side of the Sierra Nevada, California, 1978 by Philip Hyde. This photograph is an example of Philip Hyde's receptive approach. He often went against the standard wisdom and made photographs in the middle of the day. He was in the vicinity at this time and had a hunch to turn off and visit the Alabama Hills because of the fresh snow on the Sierra Nevada peaks. He drove around and got out of the vehicle and walked around with his view camera. The picturesque parallel curves of the three boulders with the angular peaks in the background presented themselves to him. This image is in contrast to photographs by Galen Rowell, who lived in the area, could visit the Alabama Hills when lighting conditions or the alpenglow was at its best. Galen Rowell made a number of memorable images of the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Carr Clifton was the first to photograph the Alabama Hills' Mobius Arch with the Sierra Nevada behind in March 1983. Carr Clifton's photograph was first published in the 1985 Sierra Club Wilderness Engagement Calendar. Galen Rowell made a different photograph of the arch much later in 2001, but he may have made an earlier photograph of the arch. Since then the image has been copied over and over by subsequent outdoor photographers who rather than using Galen Rowell's visioning, Philip Hyde's receptive approach, or any creative method of their own, came to the landscape looking for a specific landmark to add to their checklist.

(See the Photograph full screen Click Here. To see Galen Rowell’s photographs of the East Side of the Sierra Nevada Click Here. To see Philip Hyde’s never before seen new prints on display at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery May 8 through August 31, 2010 see the blog post, “New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition.”)

Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde differed in their process for choosing photographs. Galen Rowell observed certain elements in the natural setting and then visualized a scenario where those elements came together. By sheer will, attractive power and personal dynamic energy, he would very often vision into being the very circumstances for the photograph he had imagined.

Philip Hyde had a nearly opposite approach to finding photographs. His was a yin, receptive, and contemplative method.  He would still his own inner processes, tune into the land around him, and allow it to fill his being until a photograph came forward. He was interested in letting photographs present themselves by attaining a quiet composure and seeing carefully.

As can readily be seen in the work of these two outdoor photographers, either method can result in spectacular images. A developing outdoor photographer can experiment with these two differing styles, see which he or she prefers overall, or use each method in different circumstances. I’m sure that both Galen Rowell and Philip Hyde used an opposite approach to their standard one at times, or tried a hybrid sometimes too. In my own experimenting with the two ways, I have found that in most instances the two methods produce very different photographs, but there are instances when they produce the same photograph. Sometimes I find I am meant to make a certain image whatever process I use. At other times the two methods themselves can even end up feeling the same or merged, as opposites sometimes do.

Galen Rowell’s Vision And The Outdoor Photographer

Galen Rowell applied his visionary process when he made his most famous photograph, “Rainbow Over The Potala Palace.” He described it in his book, Galen Rowell’s Inner Game of Outdoor Photography. Galen Rowell for years studied atmospheric conditions in the Sierra Nevada, interested in discovering what caused alpenglow and how he could capture it more consistently. He also had studied the physics of light and how it affected conditions for the outdoor photographer. In the book, Galen Rowell explained that he saw the rainbow beginning to form, observed the water vapor conditions that cause rainbows and ran a great distance across the field knowing that odds were good that if he positioned himself just right, the rainbow would end on the Dali Lama’s Potala Palace. Getting these factors to line up this way not only took mental focus and determination, but also specialized knowledge and diligence in understanding the science behind the craft of the outdoor photographer.  “My vision came true as the sunlit curtain of falling rain stayed in place while the rainbow moved with me in relation to the sun,” Galen Rowell wrote. “I used a telephoto lens to magnify part of the bow as a spot of light came through the clouds onto the palace.” Galen Rowell described his whole process more in his book.

In Search of An Outdoor Photographer Style

In the book Galen Rowell’s Vision: The Art of Adventure Photography, Galen Rowell wrote an essay called “In Search of Style.” In this essay, excerpted here, Galen Rowell shares some of the elements that bring out this elusive thread running through a photographers work:

Every photographer has a definable style, but I spent at least a decade worrying that I didn’t. If someone asked me what my artistic goals were, I would mumble platitudes about capturing my vision of the wilderness and pursuing light. I feared that my diverse work was adrift in an ocean of outdoor photography…. I also had a disdain for externally directed photographic styles, which continues to this day. For example, I was deeply offended by work that called attention to itself by some artificial device (such as an introduced color filtration, weird lens, strange darkroom twist, or exaggerated grain) to stylistically link photos that otherwise lacked an internal message. I liked deceptively simple pictures that drew more attention to honest vision than to technique…. Ansel Adams wrote eloquently about the difference between external and internal photographic events. The most meaningful photographic styles are always reflections of the internal. We react not so much to what an outdoor photographer sees, but to how he or she sees and renders the subject for us. Personal style comes from within, from a photographer’s unconscious and conscious choices. We usually pass over a photograph devoid of emotional reaction to its subject and say, ‘This doesn’t do anything for me.’ Of course it doesn’t. The photographer didn’t have his or her heart in it. Devoting personal energy to a photograph isn’t enough unless that energy is internalized. An easy way to block the internal message is to be overly concerned about results. For example, knowing their top images will be critiqued in front of the group, workshop participants out for an afternoon shoot often wander around shooting nothing because they have created unrealistic expectations for themselves…. Pros on a major assignment can easily allow externally directed cues to block the very style that caused the client to hire them…. One solution for a blocked-up photographer is to write an imaginary letter to an internal self: Wish you were here to see this. You wouldn’t take the boring photo I’m considering right now because you’d respond by… People avoid developing a personal style by emotionally distancing themselves from their work…. However, some sort of personal stamp does sneak through, even in the most banal photography. The balance of foregrounds to backgrounds and the choice of subject matter are among the subtle clues that the images were made by a thoughtful human being rather than by a monkey or some machine. The central process of art is not to render something exactly as it appears, but to simplify it so that meaning, clarity, emotional response, and a sense of wonder combine to create a style from within.

Besides being a great outdoor photographer, you can see that Galen Rowell was also a great writer. He put into words in more than 20 books, the methods, style and inner awareness that translated powerfully to the page and produced a body of photography and texts that will endure. To read more about the Philip Hyde exhibition at Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Gallery and the first time the two photographer’s work will be shown together in the same building Click Here. See also the blog post, “Pioneer Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery.”

Which of the two approaches does your own method most resemble for outdoor photography?

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The Santa Monica Experience

April 28th, 2010

Billboard And Sign, Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, California, 2009 by David Leland Hyde, Nikon D90 hand held.

People have asked me to give a little tasty taste of what I photograph, ponder and write about while I’m on the road on the way to a Philip Hyde exhibition opening, or while I’m lugging around framed prints.

I did write something called “The Santa Monica Experience,” that I sent as an e-mail to my list of friends of Philip Hyde Photography on November 7, 2009. I wrote it at a friend’s beautiful house, not even close to the largest in the neighborhood, but way above my status. I wrote the e-mail sitting in my friend’s guest suite looking out at the swimming pool, lawns, orange trees, lemon trees, and several other fruit trees while the smell of exotic flowers filled the air. I was visiting Pacific Palisades, between Santa Monica and Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway, in my Dad’s tan 1984 Ford Van, with a dent on the right side and the paint peeling off, parked in the driveway. I had just returned from leaving 30 framed archival fine art digital prints at Santa Monica College for the upcoming exhibition.

Wow, SUNSHINE! I love L. A….

Not a drip of smog, blue skies, warm days, scantily-fashionably clad beautiful people everywhere…

Beach, Santa Monica, California, 2009 by David Leland Hyde, Nikon D90 hand held.

…The speed limit is 45 on the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica and I’m doing 60. Mercedes, BMW’s, Porsches blasting past me like I’m standing still. The last mad race of a race madly running like lemmings into the sun… On the radio of the convertible Mustang ahead of me, Madonna scintillating, “You might be my lucky star…” The girl in the white Saab looks at me, like, “You have a lot of nerve to drive that old jalopy van along here and look at me.”

The van is a quiet tan from an era gone by, but not lost at Santa Monica College. They teach cutting edge digital photography and old fashioned darkroom black and white print making. It is the only college in the United States that still teaches Ilfochrome printing. Santa Monica College has millions of dollars in photography equipment. In the new and high tech business building on the second floor there’s this beautiful gallery space with top quality lighting, completely straight white bare walls, where the work of a quiet man who loved nature will hang for an instant in time. And this quiet show starts tonight. It is the “Road Less Traveled…”

Come see…
Tonight is the night.
Santa Monica College.
It will be good for your soul…
Love,
David Leland Hyde
Philip Hyde Photography
Fine Art For Earth’s Sake Since 1942

http://www.philiphyde.com/

This time the show will be at Mountain Light Gallery. A different show. Come see. It will be good for your soul…

And, maybe somewhere along the way, in Reno, Carson City, Mono Lake, Mammoth, Bishop, Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, maybe Death Valley National Park, maybe even Yosemite National Park, I will write another experience. There is always plenty to write about and photograph on the road…

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The Legend Of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 1

April 12th, 2010

Misty Morning, Indian Creek, Northern Sierra Nevada, California, 1983 by Philip Hyde. The original color transparency went missing. As a result until 2008, this image had not been printed or published for over 20 years. With the digital age it can again be printed. The new large digital file came from a scan on a Creo CCD Flatbed Scanner of a Philip Hyde original dye transfer print. Most of the other photographs on the Philip Hyde Photography website are made from a drum scan of the original 4X5 color transparency, 4X5, 5X7 or 8X10 black and white negative, or a film duplicate of one of these.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

The stuff of myth, legend and dreams, dye transfer print making helped bring color to the silver screen in 1922. Hollywood called it Technicolor and it resulted in the best and brightest color that films have ever offered. It was the most widely used motion picture technology until 1952. “Everything else is a pale comparison,” said Brad Miller of Technicolor Labs in Grass Valley, California.

During the 1940s, Kodak released the process for still photography print making. It was the method taught in photography schools and the honored child of famous photographers such as William Eggleston, Ernst Haas, Ctein, Eve Arnold, Beaumont Newhall, Galen Rowell, Cole Weston, John Ward, Eliot Porter, Philip Hyde and others. Then in 1994, Kodak abandoned the process and the many photographers, famous or not who were producing the prints. There was outcry across the land, even the world.

I remember my father, fine art landscape photographer Philip Hyde, regularly being mad at Kodak about something. Kodak notoriously favored the mass market and made decisions from a strictly bottom line numbers perspective that often hurt the professional photographer to make the hobbyist happy. Dad used to rail about corporate greed and breaches of trust with those who like him, were working full-time, Kodak’s loyal volume supply buyers. However, nothing compared with the day the music died first in 1991 with discontinuation of the matrix film, then in 1994 with Kodak discontinuing the remaining dye transfer materials. After the dust settled, I don’t think Dad ever recovered completely from the loss of dye transfer print making. He bought up supplies like many others but refused to spend his life’s savings on large stock piles of materials at age 73. As it was, he gave what he had away to another dye transfer printer when he lost his eyesight in 1999-2000.

With these influences, the 1990s marked a change of direction in Dad’s life. After pinching every penny and saving all of them he could, he had invested small sums in the stock market for years. His modest stock portfolio had done so well that by 1994, he had become an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. He was a highly conservative, buy and hold, blue chip stock investor. It had been working for him quite well and he made far more in the stock market than he ever did in photography.

He was still smarting from his crowning book achievement, Drylands: The Deserts of North America published in 1987, being remaindered, re-published in 1990 and remaindered a second time. He was disappointed because the accountants had taken over book publishing and if books sold more slowly they were remaindered. He seemed down about the influence of corporate decision makers on photography in general and he was not one to get down about anything. He experienced more demand for his time by environmental activist groups and organizations like the Museum of Northern Arizona and Ansel Adams Gallery asking him to do more workshops. The workshops rekindled his photography spark some, but for a few years he went into semi-retirement. Dye transfer and desert landscapes were the two reasons Dad converted to color in a long, gradual process during the decade of the 1970s. More on that in another blog post and in my book. He did in time begin printing again in earnest. He made beautiful color Cibachrome prints, but it was never the same as dye transfer print making. What was it about this elusive process that captured the minds of famous photographers and darkroom techies alike?

One of the photographers famous for his dye transfer prints is Ctein, one of a few still making dye transfer prints today. He wrote on his website:

Dye transfer prints are simply without peer. They have a richness, depth, and fidelity unmatched by any other kind of photographic print. They can show extraordinary subtlety of tone and hue, combined with a brightness range of 500:1 from blackest black to whitest white. After 70 years, dye transfer printing has become a nearly-lost art…today only a few dozen people in the entire world still make dye transfer prints… Dye transfer printing is very time-consuming and expensive. Making the first 16″ x 20″ dye print from a negative costs me over $100 in materials and several days’ time. Dye transfer printing also demands extraordinary skill, understanding, and good artistic judgement… In 1991 Kodak discontinued a special film called Pan Matrix Film which I need to make prints directly from color negatives. In 1994 Kodak abruptly and without warning ceased production of Matrix Film (used for printing from separations) and all other dye transfer materials… As an artist, I couldn’t stand the idea of spending the rest of my life thinking, “Gee that’s a pretty nice print… it would have been so much lovelier as a dye transfer.” I mortgaged myself to the hilt and packed a large amount of this unique film in a deep freeze… I stockpiled enough chemicals, dye and paper to allow me to continue printing. I went deeply in debt, but I can continue creating my art for at least several more years. Those few of us still making dye transfer prints survive on such hoarded supplies. Kodak’s decision to kill dye transfer constitutes an artistic loss of the highest order.

Landscape photographer Charles Cramer described his experience on his website:

When I started making color prints in the late 70s, things were fairly primitive, but there was one process with a mythical reputation that offered tremendous control—dye transfer. I had no idea how all-consuming making dye transfer prints would be. To create one print required the precise exposure and development of approximately twelve sheets of film. The colors are literally disassembled into B&W, and then reassembled in a process akin to silk-screening. With all the steps involved, it offered tremendous control—but also the possibility for things to go terribly wrong. I labored mightily for more than fifteen years with dye transfer. When all the planets aligned, a beautiful print could emerge. But you didn’t know how it would look until the final step of “rolling” out a print. I started making dye transfer prints in 1981. In 1994, Kodak, the only supplier of dye transfer materials, announced they had ceased production. Any remaining inventory was divided up amongst existing customers. I scraped together as much as I could afford to get a decent stockpile… By the time I started in dye transfer, most everyone else had quit. The biggest obstacle was getting good information. There was very little in the literature, and I tried to collect everything I could. There are so many steps to making a print—so many variables— combined with the fact that there’s no feedback until you finally make the print, that it’s hard to isolate exactly what does what.

Charles Cramer taught dye transfer printing for the Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops starting in 1987. He teaches at the Ansel Adams Gallery to this day. Upcoming blog posts will describe how Philip Hyde learned dye transfer printing and will include Philip Hyde’s description of the process, as well as my memories of him singing along to his big band jazz records as he printed.

CONTINUED IN THE BLOG POST, “The Legend of Dye Transfer Printing, Interrupted 2“

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Photography’s Golden Era 4

March 15th, 2010

(CONTINUED FROM BLOG POST, “Photography’s Golden Era 3.”

Early Influences on Philip Hyde Before Photography School: Leland Hyde, Modernism, Rural Europe, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Group f.64, Ansel Adams and Western National Parks.

Tomales Bay, Point Reyes, Marin County, California, Oil on Canvas, circa 1925 by Leland Hyde.

In the first third of the 20th Century, Modernist Painting came into prominence. It had swept from Paris across the Atlantic in 1913 with the Armory Show in New York. However, the Beaux Arts classical approach that had influenced architecture and art across the US, remained the dominant form and the preferred way of teaching until the student uprisings of 1932. Student activism at the University of California, Berkeley and on other college campuses, led to a shift away from the traditional Beaux Arts methods of teaching. At UC Berkeley in particular, the uprisings instigated a search for a Modernist architect to take over the design program. Modernism waxed and waned but eventually took hold.

In the visual arts, the Modernist movements—Dadaism, Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism had faded from public notice and moved into private drawing rooms in the late 1920s and early 1930s. For a time, the new forms were of less interest to the American people. Isolationism and concern over domestic issues brought on the development of American Regionalism, whose proponents often painted the rural countryside. Philip Hyde, age 11 in 1932, had yet to use a camera, but his father Leland Hyde’s favorite subject to paint was nature. He took his family camping in a lean-to tent in the National Parks of the West such as Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone. In 1932, Leland and Jessie’s children, Betty, Davey and Philip, first looked down from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and Philip in particular began to dream of some way he could spend his life in the outdoors.

Photography at the time until 1932 and after, was dominated by pictorialism, based on special effects and techniques that altered photographs to resemble paintings. However, straight photography as led by Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and others eventually took over the medium and became the core of Modernism. Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and five other talented California photographers founded Group f.64 in protest to the pictorialist photography that was then broadly exhibited by museums, galleries and camera clubs, as well as widely published in periodicals because it resembled paintings. Academic painters and the art establishment, thought their livelihood might be lost to photography and therefore had for years refused to consider any form of photography art, but in time they for the most part tentatively accepted pictorialism.

Alfred Stieglitz first founded the Photo-Secession society as a pictorialist group. Alfred Stieglitz circulated in the heart of the modern art scene in New York City and followed the European Impressionist Art movement. Many of his most famous photographs were in the pictorialist tradition. They were blurry, atmospheric and employed at least partial soft focus. He usually did not soften the focus in his whole image, but subscribed to the “naturalist” theory that emphasized a photograph’s primary elements by letting background or less important elements remain out of focus, as it was thought the natural human eye did.

European Impressionists painted the steam engine as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution and of the modern city. Alfred Stieglitz in turn photographed steam engines. Alfred Stieglitz never used a special soft focus lens, but used snow or other weather conditions to soften his images and add atmosphere. All along Alfred Stieglitz used real world conditions to create pictorialist effects, rather than the manipulations that were typical of most pictorialist photography. He was the master of capturing real life moments. In the early 1920s, Alfred Stieglitz began to leave behind the idea that photographs need to look like paintings to be art. He had led the movement to have photographs exhibited besides paintings, but his photographs looked more and more like camera work than brush work. He did not cover up that he had changed his outlook. He instead instigated a revolt against pictorialism.

Even before West Coast photographers formed Group f.64, Alfred Stieglitz had started promoting what he called Straight Photography. More on Straight Photography and Group f.64 in the next blog post. Also see the previous blog post, “Photography’s Golden Era 3” for more on Alfred Stieglitz. Beaumont Newhall wrote in the Foreward to Seeing Straight: The F.64 Revolution in Photography that by the time of the founding of Group f.64, pictorialism “had long been abandoned by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and other members of the Photo-Secession society.”

Photographs such as Alfred Stieglitz’s “Steerage,” of working class people on board a ship, marked a new direction for Alfred Stieglitz’s and brought in what became known as the Modernist vision. Edward Weston, who had begun as a pictorialist, destroyed all of his early negatives. Modernist photography discarded the romanticism of the pictorialists and looked deeply into commonplace subjects for hidden beauty. Straight photography and the Photo-Secession decried soft-focus and sought sharpness and precise detail. The Modernists minimized darkroom manipulation, though even Edward Weston, who primarily printed contact prints, was known on occasion to dodge and burn prints, thereby lightening shadows and darkening highlights.

Most agreed with Beaumont Newhall when he named Edward Weston as the spritual leader of Group f.64, even though the independent Edward Weston did not found Group f.64, or pay much attention to its operation. Edward Weston lived a simple, unadorned lifestyle and made fundamental, elegant photographs of common and natural subjects such as garden vegetables, nude poses of his wives and lovers, and western landscapes, particularly those in California and around his home in Carmel. Point Lobos State Reserve was Edward Weston’s favorite outdoor place to photograph. Point Lobos is the perfect example of a straight photography location. Its scenery is not dramatic, not colorful or spectacularly beautiful. Point Lobos has a subtle, hard to define beauty that can only be discovered by looking closely, by getting to know the place, and by creatively framing common appearing rocks, trees, grasslands and beaches.

As Edward Weston did with photographs, Leland Hyde, in the same era and before, depicted the natural scene with oil paintings and pastel sketches. Leland Hyde’s painting style had elements of rural regionalism but he clearly disagreed with one of the primary representatives of the movement, Thomas Hart Benton, once a student in Paris, who wanted to rid America of what he called “the dirt of European influence.” However, Leland Hyde did agree with the social activism and politics of the New Deal that sought a public and useful art. In America, as the 1930’s opened, the merits of  Modernism versus more traditional figure painting became a heated debate. Leland Hyde dreamed of studying in Paris at one of the world’s most famous and selective art schools, L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. He wanted to explore the various forms more deeply, knowing that his course of study would primarily be rooted in classical training but would also incorporate elements and whole courses on the Modernism that flourished in pre-war Paris.

When Jessie Hyde’s favorite uncle passed away, with the family’s sorrow came a blessing: Uncle George Hair left the Hydes a small inheritance. At the height of the depression, Jessie wanted to be practical and buy a house, but Leland Hyde saw it as his chance to go to art school in Paris. L’Ecole des Beaux Arts had offered free tuition since the 17th Century but the application process had always been extremely difficult and competitive. Leland Hyde quietly applied and when he was accepted, Jessie quit arguing for more conservative uses of the money. She told him to go to Paris and enjoy. She would stay in San Francisco and keep the children in school. However, Leland Hyde would not hear of it and insisted that the entire family come with him to Europe. Philip Hyde was 11, his brother Davey only five years old and his sister Betty was 15.

European Countryside, Alps, Pastel Sketch, 1933 by Leland Hyde.

Paris, the capital of Modernism, had a profound impact on the young Hydes and affected Philip Hyde’s photography later. They learned French and listened and watched their father work and talk about his assignments in the evenings at home in their rented artist’s studio-flat. Modernism became a part of Leland Hyde’s work and he incorporated classical training with the new directions in art just as he had imagined. Philip Hyde watched his father paint in the field and listened to him expound at the dinner table about the lectures and class projects from L’Ecole. After school let out, the Hydes bought a car and drove around the European countryside while Leland Hyde painted. They spent three days of the trip on the celebrated French Riviera, where even during the Great Depression, August was the peak tourism month and crowds overran the coast. This was Philip Hyde’s first realization that he preferred wilder places such as the French and German rural countryside and the Austrian Alps where his father also found the most joy and more opportunities to paint what he liked.

When Leland Hyde took his family back to San Francisco, he took fine art painting commissions, hung art exhibitions, entered contests, designed and painted furniture, drew plans and perspective drawings of government buildings and huge factories. He developed a fine reputation as a furniture designer, builder and finisher, a fine art painter and industrial designer. Dad said that his father was gainfully employed the entire Great Depression and the family of five never went hungry. Dad said there were a few slim dinners of perhaps a can or two of food, but they never went hungry, even though Leland Hyde worked solely as an artist. This example of success in following an artistic calling during the worst of times, kept Philip Hyde going in tough times later and gave him the faith and work ethic to become a full-time landscape photographer, a choice even Ansel Adams thought economically unsound for even the most talented photographer in the 1950s.

While the Hyde family was in Europe, a meeting and an exhibition that would change photography forever was taking place back in New York City. On their way home from Europe to San Francisco, the Hydes passed through New York City at about the same time that Ansel Adams traveled there for his first New York exhibition at the Delphic Studios. Philip Hyde and Ansel Adams did not cross paths until over a decade later, when they met at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1946. Philip Hyde first saw Ansel Adams’ prints at the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island just before the War. However, earlier in 1933, a meeting that would affect all of photography occurred when Ansel Adams came to New York on a pilgrimage to meet Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer whose life and work Ansel Adams most admired. Ansel Adams said that when he told Alfred Stieglitz of his concept of visualization, Alfred Stieglitz “responded with his explanation of creative photography.”

Ansel Adams’ definition of visualization became one of the cornerstones of the training in photography that Philip Hyde would participate in later. Ansel Adams wrote in Modern Photography magazine, “The photographer visualizes his conception of the subject as presented in the final print. He achieves the expression of his visualization through his technique—aesthetic, intellectual, and mechanical.”

Alfred Stieglitz’ replied to Ansel Adams’ statement on visualization with the same explanation he had given someone questioning the validity of art produced by a camera. A patron asked Alfred Stieglitz whether a “machine could be creative?” Alfred Stieglitz replied, “I have the desire to photograph. I go out with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically. I see the photograph in my mind’s eye and I compose and expose the negative. I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.”

This process as described by these two primary teachers of photography, turned out to be vaguely familiar and readily understandable by Philip Hyde a dozen years later. Perhaps this had to do with a similar process that he watched over and over throughout his upbringing and in extended duration and repetition, during his boyhood months in Paris, the World’s hub of Modern Art, and throughout his travels in the countryside of Europe, with his family, watching Leland Hyde paint the natural scene. Thus, in the early 1930s, while Alfred Stieglitz and Group f.64 transformed photography and the west coast tradition was born, Philip Hyde started his training in composition and seeing, and began forming his early feelings about wild places that became the heart of his life and work. Ultimately, all of these influences and others we will explore in this blog, helped shape landscape photography. What influences do you know of? What are your feelings and thoughts about the beginnings of straight photography?

References:
Interviews of Philip Hyde by David Leland Hyde 2002-2005
Seeing Straight: The F.64 Revolution in Photography by Mary Street Alinder, Therese Thau Heyman, and Naomi Rosenblum
Ansel Adams: A Biography by Mary Street Alinder
“Get the Picture” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Art Across the Ages DVD Series by Ori Z. Soltes, The Teaching Company

(Continued in the blog post, “Photography’s Golden Era 5.”)

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Philip Hyde Now Represented by One of the First Fine Art Photography Galleries

February 26th, 2010

New Representation of Philip Hyde by Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver, Colorado

Hal Gould In The Camera Obscura Gallery, 2002, by Kurt Edward Fishback.

For nearly 50 years, Hal Gould has operated showcases for fine art photography. In 1963, he founded the non-profit Colorado Photographic Art Center — one of the first venues in the world devoted exclusively to showing and promoting photography as a medium for fine art. In 1979, the center transformed into The Camera Obscura Gallery, today still in its original location at 13th Street and Bannock Street in Denver, Colorado.

Camera Obscura Gallery has since built a reputation for exhibiting masters such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Brett Weston, Andre Kertesz, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Edward S. Curtis, Sebastiao Salgado, Philippe Halsman, W. Eugene Smith and many others. Hal Gould’s collection at the gallery is one of the most diverse between the East Coast and West Coast of the United States. The collection on display at Camera Obscura contains some of the earliest photographs starting in 1839, with a large selection from the 1800s and early 1900s.

The Colorado Photographic Art Center and the Camera Obscura Gallery have held exhibitions of the work of many prominent western photographers, one of whom was Philip Hyde as part of a group show in the early 1970s. The Camera Obscura Gallery now has on display a 16X20 archival fine art digital print of Philip Hyde’s 1971 “Mt. Denali, Reflection Pond, Denali National Park, Alaska.” Philip Hyde’s artist statement, biography and other information is now listed under artists on the Camera Obscura Gallery website. The Camera Obscura Gallery also has a magnificent portfolio book of 8X10 archival fine art digital prints of 47 of Philip Hyde’s best photographs.

Hal Gould’s long experience in both commercial and fine art photography, and collecting, has helped Camera Obscura Gallery become a center for learning and viewing by visitors from all over the world. A large contingent of volunteers help keep Camera Obscura Gallery vibrant with new shows, and with publication of the Photography in the Fine Arts Newsletter authored by Hal and his associate, Loretta Young-Gautier. The newsletter is distributed by regular mail to over two thousand art lovers and collectors worldwide.

Hal Gould, a photographer and artist himself, trained as a portrait painter at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1940s. Inspired by the work of Alfred Stieglitz and Man Ray, he also studied photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Ray Vogue School of Photography. He then operated his own commercial studio for 25 years, photographing a in wide range of styles from portraits to architecture. Camera Obscura Gallery’s assistant director, Loretta Young-Gautier, is also a photographer and has worked with Hal Gould for 15 years as assistant curator, book-buyer and editor of the Photography in the Fine Arts Newsletter. She studied with several masters of Darkroom manipulation including multiple image master Jerry N. Uelsmann.

The Camera Obscura Gallery
1309 Bannock Street
Denver, Colorado   80204
303-623-4059

Open Tuesday–Saturday 10 AM to 6 PM. Sunday by appointment. Closed Mondays

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