Noah Purifoy In His Studio

Besides seeing art, I started THINKING about it, too. This began initially with my going to see the Watts Towers--a kind of urban folk art built by an immigrant worker named Simon Rodia over a period of 32 years on the small wedge of land he owned in the midst of sprawling LA. This in turn led to my meeting a Black artist named Noah Purifoy and to our having a series of conversations which made a strong impact on me. Eventually all this thought crystallized around an article I read in U.S. Camera written by David Vestal and entitled Recipe for Seeing. It made a distinct impression on me--so much so that I dissected it line by line, then interpolated these nascent thoughts of mine into it in the appropriate places, calling the resulting treatise Photography ad infinitum. The principles embodied in this amalgamation of ideas ultimately served as the foundation for my career as an artist.

Photography ad Infinitum

Bob, do you remember the article in U.S. Camera, "Recipe For Seeing" by David Vestal? Well, I reread it several times after getting your letter, and suddenly realized I had completely missed its point. I now find that it has much to say about the line along which I have tentatively been traveling, and there are several key phrases I want to discuss.

The vital ingredients of your photography are the things you see that you care about. They are your own complex reactions to your own personal and private experiences. You can't share them with people except by giving expression to them. You know instinctively, if you permit yourself to know, what you need, who you are, and what you must do. Photograph things you have strong or clear feelings about. Mean what you say. Work for your own satisfaction, not to please others. Working to please yourself is neither capricious or anti-social, it is a practical approach based on working with what you can know. You can't know what others feel anymore than you can live their lives for them. When you photograph people who are showing emotion, the feeling you work from is still your own--triggered by association with what they seem to be going through. You could be quite mistaken about them, and still express your own feelings accurately through the way you see and show their expressions.

In doing something creative, something expressive, Bob, you must do it with your whole being. There can be no secrets, nothing held back. When you press the shutter release you must say, this is me, this is what I believe, or else the result is only a sham having no involvement with the subject. It will only be the result of certain mechanical actions. Possibly this sounds unimportant, but I don't believe it can be taken lightly.

It is better to act on casual impulses than to carry out planned projects for which you have carefully figured out everything according to what you think you should feel. The problem people get into when they begin to follow  a system or theory instead of their own eyes and sensitivity is that they prevent anything really good from happening to them unless it fits the doctrine of their choice. 

I would carry this further and add to system and theory, pattern of life. Being creative demands a love of life, an involvement with people, a continuous wonderment at the differences in the world, and also a mind receptive to all forms of expression by the people, races, and things of that world. Above all, this means banishing the fear of life and of living from your consciousness. As long as you are afraid of people, of new ideas, and of the effects they might have on you, you cannot truly be experiencing life to its fullest and thus are severely limiting your creative abilities. Life can be such a beautiful evolving kaleidoscope of colors, faces, patterns, sounds and scenes if only you will allow yourself to become enmeshed in it. Push out, permit yourself to expand, to experience to the fullest.

Judson Powell, an artist from Watts, probably said it best one night: You have to take the fear out of your life. Once you do that, you really begin to live. I  wish that I could say it more directly, but I cannot. This is not something you can express verbally, it is an experience itself.

If you analyze, you will see that pictures are not ends in themselves, but only means to ends. More important is what you start from, the thing the picture is about: an experience that is alive for you, so fine or so awful that you are moved to do something about it. Art does not come first with wise artists; life does. Art is a way of knowing life and of telling about it, passing it on. The manufacture of pictures, in itself, means nothing. Living needs no justification, no motivation, no explaining. There it is: living is everything for us. Photography at its best is one good way of knowing that you are alive and making the most of it.

This is the TRUTH, baby, as best as it can be written. I know one man here in LA who is a living example of this last paragraph--Noah Purifoy. Noah and I have spent hours talking, discussing two things mostly: living and being. We were brought together by his art, but we seldom ever discuss it. That is just a front. It pays his bills and it keeps a constant influx of people through his life from whom he draws inspiration and ideas and to whom he tries to dispense his own particular recipe for living. However, most people will never have the benefit of communicating with this man and thus they will never know why their lives are so empty and his so full.    (to be continued...)

Sculpture of the 60's

In Los Angeles I began to take a serious look at what was happening in art. In college my best friend Roger and I had gone to Washington, DC, to see the Mona Lisa which was touring America. I did not get much from my brief encounter with that masterpiece, but the tour through the National Gallery itself was an eye-opener. It was the first time I had beheld  great art and I was astounded, both at what I saw and at what I felt. In LA I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but the art there was different. It wasn't so much about Europe and all that Old Master stuff. It was more about surface and less about meaning--much like LA itself. These pictures are from a then current exhibit: Sculpture of the 60's. 

Life In LA

LA wasn't all freeways and billboards, however. There were also periods spent sampling city life. I found myself living on Alvarado Street just across the street from MacArthur Park, a sprawling urban park that was a welcome escape from the rigors of the freeway. Watching these older men playing chess was definitely a change of pace from charging along at highway speeds. I also went down to San Juan Capistrano where I observed two young boys who were enthralled not with swallows (who hadn't arrived yet), but with this white dove.

Got My Eye On You

I quickly settled into life in LA and life in LA revolved around its Freeways. I spent hours driving all over them because most of my jobs were Freeway oriented. Whether it was doing store inventories, setting up record display racks, selling photo coupons, you name it, they all entailed driving miles and miles on LA Freeways. This particular billboard caught my attention because it was very Pop and very LA. Girls in Los Angeles were a different breed from the demure women I had known in the South, and this oversized image on a billboard seemed to capture their Hollywood Spirit quite well.

Goin' To LA

I stayed around Monterey for several weeks. Though his family was wealthy, Jeremy worked as a carpenter with a few independent contractors in the area. He got me a couple of jobs as a "helper" where he was working, but I really couldn't support myself that way. I even briefly entertained the idea of approaching Ansel Adams--who lived in a nearby  area known as the Highlands--to beg him to take me on as an apprentice, but I quickly scotched the idea. I was way too insecure about photography to do such a thing. Instead, in early February I drove south to Los Angeles. There I found it easy to get short term jobs which allowed me to earn enough money to live without having to make a serious commitment to anything.

Big Sur and Monterey

 Big Sur is probably the most beautiful stretch of the long California coast. It first received national attention in the 1960's through the efforts of the Sierra Club, a California conservation group which was the first well-known group of its type in the US. But it received even more popular attention as the result of a 1965 movie, The Sandpiper, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was set there and featured beautiful aerial scenes along the coast accompanied by the haunting refrains of the pop song The Shadow of Your Smile. This was my version of its beauty.

Probably one of the most unflattering pictures I have ever taken. They all look as though they have just eaten something that didn't agree with them. This scene was at Jeremy's house, a small three room affair that was located just outside Monterey on what was known as Jack's Peak. Jeremy is on the left, the woman in the middle is Diana, his fiance, and the guy on the right is a friend of theirs named Grant. The weather was warm and sunny and we were having breakfast outdoors on a small patio.

Downtown Monterey, January, 1967

Within weeks of my arrival, the Monterey of John Steinbeck (a la Cannery Row) fell victim to Urban Renewal. Shoe Shine, along with a bunch of other funky buildings and  seedy bars, quickly disappeared to be replaced by fancy new buildings that were more in keeping with the new California Style. Poor old John S. must have rolled in his grave as Cannery Row became the home of boutiques, salads, finger foods and $4 espressos.

Life After College

  In 1965 I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a Bachelor's degree in Latin American  History. Initially I thought to continue my Latin American studies, but my experience in graduate school proved abortive: I withdrew before they had the chance to flunk me out! I floundered around for the rest of the year (1966), then fate intervened. During the Christmas Holidays, an aunt and uncle had a party at their house and one of the attendees was a young man whose parents were business partners with my uncle in some real estate development. They were British and their son Jeremy was a bit of a maverick whom they had packed off to the University of Colorado in Boulder. From there he had run off to California--more specifically to the Monterey peninsula--and now Jeremy was home for the holidays. He brought with him this fabulous book titled Not Man Apart which was an early Sierra Club book full of striking photographs of the Big Sur coast done by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and the like.

  "This is where I live," Jeremy said casually as I perused the book. The pictures were mouthwateringly beautiful. "You should come out and visit some time." Though we exchanged phone numbers, I doubt he expected me to be calling him from Monterey's local Sambo's restaurant in a few weeks asking for directions to his house, but nevertheless here I was. My adventure was about to begin. 

More Scenes From Mexico

On Sunday in Taxco, people went to church in the morning and then to market.

The town of Taxco was built on the side of mountain west of Mexico City and was very picturesque with its winding cobblestone streets flanked by white buildings topped with terra cotta tile roofs and covered with bougainvillaea vines. It was an old silver mining region that was noted for its style of jewelry which was sold everywhere.

Lastly, along with some friends  from the college, I  set off to spend the weekend in the remote silver mining town of Taxco. On Sunday we ventured into the market which was a warren of covered stalls selling food, clothing, and everything in between. One can't say that Mexico is not colorful!

On a trip to the nearby city of Cuernavaca, I discovered this photographer who had set up his prop horses in the Plaza for the purpose of making pictures of children who had come to town for a weekend treat.

 It was interesting to be in a country where Socialist and Marxist themes were openly displayed--often propagated by the government itself. This picture shows part of a complex mural done by the famous muralist Diego Rivera. It is in the National Palace, a building which dates from colonial times and occupies an area that was originally the center of the Aztec empire. In it Rivera depicts the historical struggles of the indigenous Mexican people throughout the country to overcome the oppression of their European lords and masters.

Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe - Mexico City

One of the most revered religious shrines in Mexico is the one dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 1531 the Virgin Mother of Jesus appeared before a Mexican peasant out in his field. More importantly, when he recovered from this encounter he discovered that the Virgin had left an imprint of herself on his tilma--a coarse cloak worn by peasants of the time. This was eventually accepted by the Catholic Church as a true and miraculous appearance by the Virgin Mother and this Cathedral houses the original cloak. Today it is the object of pilgrimages and veneration by people from throughout Latin America.

When walking in Chapultepec Park I encountered these boys who, like young boys everywhere, were only too eager to mug for my camera. Ironically, in the 1800's Chapultepec was the site of a Military Academy which was perched on top of this strategic hill in the midst of the Mexican Capital. In Mexico today it is remembered for the attack made by General Pershing and the United States Army towards the end of the Mexican War when they stormed this bastion and killed the majority of its defenders who were largely the young cadets enrolled at the academy.

Besides attending the Charreada, I also went to a bullfight in which one of my instructors at the University was performing. This was some sort of charity event (though I guess it wasn't very charitable for the bull!). At any rate, it had a certain amount of fanfare and certainly gave one a taste for what a real bullfight might be like. The bulls were rather small and at least one of the "kills" was a butchery, but this man did perform with a certain flare.

The picture below was the scene looking east from the Latino Tower which was the city's tallest building--something like the Empire State Building in New York. Of course you can't go to Mexico without seeing some local color and the Mexican  Charreada above was one such event. 

Mexico City itself was a beautiful cosmopolitan city unlike anything I had seen before. Yet in its midst were the remains of an ancient Aztec culture overlaid with the colonial buildings of its Spanish conquerors. It was a very mystical encounter. At that time it had a population of 4 million and was not being strangled by pollution like in modern times, so I had a fabulous time roaming and photographing.

National University, Mexico City, 1964

The Library was world famous for its mosaic walls covered with historic cultural symbols and was certainly one of the most recognizable buildings on the campus of the National University.

My initial reason for getting a camera was because I was going to Mexico City to attend the National University there as part of my college education. I was studying Latin American History and felt that if I were going to study Latin America, I should go see part of the region first hand. So in the summer of 1964 I set off for Mexico City.

From this humble beginning, I have spent the past 46 years exploring the exciting and ever-changing realm of photography. My career as a photographer coincided with the widespread availability of single lens reflex (SLR) cameras in the 1960's. I was starting my junior year of college (Fall, 1963) when Pentax introduced the H1a model which was a fully operational SLR at a budget price. When I first tried it out in the store, I was enthralled as I watched the image go in and out of focus in the camera's viewfinder while I focused the lens. Even though I knew little about photography, for the next six years I traveled and took a lot pictures wherever I went.

 Eventually I concentrated on three films: Kodachrome II (later 25), Ektachrome, and the original Agfachrome CT-18 which, like Kodachrome, was a proprietary process film that had to be sent to Agfa for processing. It was my understanding that these films were the most stable form of color photography and therefore images made with them would be the most likely to survive over time. This proved to be true and today nearly all my transparencies which have not been lost, strayed, or destroyed retain much of their original color.

My first photograph - Durham, NC, 1963