Customer Reviews

Pirkle Jones: California Photographs, 1935-1982

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Pirkle Jones is a photographer who has been photographing in California for most of his career. At one time he was a personal assistant to Ansel Adams in the 1950's and a close friend of Edward Weston as well. But aside from the traditional West Coast Style of Black and White Photography he was introduced to by working for and knowing some of this countries greatest photographers, Pirkle is a man of his convictions and he passionately pursued issues of his time with dignity and beauty. Whether he followed the tireless efforts of the migrant worker or The Black Panthers cry against a system of injustice , or the more optimistic dreamings of the Gate 5 series (in the Sausalito Marina, Marin County, CA) where he photographed the California House Boat Movement and lifestyle: each series has made with the same passion and brilliantly sensitive technique so long associated with the Western Coast Photographic ethic.

But Mr. Jones not only pursued these movements but was, himself, a photographer of the land and its many components that are seen less on a grand scale and more from a "spiritual" outpouring of his love for the nuances of life found in the details of the land and its fleeting essence.

While this book does not focus on all aspects of his career, it instead choose to overview works of striking contrast. Documentary essays that faced the troubles and radical changes of a unique and vigorious time in America and then the quiet and serene aspects of the natural world within Mr. Jones conscioueness and within the unspoiled landscapes of a State whose incredible beauty will never be again. Pirkle's work has been presented in such a brilliant fashion that only Mr. Jones and Aperture could have collaborated on this quintensential 50th Anniversary Publication of a Photographer, a philosopher, and a gentle man that we all need to learn from via his work.

Pirkle Jones is a photographer whose strength and convictions were elegantly made for the time in which they occured and for the furture remembrances of what living in his vibrant times must have been like.

This book is a testament that future generations will NEED to look back at. It shows a time when America was at its strongest. When its vigor and struggle to remain a place of freedom and Pirkle was not just there taking pictures, he was an integral part of this time, MAKING photographs.

This is a book every serious photographer, philosopher, historian, and a lover of the human condition must own.


***An addition to my review of "Pirkle Jones: California Photographer, 1935 to 1982.

"I have recently called up this book on Amazon to discover that there are used copies selling for $7.75. Considering the over abundance of "fine art photographers" now trying to "make it" it actually comes as no surprise (having been a Professor of Photography for 32 years) that there is an incredible lack of knowledge or even curiosity of and about the masters of photography in our past such as Pirkle Jones. I am speaking of those who started their work when it was not fashionable 50-60 years ago and photography was barely thought of as "art" - Despite Ansel Adams on-going struggle (first sparked as an art by Alfred Steiglitz - the father of Modern Art in America and of photography's artistic abilities) for the artworld to take photography seriously as an art form. Such an attitude has really been embraced only on such a scale as today within the last 12-15 years. And in general most people still only know of Ansel Adams as a name they recognize as a photographer in the arts because he was on Time Magazine's cover.

What I find so disheartening is the lack of understanding that so many of the recently tabulated Google number of Fine Art photographers (at over 22 million on the Internet alone) know so little about photographers, styles, directions, issues, concerns, and contributions that a handful of passionate and dedicated Master's of Photography (aside from Adams)have made prior to 1990, have not choosen to credit Mr. Jones with.

Now to see that these brilliant contributions to the social and environmental growth and destruction of California and the west as photographed by Mr. Jones (Ansel Adams Assistant in the late 1950's) are being insulted by ending up in the Amazon used catagory of book sales at this price is astounding and embarassing to all who would call themselves Fine Art Photographers.

This is an extremely well made and printed Aperture publication of a photographer, still exhibiting and lecturing in his late 80's. And this $7.75 price of a book that I would still pay the original price for of $45 (as they are out of print) for a new copy is being cast aside by the speed of a culture that only sees new work and photographers on the "scene" as important and "unique," that the work which is the foundation of all contemporary work today made by men and women like Pirkle Jones 40-60 years ago, is so ignored.

Look into your past at the visual work made by those who saw the potential of vision and worked in their medium because of an all consumming love and passion for their subjects and the simple yet unsurpassed materials they used and not for a calculating plan to make work mainly for the purpose of fame or fortune and what you desire WILL come to you, if you have anything to say.