The Early Photographers

SEPTEMBER 2019

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ANSEL ADAMS, JOSEF MUENCH, R AY M ANLEY, CHUCK ABBOTT, ESTHER HENDERSON ... THE EARLY PHOTOGRAPHERS September 2019 2 EDITOR’S LETTER 14 THE EARLY PHOTOGRAPHERS GET MORE ONLINE Arizona Highways has been around since 1925, www.arizonahighways.com 4 LETTERS but it didn’t make much noise until it started showcasing the work of Esther Henderson and /azhighways 6 BEST PICTURE 2019 Josef Muench. They were the earliest of the early photographers, and they launched an era that @arizonahighways If you’ve been to our website, or if you follow us on ran through the mid-1950s, when David Muench, Instagram, this won’t come as any surprise. If you Josef’s son, set the bar for all who followed. haven’t, or you don’t, the suspense is over. After look- By Robert Stieve ing at thousands of entries in our annual photo con- Photographs by the Early Photographers test, we have a winner. Her name is Sara Wittenberger of Gold Canyon, Arizona, and her shot of Mount Ord is ... well, you can see for yourself. The runners-up are 22 ESTHER HENDERSON & CHUCK ABBOTT pretty impressive, too. By Matt Jaffe Edited by Jeff Kida and Keith Whitney 36 RAY MANLEY By David Leighton 46 JOSEF MUENCH By Kelly Vaughn 56 MARICOPA POINT By Esther Henderson

Ray Manley’s Windmill Silhouette — Desert Sunset, a photo made on an old homestead east of Tucson, was featured in the December 1964 issue of Arizona Highways. FRONT COVER: “Monument Valley is a blend of a beautiful land and a beautiful people,” Allen C. Reed wrote in our April 1956 issue, which featured Reed’s shot of a Navajo woman on horseback. BACK COVER: Navajo shepherds tend their goats on a Monument Valley sand dune, as photographed by Esther Henderson in the mid-1950s. Arizona Historical Society

www.arizonahighways.com 1 editor’s LETTER

“No instrument so faithfully records our lives and Norman Wallace. Another pioneer was Hubert prospects, but how to reach them?” A. Lowman, who made his debut in July 1942. He went on to discuss the pros and the land we live in as the camera. Through the printed He grew up in Kansas City, but as soon as he cons of having an agent. Like most SEPTEMBER 2019 VOL. 95 NO. 9 was old enough to buy a car, he started making contributors, then and now, he chose page and the reproduction of the photograph the whole 800-543-5432 road trips to Arizona. “After a particularly suc- to skip the middleman. “While there www.arizonahighways.com world is brought into our living room. The most remote cessful trip in 1941,” he wrote, “I dared for the are notable exceptions, many freelanc- GIFT SHOP: 602-712-2200 first time to submit some of my stuff to several ers, including myself, feel they are places become as familiar as our backyards.” publications. I was overjoyed when I won the better off dealing direct with their PUBLISHER Kelly Mero — RAYMOND CARLSON annual cover contest from Desert magazine, the customers.” Ray Manley was one of the EDITOR Robert Stieve

prize shot of Betatakin ruin being published on exceptions. SENIOR EDITOR/ the June 1942 cover. Then I was delirious indeed “There are two courses open to the BOOKS EDITOR Kelly Vaughn ack sent Jeff an email. when I saw myself on the cover of Arizona High- would-be professional,” he wrote. “To MANAGING EDITOR Noah Austin “You’ve gotta talk Robert into this. These little guys are being reintro- ways the following month, with several pages submit direct to the magazines and ASSOCIATE EDITOR/ VIDEO EDITOR Ameema Ahmed duced in farming areas. They’re nature’s natural insecticide. I have a col- inside, as well.” other markets on approval, or to turn PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Jeff Kida lection of images, should Roberto have interest.” The cover shot for us featured the Grand Can- his material over to an agent, who usu- J July 1942, photograph by Hubert A. Lowman CREATIVE DIRECTOR Barbara Glynn Denney When Jack Dykinga casually mentions a “collection of images,” it’s like Bob yon, and the story inside was about the North ally charges about forty percent of the ART DIRECTOR Keith Whitney Dylan saying: “Oh, hey, I’ve written another song. I call it Blowin’ in the Wind.” Rim. After that, the new guy became a regular. gross. This fee sounds like a lot, but it will ensure more sales and usually at a MAP DESIGNER Kevin Kibsey Another song. Another collection. “In these pages, quite often in the past, has the better price than the inexperienced individual can command for himself.” PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Michael Bianchi I think Jack could pitch us a portfolio of papier-mâché pinecones and we’d name Hubert A. Lowman appeared,” Editor The strategy seemed to work. Among other things, his agent was able to DIRECTOR OF SALES send him a contract. Not because of the Pulitzer that sits on his mantel. But Raymond Carlson wrote in February 1954. “He repurpose a lot of Mr. Manley’s images. One was a photograph titled Land AND MARKETING Karen Farugia because of the way he approaches a subject. “What sets Jack apart is that he’s has been one of our faithful contributors. We are Without Beginning or End, which featured a Navajo couple named Willie and WEBMASTER Victoria Snow

always looking for a narrative,” says Photo Editor Jeff Kida. “He tells stories pleased herein to present a folio of his pictures Happy Cly, who rode their horses more than 40 miles to get to the photo shoot. CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Nicole Bowman

with his images. Because of that, there’s an added layer of interest to his work.” and an article in which he tells of the trials and “After it appeared in Arizona Highways in December 1954,” Mr. Manley DIRECTOR OF FINANCE Matthew Bailey He’s also a master of lighting and composition. He understands the tribulations of a photographer, particularly one wrote, “my agent placed it with Trans World Airlines for use on a scenic OPERATIONS/ IT MANAGER Cindy Bormanis balance between art and technology. And he studies his subjects the way whose camera is his tool of trade and with which calendar. Then, on the strength of the Arizona Highways display, National Geo- Galileo studied Orion and the Pleiades. No one does it better than Jack. Nev- he has been able to make a living for himself and graphic bought a similar view taken the same day. This picture will continue ertheless, as a freelancer, he still follows a protocol that goes back to the ear- his family. He has no studio. The whole West is to have a market value for years to come, after the provisions of the ‘first CORPORATE OR TRADE SALES 602-712-2018 liest days of this magazine. Thus, the email to Jeff. He was pitching an idea his studio. Interpreting its beauty is, for him, a rights’ sales have been fulfilled.” SPONSORSHIP SALES about burrowing owls. business and a pleasure. We don’t know of a He had some thoughts on dealing with editors, too. “Just keep in mind REPRESENTATION On Media Publications There are two ways we work with photographers: stock calls and story nicer way to make a living. If you aspire to make that the editor who examines your transparencies will not be very interested Deidra Viberg 602-323-9701 assignments. The difference is simple. Story assignments are made with your living taking pictures, we think you might in how long it took to get the picture, or the tribulations you suffered for the individuals; stock calls go out to a pool of photographers. be interested in his ‘confessions of a freelancer.’ ” shot, or what make of camera you used, or how much you paid for the film. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [email protected] We’re doing a portfolio on fall color. We’re looking for verticals and horizontals. Turns out, it wasn’t any easier in the early The result and its application to his plans are alone significant to him.” 2039 W. Lewis Avenue Subject material can cover all parts of the state. We’d love to see anything you’ve shot years. “A file bulging with presentable material True. But it was Chuck Abbott, another early photographer, who offered Phoenix, AZ 85009 recently. That’s a stock call. They work best with general subjects — autumn will not earn a freelancer a dime unless he can what might be the best advice. “The would-be photographer,” he wrote,

leaves, red rocks, waterfalls, saguaros, sunsets. Story assignments usually find customers,” Mr. Lowman wrote. “Newspa- “should start by taking the photographer’s oath. Is there one? Not that I know GOVERNOR Douglas A. Ducey

have a tighter focus, such as Jack’s burrowing owls. pers, magazines, manufacturers of calendars and of, but if there were, it should go something like this: ‘From this day forward DIRECTOR, Although we get a lot of queries, only a handful make it into the magazine. postcards, publicity organizations, advertising I hereby do swear that I shall arise when all others are sleeping. I shall dash DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION John S. Halikowski Most of our assignments are based on stories that we come up with. And agencies, printers and publishers ... all are logical from my warm house without flinching and I shall drive miles before sun- who we choose to shoot them depends on the subject. If it’s rise. I shall be ready to shoot at sunup, and if the scene is not best rendered Arizona Highways® (ISSN 0004-1521) is published a story about the backcountry, we might call Dawn Kish, at this time, I shall return home unperturbed. I shall tramp the mountains in monthly by the Arizona Department of Transportation. Subscription price: $24 a year in the U.S., $44 outside John Burcham or Bill Hatcher. If it’s a story about a cowboy, chilblain weather and I shall stagger over the desert in midsummer. I shall the U.S. Single copy: $4.99 U.S. Call 800-543-5432. UP- we’ll probably call Scott Baxter. For food, Paul Markow. do without water because I shall not be able to carry a canteen in addition DATED PRIVACY POLICY: Our privacy policy has been updated to reflect the new changes in data protection Photographers tend to have a beat, and that helps us zero to my other equipment. I shall inform my wife of my absence from dinner laws, including the EU’s General Data Protection Regu- in. Sometimes, though, we’re looking for a new perspective, and I shall return home after a glorious sunset. The next day when I have lations. To read our updated privacy policy, go to www .arizonahighways.com/privacy-policy. Subscription corre so we take a chance. Adam Schallau, Joel Hazelton, Jessica developed the results of my labors, I shall maintain equanimity of soul and spondence and change of address information: Arizona Morgan ... they’re among the talented newcomers who are expression when I find the results far short of my expectations. I shall not Highways, P.O. Box 8521, Big Sandy, TX 75755-8521. Peri odical postage paid at Phoenix, AZ, and at additional now in the rotation, getting both stock calls and story assign- browbeat my models. I shall not brag to my friends. Yea, verily will I share mailing office. Canada Post international publications mail product (Canadian distribution) sales agreement ments. They’re frequent contributors. But not this month. the secret of my locations with my competitors.’ ” No. 40732015. Send returns to Quad/Graphics, P.O. Box Everything inside is from a fellowship of pioneers we call He was being facetious about the secret locations. Photographers are big 456, Niagara Falls ON L2E 6V2. Postmaster: Send address changes to Arizona Highways, P.O. Box 8521, Big “the early photographers.” on covering their tracks — like cattle rustlers and the inventors of Coke. We Sandy, TX 75755-8521. Copyright © 2019 by the Arizona Many of their names will be familiar: Chuck Abbott, do, however, know where Jack Dykinga’s burrowing owls live. In another Department of Transportation. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The magazine Ansel Adams, Bob Bradshaw, Carlos Elmer, Laura Gilpin, email to Jeff, he let us in on the secret. He also shared his collection of does not accept and is not responsible for unsolicited Barry Goldwater, Esther Henderson, Charles W. Herbert, images. Five minutes later, we bought the story. Of course we did. mater ials. Ray Manley, Jerry McLain, Herb McLaughlin, David Muench, ROBERT STIEVE, EDITOR PRODUCED IN THE USA Josef Muench, Tad Nichols, Willis Peterson, Allen C. Reed, Land Without Beginning or End by Ray Manley, December 1954 Follow me on Instagram: @arizonahighways

2 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 3 LETTERS [email protected]

11 million people liked this image on Instagram. awrence Cheek said he wanted to write an article on architecture, “hopefully better” than he did 35 years ago. [Not really, but it did get a lot of love, so we made it into a poster.] L He certainly achieved that goal! I know this not because DIFFERENT BY I researched his previous articles — although his use of the DESIGN People visit Arizona from around the world. Usually, it’s for the things that Mother Nature has built — Sedona, the term “Taco Deco” made me want to — but because noth- Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. But there are some man-made structures worth a look, too. Some of them are well known — such as Mission San Xavier del Bac and Taliesin West — ing could be better written than his two recent articles while others are not. All, however, are worthy of contemplation. BY LAWRENCE W. CHEEK [Spanish Accent and Different by Design, July 2019]. This is PHOTOGRAPHS BY KERRICK JAMES word crafting at its finest. His view of architectural trends is clear and concise, and his way of describing them is a joy to read. If he builds sailboats as perfectly as he writes, this man is turning out superbly crafted masterpieces! Jean Hutton, Scottsdale, Arizona

36 JULY 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 37

July 2019

wish to applaud you for your thought- zine, but your magazine is outstanding outside of Coolidge. I know the bakery ful response to the reader unhappy and I wanted to tell you how much my you featured [Mediterra Bakehouse]. We I about restaurant information [Letters friends here in the U.S. and around the also went to Oracle and picked bellotas to the Editor, July 2019]. I agree with your world enjoy your magazine. I person- [An Easy Nut to Crack]. They’re so good. editorial decision, and one must always ally have enjoyed Arizona Highways for a And the chiltepines [Great Balls of Fire] ... remember it’s impossible to please few years and very much look forward boy, they are hot. Grandpa John Aguirre 100 percent of the people 100 percent to receiving my issue every month. used to say: “If you eat chiltepines, you’ll of the time. I have appreciation for the Then I send those issues to my friends grow hair on your toenails.” I am 85 change in the magazine since I was a in Australia, France, Switzerland, years young, still eating chiltepines and child reading my aunt’s copies. I love Denmark, Poland and Russia. checking my toes. restaurant information, especially as a John H. Henning Jr., Bullhead City, Arizona Ruth Balli, Surprise, Arizona traveler from Washington who loves dis- covering small mom-and-pop eateries. he June 2019 issue of Arizona Highways ust after my graduation from Purdue Karen Johnson, Renton, Washington shows a photograph on page 48 that’s University, my friend Harald and I T described as “members of the con- J drove through Arizona on our way to greatly enjoy both reading and look- struction team” of the Gallery in the California. I was so impressed by the ing at Arizona Highways each month. Sun. Since there’s no identification of landscape and scenery that I hoped I I’ve learned a great deal about places the people in the picture other than Ted to see more of Arizona. Thirty-five I’ve been and places I’d like to go. The DeGrazia, I’d like to fill in a couple of years later, I rented a vacation condo recent issue on Arizona architecture blanks of some of the people I remem- in Scottsdale. Now, I am an owner of is no exception. But I was sorely dis- ber. Left to right are Howard Torkelson, a condo in Fountain Hills, and I enjoy appointed when I read the essay by construction supervisor; Ted DeGrazia, every day I can spend in Arizona. Thank Lawrence Cheek [Spanish Accent, July artist; and Marcos Romero, construc- you for an exceptionally good magazine. 2019]. In an article by an architectural tion worker. The next four individuals I always anxiously await the new issue. critic in an issue devoted to architec- I do not remember, but the last two are The June 2019 issue, with all the inter- ture, while waxing rhapsodic about the Pinto (I only remember his nickname) esting paintings, is fantastic. However,

Tlaquepaque center in Sedona, nary a and myself, Fred Brown, construc- I miss something in your magazine. ©2019 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS mention was made about Design Group tion worker. The picture was taken by Arizona has so many special towns with Architects, the firm responsible for the Tucson photographer Dick Fontaine. I’d a lot of history, architecture, beautiful MONUMENT VALLEY design and execution of the project. also like to mention Juan Javier, who streetscapes and interesting people. I A PHOTOGRAPH FROM APRIL 1956, TITLED EAR OF THE WIND ARCH, BY ALLEN C. REED.

Design Group has been an integral part also worked on the team but did not will very much appreciate seeing future –THE– ARIZONA HIGHWAYS of the Sedona community fabric for over make the picture. articles covering these towns. LLECTION 30 years. Omitting mention of them in Fred Brown, Bisbee, Arizona Ola Thorsnes, Oslo, Norway this article is a disservice, in my view. Paul Svrcek, Vashon Island, Washington ave you ever been in church and felt contact us If you have thoughts or com- like the pastor is talking directly to ments about anything in Arizona Highways, we’d ince I will be 86 in September and H you? Your April 2019 issue was just love to hear from you. We can be reached at editor@ Was $19.99 Now $17.99 (plus shipping and handling) #ARMVP9 arizonahighways.com, or by mail at 2039 W. Lewis have had numerous strokes, I don’t like that. I went to school from first Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009. For more information, Order online at www.shoparizonahighways.com or call 800-543-5432. Use promo code P9J5MP at checkout. Offer expires September 30, 2019. S often write to the editor of a maga- grade to eighth grade at Kenilworth, just visit www.arizonahighways.com.

4 SEPTEMBER 2019 If you’ve been to our website, or if you follow us on Instagram, this won’t come as any surprise. If you haven’t, or you don’t, the suspense is over. After looking at thousands of entries in our annual photo contest, we have a winner. Her name is Sara Wittenberger of Gold Canyon, Arizona, and her shot of Mount Ord BEST PICTURE 2019 is ... well, you can see for yourself. The runners-up are pretty impressive, too. EDITED BY JEFF KIDA AND KEITH WHITNEY

GRAND PRIZE HIGH DESERT CHRISTMAS SARA WITTENBERGER Mount Ord, northeast of the Phoenix area, offers a spectacular and snowy view of a Christmas Day sunset. “The first thing that grabs me is the light and how it interacts with the landscape and the clouds,” says Arizona Highways Photo Editor Jeff Kida. “The angle of the light creates contrasting textures in the jagged rocks and the soft clouds, and the warm tones of the rocks contrast with the cooler tones of the clouds and the snow. I also like how Sara placed the horizon high in the frame, then used the foreground to lead the viewer to the payoff, the sun itself.”

Nikon D610, 1/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 14 mm lens

6 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 7 SECOND PLACE GREAT EGRETS IN THE MIST TAM RYAN Mist cloaks four great egrets at the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert. “I like foggy scenes, probably because we don’t see too many in Arizona,” Kida says. “Tam cropped this to take

away any extraneous elements, so all you see THIRD PLACE are the birds and their forms. And one of the birds is in a slightly different stance, which really REFLECTIONS AT THE LAKE helps make this shot special. It’s a great image TOM G. COREY that’s easy to look at, and she hung in there on a murky day when a lot of photographers would “Really, this is an image about form,” Kida says of this have called it quits.” photo of a lake in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. “The reflection of the clouds in the calm water Nikon D7100, 1/640 sec, f/9, ISO 1250, 600 mm lens of the lake is what dominates the shot, and I like the thin layer of fog that divides the reflection from the surround- ing landscape. It’s a slightly otherworldly view, and the rock in the foreground acts as an anchor — a starting-off place from which the viewer’s eye can move through everything else.”

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 1/100 sec, f/18, ISO 2000, 34 mm lens

8 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 9 HONORABLE MENTION HONORABLE MENTION AGAVE SUNRISE ZEBRA-TAILED LIZARDS MICHAEL WILSON DISPLAYING An immaculate agave con- FRANK STAUB trasts with the red rocks of Zebra-tailed lizards face off in the Sonoran the Sedona area at sun- Desert near Tucson. “Everyone who rise. “There’s an interesting looked at this photo cracked up,” Kida juxtaposition between the says. “So often, still photos are about agave and the sunrise,” Kida frozen moments, and this is one of those. says, “and they’re offset by Additionally, the soft light accentuates the a triangular peak in the upper details of the lizards and the colors of their right, so there are a number of scales.” elements that move your eye Nikon D70, 1/640 sec, f/5.6, aperture priority, around. It’s about shape, tex- 200 mm lens ture and a little bit of color.”

Nikon D750, 1/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 20 mm lens

HONORABLE MENTION SIBLING RIVALRY JEFFRY SCOTT “I don’t know how long Jeffry had to wait for this shot, but it’s a wonderful moment,” Kida says of this raccoon tussle at Tucson’s Sweetwater Wetlands. “A lot of wildlife photos can be pretty static, but if you sit with something long enough, good things can happen. He also used a long enough lens to avoid disrupting the activity.”

Sony ILCE-7M3, 1/1600 sec, f/6.3, ISO 12800, 380 mm lens

HONORABLE MENTION Coyote pups take up researched the image or there’s a certain amount of residence in drain open- was just walking by, but you whimsy to it.” ings at a Tucson golf course. couldn’t plan something HONORABLE MENTION COYOTE PUPS Canon EOS 6D, 1/800 sec, f/8, leslie leathers “It’s just a great catch,” Kida like this. It’s nature meet- ISO 320, 300 mm lens MIRAGE says. “I don’t know if Leslie ing an urban structure, and C. EDWARD BRICE Willcox Playa, a dry lake in Southeastern Arizona, offers a mountain view at sunset. “Sometimes, photographers get caught up in filling the frame with as much material as we can,” Kida says, “but there’s a beautiful simplicity to this photo. It’s reminiscent of the work of the painter May- nard Dixon, to whom some of us on staff refer when we talk about this shot.”

Sony ILCE-6300, 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 200, 103 mm lens

10 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 11 FOCUS ON NATURE 2019 Adventures in Nature Student Photo Contest TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT. Every month, we showcase the most talented photographers in the world. Now it’s your turn to join the ranks. Enter your favorite photo in the 2020 Arizona Highways Photography Contest. You could win an Arizona Highways Photo Workshop valued at $2,500 or additional prizes.

Our contest is open to amateur and professional photographers. All photos must be made in Arizona and fit into the category of Landscape, Wildlife or Macro (close-up). For details, visit www.arizonahighways.com.

FIRST PLACE KILLDEER Sean stubben A killdeer is reflected in the marshy water to make this shot,” Kida says. “More than of the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch anything, that’s what I like about this shot. in Gilbert. This photo took the top prize in Most people have a tendency to shoot things this year’s Adventures in Nature Student from their own eye level, so a different angle Photo Contest, which was sponsored by The makes a big difference: It provides not only Nature Conservancy, Cox Communications a different perspective, but also an interest- and Arizona Highways; Arizona students ages ing reflection.” 13 to 18 were eligible to enter. “Sean was liter- Nikon D610, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 160, ally lying in the dirt, at eye level with the bird, 500 mm lens JEFF KIDA JEFF

12 SEPTEMBER 2019 THE EARLY PHOTOGRAPHERS

Arizona Highways has been around since 1925, but it didn’t make much noise until it started showcasing the work of Esther Henderson and Josef Muench. They were the earliest of the early photographers, and they launched an era that ran through the mid-1950s, when David Muench, Josef’s son, set the bar for all who followed.

BY ROBERT STIEVE PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE EARLY PHOTOGRAPHERS

LEFT: Bob Bradshaw, pictured in front of his Sedona photo shop in the 1950s, was among the early contributors who turned Arizona Highways into a showcase for photography. Courtesy of the Bradshaw Family

ABOVE: Snow blankets Red Rock Crossing beneath Sedona’s Cathedral Rock in a Bradshaw photo.

14 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 15 “There’s such power in the landscape in Arizona. And Arizona Highways has held on for a long time. It’s an honor to have some of my best work in the magazine, especially on subjects that haven’t been done that much, and that’s why I come back to the magazine. I want it to hold up through time.”

— DAVID MUENCH, DECEMBER 2015

n television, the big change began with Bonanza — 60 years ago this month. It wasn’t the first color broadcast, that distinction goes to the Tournament of Roses Parade, but to Baby Boomers and their parents, the Idebut of the feel-good Western on September 12, 1959, marked the transition from the Paleozoic era of black and white television to an age when the vivid blue of Lake Tahoe and the brilliant green of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest could be splashed into living rooms around the world. Our bonanza began two decades earlier. In 1938. Before that, Arizona Highways was a trade journal aimed at road engineers and intrepid travelers trying to get from Point A to Point B. Along with mileage charts, maps and reports on road conditions, the pages included ads for road graders, asphalt paint and corrugated culverts. Reading it was like watching ink dry. Until Raymond Carlson came along. He changed everything. The first thing to go was the tedious jargon, which was replaced by evocative travelogues. Then, in July 1938, Mr. Carlson added some pizazz. “How can we,” he wrote, “through the medium of black and white, paint a picture of the gold in an Arizona sunset, portray the blue of an Arizona sky, tell the fiery red and green of an Arizona desert in bloom? We therefore resort to color photography in this issue’s cover page to faithfully portray one colorful portion of the state.” It was a shot of lower Oak Creek Canyon by Norman G. Wallace — the first- ever color photograph in the magazine — and Mr. Carlson liked what he saw: “The faithful photographer has caught the deep red of the cliffs, the purple hue of the mountains in the background, the extravagance and richness of one of capricious Nature’s finest paintings in the state.” To solicit even more photography, Mr. Carlson launched our first-ever amateur photo contest. The prize money was $15, $10 and $5, which was considered a lot of money in the late 1930s. It was the infancy of our renowned archive, which by 1939 included the work of Esther Henderson, Barry Goldwa- ter and Josef Muench. They were the earliest of the early photographers. As the 1940s got underway, the momentum was building and the magazine was evolving into something special. Unfortunately, that evolution coincided with the escalation of World War II, and by 1943, Mr. Carlson and George Avey, the magazine’s visionary art director, had stepped away from their driver’s seats to join the war effort — Mr. Carlson enlisted in the Marines, and Mr. Avey went to work for the Navy. Three years later, when they finally came home, they picked up where they’d left off. And then some.

ABOVE, LEFT: Two members of the Muench family contributed photos to Arizona Highways in the 1950s. Josef Muench’s harvest scene (top) graced our November 1952 cover; later, in January 1955, our cover featured a shot of Sonoran Desert saguaros (bottom) by Josef’s son, David. It was the younger Muench’s first contribution to the magazine.

RIGHT: Laura Gilpin photographed this Navajo family in a covered wagon in 1934. Gilpin is best known for her photographs of Native Americans.

16 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 17 “I am PREGNANT with ideas!!!! Maybe there will be a multiple birth!!!”

— ANSEL ADAMS TO RAYMOND CARLSON, MARCH 14, 1953

In their first issue back, March 1946, they welcomed Ansel Adams to the pages of Arizona Highways. By that time, he was already considered one of the world’s great landscape photographers. However, despite his reputation as the master of black and white composition, his first photograph in the magazine was a two-page color spread of Monument Valley. It was the first, but not the last. “I have a far-flung reputation now, which I am anxious to cash in on in a thoroughly dignified (and profit- able) manner,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, to our editor. Over the years, Mr. Carlson and Mr. Adams developed a deep friendship and a mutually beneficial professional rela- Ansel Adams’ black and white photographs of Mission San tionship. And whenever the photographer would pass through José de Tumacácori were paired Phoenix, he’d stop by the magazine. During one of those visits, with a Nancy Newhall story he suggested that Arizona Highways purchase a large collection (above) in our November 1952 of his photographs — at a good price — to be used whenever. issue. Before that, in March 1946, Adams’ iconic shot of Like finding a Maynard Dixon behind a velvet Elvis, Monument Valley (right) Mr. Carlson must have thought, Hell, yeah! It was a deal too appeared in the magazine. good to pass up. And with hindsight, it was more like highway robbery. Highways robbery. According to a series of letters between the two men, Mr. Adams’ bill to the magazine for that caused by patting ourselves on the back.” Martin Litton, Hubert A. Lowman, Willard Luce, Ray Man- told, were outstanding. They were and are! Hers were the first collection, which turned out to be 150 original, mounted pho- Like The Beatles after Ed Sullivan, Arizona Highways had ley, Robert Markow, Jerry McLain, Herb McLaughlin, Nelson photographs we purchased. We always contended she is one of tographs, was $1,500. Do the math. become an international phenomenon. And the roster of pho- Merrifield, H.H. Miller, Gene Morris, Lyle A. Morse, David the best.” In addition to the arrival of Ansel Adams, the magazine tographers was growing. Joining Norman Wallace, Esther Muench, Tad Nichols, Willis Peterson, Claire Meyer Proc- Ray Manley was another talented contributor. As a young made history in 1946. In December of that year, Arizona High- Henderson, Josef Muench, Barry Goldwater and Ansel Adams tor, Frank Proctor, Fred H. Ragsdale, John Anthony Randazzo, man, he dreamed of “capturing a few nature photographs wor- ways published the first all-color issue of a nationally circulated in the early years were Chuck Abbott, Forrest Alexander, Earl Allen C. Reed, Art Riley, H. Armstrong Roberts, Mike Roberts, thy of being printed” in a fledgling magazine called Arizona consumer magazine — we beat Life, Look, National Geographic, Anderson, Norton Louis Avery, Pietro Balestrero, William Bill Sears, Robert Upton and Harry Vroman. Highways. “In 1939,” he told us, “I bought my first 10-sheet box The Saturday Evening Post ... we beat them all. Belknap Jr., Somers Blackman, Catherine Boyd, Bob Bradshaw, Some of those names you may have seen before, including of Kodachrome. I studied my subjects well before exposing “It may or may not be an achievement,” Mr. Carlson wrote Jack Breed, Margaret Bundren, Hulbert Burroughs, Ruth Chuck Abbott, who was married to Esther Henderson (see that film because a dollar a sheet was a lot of money to pay for in his column, “but as far as we know, this is the first time in Crockett, Wayne Davis, Don DeMuth, Duncan Edwards, page 22). Ms. Henderson was our first paid contributor. film in those days.” American publishing history that a magazine of general circu- Carlos Elmer, Ferenz Fedor, Virginia Garner, Norman Rhoads “Years and years ago,” Raymond Carlson wrote in January Nevertheless, the investment paid off. Of those 10 shots, lation appears completely illustrated from ‘cover to cover’ in Garrett, George Geyer, Laura Gilpin, Charles W. Herbert, 1968, “we learned of a photographer in Tucson by the name of three would become covers for us. The first, a beautiful photo- color — that loud ‘crick’ you just heard is a sprained elbow A.H. Hilton, Lyle Hiner, Richard Jepperson, Max Kegley, Esther Henderson, whose creations with a camera, we were graph of the San Francisco Peaks, appeared on our back cover

18 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 19 “In the past ten years my work has been accepted by just about every American publication that uses photographs, but even if Arizona Highways did not give the photographer such consideration and so superb a showcase for his wares, I would still follow my rule of offering its editors first refusal on any shot of mine they can possibly use. This magazine not only stood godfather to my professional career when it accepted the view of the San Fran- cisco Peaks [October 1944], but without its unwitting aid at a turning point in my life, photography would probably be just a sometime hobby instead of my absorbing interest and means of livelihood.”

— RAY MANLEY, AUGUST 1956

in October 1944. A decade later, in August 1956, Mr. Manley against the rewards when I say that I hope someday to be one The photographers we have featured in the past, to say the these places myself.” And so he did. picked up a pen and shared some of his thoughts on being a of them. So far, I have had to rely on commercial photography least, know their cameras thoroughly and are adept in their Then, in the early 1950s, David and his father made a trip to full-time photographer. to finance the scenic expeditions.” use. Witness their consistently fine contributions to these Arizona Highways. “As soon as you feel like you’ve made a good “I’m a very fortunate fellow,” he wrote. “That’s what people His 1956 story is titled Arizona Is My Studio, and it’s a won- pages year after year.” picture, I’ll publish it,” Mr. Carlson said to the prodigy. In tell me often, and that’s what I often tell myself; although, we derfully written piece. Many of our early photographers shared Like so many others on that long list of early photographers, typical David Muench fashion, his first photograph ended up may not be looking at my professional activities as a scenic that ability. Chuck Abbott, Esther Henderson, Hubert A. Ray Manley was a contributor for many years. No one, how- on a cover — it was our January 1955 issue. He was 18, and the photographer in exactly the same way. ‘My, but you must lead Lowman and Josef Muench all wrote what Raymond Carlson ever, has done it longer than David Muench. He’s been sharing image was titled Saguaros. an interesting life,’ folks will comment. ‘Just traveling around described as “valuable and informative dissertations on the art his award-winning images with us for parts of seven decades. “Ever since my first visit to Arizona, when I was six years taking pictures of beautiful scenery and getting paid for it.’ of taking pictures.” His beginning, however, goes back even further than that. As old,” the caption reads, “these big desert fellows have spelled ‘Yes, indeed,’ I agree, remembering the time I waited out a And it is an art, the exalted editor continued, “the wonder- a child, David traveled with his father, Josef, and his mother, exciting scenery to me. This grouping, backed by towering 3-day wind-and-rain storm in Monument Valley to take a 1/10th ful and satisfying art of translating into and capturing on film Joyce Rockwood Muench, on story assignments for Arizona clouds, west of Tucson, was one of the first pictures I took on second exposure, and the time I traveled seven hundred miles the imperishable beauty of the world about us. The beginner Highways to Northern Arizona and beyond. Ektachrome with my Speed Graphic.” to shoot a round-up of three thousand Herefords for a breeder’s has found these photographic essays invaluable and, we feel, “We did Colorado River trips and hiked up to Rainbow The caption continues: “David is the son of one of our favor- journal and the picture couldn’t be used because there were even experienced practitioners have found them worthwhile. Bridge,” he says. “I was 12 when I hiked the 6 miles to Rainbow ite contributors, Josef Muench. We are proud to welcome him three or four Brahmas in the herd, and the time ... Bridge the first time — of course, before Lake Powell. I have a to our pages for the first time this issue.” “No, there are just as many disappointments in scenic pho- picture on my wall. I’m sitting on the river and just enjoying it. Today, at the age of 83, David Muench is as passionate about ABOVE: Arizona’s mountain lakes have attracted our photographers for tography as in any other creative profession; perhaps more, decades. Willis Peterson photographed the aspens of Big Lake (left) for our I was becoming familiar with the country. But I really wasn’t the art of landscape photography as he was in the middle of since so many of the elements in this work — light and shadow, May 1973 issue; earlier, in December 1962, we published Charles W. Herbert’s thinking of photography.” the last century. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that his weather and temperature — are variable and beyond human shot of pines and wildflowers at Hawley Lake (right). It was inevitable, though. Sir David was destined to join the images influenced not only this magazine, but also the entire control. I am not surprised that fewer than a dozen people in OPPOSITE PAGE: Ray Manley’s photograph of the snowy San Francisco Peaks, family business. Like Titus, Edsel Ford and Jakob Dylan. “He direction of landscape photography. What Ansel Adams is to near Flagstaff, appeared on the back cover of the October 1944 issue of the entire country make their living solely from scenic pho- Arizona Highways. It was the first of hundreds of Manley photos the magazine showed me much of the country and got me enthused,” David black and white photography, David Muench is to color. He set tography. But you can judge how I weigh the disappointments would publish. says of his father. “It wasn’t too long before I had to see some of the bar for all who followed. Like Bonanza did back in 1959.

20 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 21 ESTHER HENDERSON & CHUCK ABBOTT BY MATT JAFFE

HIS IS THE STORY OF THE DANCER AND THE COWBOY — a romance for the ages, set against the widescreen splendor of an untamed Arizona. In a word, photographer Esther Henderson was plucky — good at pretty much anything she set out to do. But no single word could capture the character of her husband, Chuck Abbott, a man who spent his first 48 years seeking opportunity, from Hawaii to war-torn Europe, before finally finding the love of his life one day in Tucson. They would go on to become the first couple of Arizona photography, traveling for weeks at a time on rugged, rutted roads, from stands of aspens in the San Francisco Peaks to expanses of sand verbenas in the desert dunes along the Colorado River. They were forever in search of that ephem- eral moment when light could transform land into art. “We took everything, every season, under every lighting condition, every direction, north, south, east

RIGHT: “To Miss Esther and west,” Esther said. Henderson of Tucson are In the parlance of romantic comedies, theirs was we again indebted for our a “meet-cute,” that moment when a couple-to-be first Christmas cover,” Editor Raymond Carlson wrote in the encounter each other in an implausible or amusing December 1940 issue of Arizona manner. Not that Esther was in a laughing mood Highways. “It was she, you will when Chuck first came calling. remember, who supplied the color study from which our She stood just 5 feet, 2 inches tall. Weighed barely cover of Christmas, 1939, was a nickel over 100 pounds. But Esther could be plenty made … San Xavier Mission. The tough. And she wasn’t at all pleased when Tucson subject of our cover this month is [the] San Francisco Peaks.” businessman Roy Drachman hired Abbott, an outsider “My wife once said to me that photography consisted of fifty percent Providence, from Palm Springs, to photograph for the Tucson Sun- OPPOSITE PAGE: Esther Henderson once joked that shine Climate Club, a booster organization. fifty percent good equipment, fifty percent leg work and two percent brains. after meeting her future Drachman had insisted to Esther that any work I replied that you could only have one hundred percent in a whole. husband, Chuck Abbott, she related to the club needed to be done locally. Now he decided that “it might be pretty nice to have a man carry the had imported a photographer. From California, of all ’That’s what I mean,’ she said. ’It takes more than the most to get a good picture.’” equipment and drive the car.” places. “She called on me and raised the devil about — CHUCK ABBOTT

22 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 23 FAR LEFT: Esther titled this photo from the Tucson area Moody Afternoon, and it appeared in our January 1953 issue. “Autumn has passed and spring is yet to come,” Esther wrote. “The hand of winter holds the season in a state of suspended animation.”

LEFT: Chuck’s photograph of a young boy fishing in a mountain stream graced our June 1945 cover. “Chuck Abbott has truly caught the Spirit of Young America in this delightful scene,” Editor Bert Campbell wrote.

“Some of the most enchanting effects are seen before ten and after four. Exposure is more of a hazard but the gamble is worth it. Mornings are blue, evenings are red, and I see no reason for not capturing, if possible, those effects which to me are the most exciting.”

— ESTHER HENDERSON

my having hired Chuck Abbott,” Drachman recalled years later, at a major printing press company. After his wife’s death, he cabarets at upscale hotels and supper clubs, performing what commercial photography and portraiture program the very in his memoir. retired and helped Esther with her budding dance career. she described as “toe dancing and ballet” and called “very next day. She set up a darkroom in a hotel bathroom, and her Weary of the controversy, he thought it might help if Chuck Once she finished high school, they moved to New York City, flashy.” She loved the life but had vowed to her father that she father served as a model for thousands of photographs. spoke with Esther to try to smooth things over, adding, “She’s where Esther was discovered by Gus Edwards, a vaudeville would find a new career by the time she turned 25. With that By the time Esther completed the program, both father and a nice girl. She’s all alone.” producer who also had discovered Groucho Marx, among oth- deadline looming, she looked in the Yellow Pages for inspira- daughter were ready for a change. The previous summer, they ers. Famous in his day, Edwards was enshrined in the Song- tion and saw the listings for photographers. had vacationed in Minnesota, where he still owned a fishing ORN IN 1911, Esther grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, the writers Hall of Fame for such hits as By the Light of the Silvery “When I came to photography,” she said, “I thought, Well, shack — a true shack, Esther recalled, with no electricity or B stately Chicago suburb where Frank Lloyd Wright spent Moon, and Bing Crosby played a fictionalized version of him in that deals with line and light, and that’s something that I know some- running water. They savored their time in nature after never the early part of his career and Ernest Hemingway came of age. the 1939 musical The Star Maker. thing about, because that’s what dancing is, you might say.” having seen any trees, except in Central Park. A self-made man who left school when he was just 9, her inven- Edwards didn’t exactly make Esther a star, but she earned a Dipping into her savings, a grand total of $239 after seven Years later, in New York, Henderson looked down from tor father, Robert Carl Henderson, worked as an executive good living at the height of the Great Depression by working in years onstage, Esther enrolled in an intensive, three-month her Times Square hotel room and saw a huge crowd gathered

24 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 25 “That’s the trouble with this picture business — there is so little satisfaction in it! You are always beset with the haunting thought that every picture could be improved, if not by you, then by someone, sometime. So you end up traveling in a circle, periodically returning to do a better, or at least a different, interpretation of the subject. Perfection, of course, is the goal.”

— CHUCK ABBOTT

for a concert by Frank Sinatra (“Some punk kid,” her father remarked) at the Paramount Theatre. “And I thought, I must be crazy, because the world goes on outside and has so much more to do than just what I’m doing,” she said. Raised in the flatlands of the Midwest, Esther had always craved easy access to mountains, those caterpillar-like squig- gles that first caught her attention as a young girl when she studied the maps in her Frye’s Complete Geography atlas. In 1934, Esther and her father plotted their next move and, following Horace Greeley’s famous adage, decided to go west. You’ve Got to Go Back to Get the Good Ones (above), a story and portfolio by Chuck, was published in our September 1955 issue. The story discussed his and There were extended stops, first in Norfolk, Virginia, and Esther’s approach to photographing Arizona, and the portfolio included Cabin in then in San Antonio, where Esther worked in a darkroom to the Snow (opposite page), a shot of a summer cabin in Oak Creek Canyon in January. gain experience. The roads were horrible, paved entirely with “three-sided stones,” according to Esther. It rained constantly before the Hendersons arrived in Douglas, Arizona, where the embarking on a studio career,” she wrote in My Southwest, a sun was shining on New Year’s Eve in 1934. They stayed the 1968 Arizona Highways retrospective of her work. “It didn’t take night at the landmark Gadsden Hotel before arriving in Tucson long to find that I had already made the first mistake: choosing on the very first day of 1935. a business that would keep me in a darkroom after I had come In Tucson, Henderson checked out the photographic compe- to a land of sunlight.” tition before deciding to stay. They can use a good one, and I’m good, she recalled thinking. HUCK ABBOTT TOOK HIS OWN LONG, bumpy road to “You know, innovative and good. … To gain experience, I took CTucson. His peripatetic life began in the Michigan lumber everybody’s picture — the mailman, the milk delivery man, town of Cambro in 1892, but he spent most of his childhood whoever came to the door in the neighborhood that I knew — in Portland, Oregon, after coming west by covered wagon as just to get experience, so that when I really opened up a busi- a young boy. Chuck worked for two years on a pineapple plan- ness, I wouldn’t fall on my face.” tation in Hawaii before serving during World War I with the Esther’s reputation quickly grew. The first year she oper- Army’s 23rd Engineer Battalion in France and Germany. ated her portrait studio, Raymond Carlson, the now-legendary Chuck carried a camera with him throughout the war and editor of Arizona Highways, stopped in looking for scenic shots as he explored Europe after the armistice. He photographed as the magazine transitioned from its literal focus on Arizona the destruction of the Battle of Verdun, as well as dead Ger- highways themselves to the places those roads could lead. man soldiers and such notables as General John J. “Black Jack” Esther’s inventory was limited. But she began to shoot more Pershing while making pictures of an assortment of historic landscapes, and her photos became the first that Carlson sites, including the home of Joan of Arc, 12th century churches bought for the magazine. and Roman baths. He sold sets of war prints in Germany and Esther worked in the studio during the week, then spent France and also captured events during the German Revolution weekends exploring, hauling gear that weighed nearly half of 1918 and ’19 before finally returning to the U.S. in 1921. as much she did, including her precious 5x7 Deardorff view In New York, Chuck parlayed income from his war photog- camera. raphy into a Fifth Avenue exotic-bird shop he operated with “I came to the Southwest as a greenhorn photographer newly a friend from Germany. Back then, he was no cowboy. Chuck

www.arizonahighways.com 27 “While driving, we often pass parked shutter-clickers who are apparently clicking away at the worst angle under the poorest lighting conditions. They are usually using good equipment and bad judgment.”

— ESTHER HENDERSON

married a New York socialite and donned spats and a straw hat while carrying a cane through the streets of Manhattan. The bird shop prospered for a while, but as the economy in Ger- many collapsed, so did the business. Chuck took his wife and young daughter to Florida, where he opened Abbott’s Joint, a dance hall and casino along the coast. Then, in 1928, the Category 5 Okeechobee hurricane, one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history, destroyed the building — and, with it, Chuck’s marriage. From Florida, Chuck moved to California, where his sister lived, and he owned a coffee and pie shop in Carmel for five years, until famed hotelier Nellie Coffman, owner of the Desert Inn resort in Palm Springs, hired him. In the desert, Chuck led combination horseback rides and barbecues, during which he would cook over open fires and regale hotel guests with songs and tales of the Old West. He briefly married another socialite, this one from San Francisco, but dedicated more time to photography as his pictures won acclaim during exhibitions at the inn’s gallery. The “Cowboy Photographer” was born. And around 1940, Drachman lured Chuck to Tucson.

HUCK, TALL AND RANGY in his cowboy boots Cand Stetson, went over to the house and studio that Esther’s father had built on a lot thick with caliche on Speedway Boulevard. Late one morning, as Esther worked in the darkroom, her secretary knocked and said Chuck was waiting out front. Esther wouldn’t have it: “You tell him I don’t want to see him, and this is Christmas rush and I’m busy — no time.” Soon, Esther began to have second thoughts and called Chuck to invite him back. “So, he came over, and when I opened the door and I saw him … Chuck had white hair very early in life, and was so nice-looking. I thought: Gee, look at what a nut I was. Wouldn’t even talk to him! Wouldn’t even see him!”

Portrait of a Storm, Esther’s shot of rain at the Grand Canyon, occupied two pages of our December 1951 issue. “A storm in the desert land is a thing of beauty if one can forget one’s fear of the storm,” Editor Raymond Carlson wrote in an accompanying essay.

28 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 29 “While I am taking a shot, my husband is scouting another. If pressed for time he takes meter readings while I change lenses. We divide up the equipment for portage, and on long hikes that means this individual, at least, is still breathing on reaching the location! My husband carries the film bag, I, the tripod, the oldest boy, the camera, and the littlest, the lunch. Cooperative endeavor, we believe, is more than a system for taking pictures efficiently — it is a good road for all families to travel.”

— ESTHER HENDERSON

crossed the street to toast their marriage with chocolate sodas at a drugstore before spending their wedding night camping next to a gravel dump outside Fort Defiance, along the New Mexico border. If that doesn’t sound especially romantic, consider Esther’s account, written more than 40 years later: “I still remember the starlight, which I had thought was the figment of an author’s imagination. But on that moonless night, far from any

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: city illumination, the billions of stars gave off enough light to Esther’s words, sketches and photographs formed My Southwest, a piece in the see the nearby hills like a black silhouette against a dark blue January 1968 issue of Arizona Highways. velvet sky.” an art gallery dedicated to what they called “Arizoniana” — in A determined juniper clings to sandstone in the Navajo Nation’s Mystery Valley, as a strip of buildings Chuck built along the 2300 block of East photographed by Esther for our January 1953 issue. HUCK MOVED into Esther’s house on Speedway, and the Broadway Boulevard. Between a young family and a new busi- The couple’s sons, Carl (standing) and Mark, frequently accompanied Chuck and Ccouple began building a life together. But when the United ness, getting out to shoot became more challenging. Esther on their trips around the Southwest. Arizona Historical Society States entered World War II, Esther’s business went through “I found that owning one’s own business has its price,” a transition. More and more families started coming to her stu- Esther wrote in 1968. “One is never ‘free.’ I found that freedom Esther poured highballs, and when she offered to freshen dio to have portraits made of sons who would soon go off to war. of the freelance photographer has its price: One is never ‘secure.’ Chuck’s drink, he declined. “So, I wasn’t able to get him Meanwhile, Esther and Chuck had sons of their own: first I found the Southwest has its price: a never-ending search to drunk,” she said. Carl in 1943, then Mark in 1947. For a time during the war, more accurately translate its majesty into human terms.” The next weekend, they packed their cameras and a picnic Esther closed her studio and the couple bought a farm near Carl and Mark accompanied their parents on trips, and for a day of desert photography. It was the start of a beautiful the ruins of Fort Lowell. In an age before helicopter parenting, the family worked as a team. The boys helped out where friendship, creative partnership and romance. they crafted a boat cradle for Carl and anchored it to the bank they could, carrying cameras and light gear, as their parents Esther’s father had recently died, and Esther was 30, late of a stream while they harvested eggplants, potatoes and toma- searched for pictures. Behind the wheel of a succession of for a woman to remain single in those days. She was ready toes in their nearby fields. vehicles, including a classic Ford “woodie” and later a Ford for marriage and thought of practical considerations as well, The couple still took photo trips — that is, when they had Ranch Wagon with “Chuck Abbott Illustrative Photography” explaining, “It might be pretty nice to have a man carry the enough gasoline during the years of fuel rationing. In 1942, stenciled in script on the door, Chuck handled the driving as equipment and drive the car.” A few months after they met, they visited the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s land and Esther directed them to prime locations. Their pictures filled Esther, no shrinking violet, proposed to Chuck — at 48 a good made some of the most significant photos of their careers. If Arizona Highways: Esther’s shot of a cowboy and his horse gaz- 18 years her senior. somewhat idealized, these images captured aspects of the still- ing down from Maricopa Point graced the cover of a 1954 issue During a photo trip in the summer of 1941, the couple traditional life of the tribe: residents constructing gowas, or on the Grand Canyon, with Chuck’s photo of a rainbow arcing stopped in Holbrook to get married. A Navajo County justice traditional dwellings made of tree limbs; babies carried in cra- over Zoroaster Temple on the inside front cover. It took four of the peace performed the ceremony, with two state highway dleboards; and children, alongside a river, pouring water into years for Chuck to capture a slope of poppies rising up to meet patrol officers serving as witnesses. Esther had packed a gray vessels borne by a donkey. Chuck’s photo of billowing clouds a ruddy promontory in Cochise County, while Esther turned silk dress for the occasion, but because the couple planned to over the 700-year-old Kinishba Ruins still appears on the cover a pair of tire ruts, filled by recent rains, into a mirror that go back out into the field for more photography after the wed- of the visitor guide to this National Historic Landmark. reflected nearby saguaros and the snow-covered Santa Cata- ding, she ended up wearing her jeans with a new blue shirt she After the war, Esther reopened her studio, and in 1947, the lina Mountains in the distance. bought for $1 at Babbitt Brothers Trading Co. The newlyweds couple launched the Photocenter — a color lab and studio, with Carl, now 76, says, “My mother had the ambition, really. She

30 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 31 “Another concomitance of photography is the reviewing of the files, a costly but necessary diversion, wherein we hope to add more than we subtract. That is, replace old shots with new and better ones. Sometimes we are aghast to see again what we thought at the time represented our best effort.”

— CHUCK ABBOTT

was the go-getter, in a way. My father went along. Especially on the photography side: He would drive, and she would decide where the pictures would be, because she had more of the talent for photography, where his talent was more in business and real estate. He wasn’t particularly artistic, I guess you’d say. The business was what interested him.” In the 1950s, Esther started writing and photographing Way Out West With Esther Henderson, a weekly feature for the Tucson Citizen, and the family headed off on extended drives into the American West during the boys’ vacations. It was the Golden Age of road trips — a time before air-conditioned cars, when Arizona was wild, open country. Esther recalled driving 8 mph up Yarnell Hill toward Prescott on a road she described as “some wayward burro’s reverie.” Carl befriended a Navajo boy named Benny No-Goats at Monument Valley (“I can’t talk Indian and he can’t talk Eng- lish much, so we don’t have no arguments”), and Esther photographed a storefront, with no store behind it, in a pre-tourism Tombstone. Up in the high country, the Abbotts whipped up their own version of ice cream by mixing vanilla, cream and sugar into snow, and the family camped by streams where the boys fished with crooked poles crafted from branches found in the woods. Esther rejoiced when, after years of tents and bedrolls, the couple bought a 19-foot, two-toned Aljoa trailer, complete with a bathroom. Long before the advent of digital photography, the family didn’t travel light. Esther wrote: “All our clothes and living materials are in the trailer, which leaves the car free for ABOVE: One of Esther’s Way Out West columns focused on Chiricahua National Monument, and the accompanying photo likely shows Chuck and the boys at cameras, two hand cameras, six lenses for the large cameras, the site. Arizona Historical Society

50 plate holders, 1,000 sheets of color film (two bucks a sheet), RIGHT: Dance of the Penstemons, a Chuck photo that ran in our December 1952 tripods and flash equipment, two suitcases full of hats and issue, shows a varied landscape near the Southern Arizona ghost town of Ruby. shirts for models, and fishing, tenting, camping and cooking gear for picture props. We never have time to pursue these activities ourselves — we just photograph ourselves and others September 1955, Carl wrote, “We can’t wait to go away, and in the role of vacationers!” then, after a couple of months, we can’t hardly wait to get The button-nosed boys — fair-haired, freckled, and clad in back. But not Mom and Pop. They would never come home — cowboy boots and dungarees mended with knee patches — if they could.” doubled as models for their parents. In one memorable shot, they sit upon a split-log fence, with Mark gazing lovingly up at S MUCH AS THEY LOVED ARIZONA, Esther and Chuck Carl as the latter puffs out his cheeks to blow the seeds off a A began thinking about a move in the early 1960s. They dandelion. finally got fed up with the dryness and summer heat. Carl Sometimes, Esther turned the newspaper feature over to says: “I always liked the desert and wanted them to stay longer her sons, whom she asked to keep diaries of their travels. In in places like Moab [in Utah] and Monument Valley. But they

32 SEPTEMBER 2019 “My first outdoor assignment took me to Prescott and Oak Creek Canyon. Then, for the first time, I realized how the elevations of Arizona determine the climate and how, within a short distance, they transform the landscape into a completely different scene and season; where the highlands resemble Canadian valleys and the architecture conforms to the climatic demands of the region.”

— ESTHER HENDERSON

would go where there was lots of rain and forest.” The couple Chuck played such an instrumental role in the creation of once spent 19 days in a Northwest rainforest, trying to get downtown Santa Cruz’s pedestrian-oriented Pacific Garden a shot. Mall that he became known as the “Father of the Mall.” And Chuck and Esther first bought a ranch in Ouray, Colorado, in 1972, the city established Abbott Square, a downtown plaza then moved to Santa Cruz, along California’s Monterey Bay. where the Abbott Family Band — a bluegrass quartet featuring Chuck had retired by then, and with their money still tied Carl; his wife, Leslie; and their sons, Luke and Kyle — has per- up in the unsold ranch, he told Esther they couldn’t buy a formed in recent years. house. Even so, the Abbotts went out with a real estate agent, But another Santa Cruz landmark bearing the Abbott name asking to see “the cheapest, worst place in town,” as Esther carries an even deeper meaning for the family. On February 28, described it. 1965, a few days after she and Chuck were honored for their She thought one neighborhood was “a dump” until they preservation and restoration work, Esther watched as their went inside a Victorian house with beautiful wooden details. younger son, Mark, headed out to go bodysurfing. It was a Chuck decided to put in a lowball offer of $15,000, figuring sunny Sunday after the gloom of an extended winter storm. that the sellers, who were asking $18,500, would never accept Mark had come to love the ocean, certainly more than it. “They did take it!” Esther said. “Suddenly, we had a house.” school, and he spent many days fishing from the Santa Cruz “They kind of would always bite off more than they could Wharf and bodysurfing off Pleasure Point. Chuck said his chew on the business side of things,” Carl says. “But they made son had become “one of the top bodysurfers on the California a success of whatever they jumped into.” coast.” But Mark drowned that day in heavy surf still churn- The family settled in Santa Cruz in 1963 and quickly got ing from the passing storm. “He was an excellent swimmer,” involved in the community. Chuck renovated the Victorian, Chuck said, “but old-timers tell me that the undertow here and the couple then bought the neighboring house and the that day was the worst they could remember.” one next to that before eventually rehabilitating a line of A month earlier, when Mark turned 18, Esther and Chuck dilapidated row houses across the street. Victorians had fallen had bought him a life insurance policy, and they used that totally out of fashion, but Chuck and Esther felt the style was money to build the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse over- integral to Santa Cruz’s identity. Mixing metaphors, the local looking Steamer Lane, one of the country’s iconic surf spots. newspaper said of the couple, “They make ‘Cinderellas’ out of Today, the building houses a surfing museum where Mark’s ugly ducklings,” and Chuck and Esther would go on to fix up ashes are interred. numerous buildings around town, always guided by Chuck’s In 1973, Esther would lose Chuck, too. But she lived another motto: “Beauty is good business.” He added, “We are great 35 years, never wasting a day. She taught Sunday school and believers in preserving atmosphere in the form of old trees, old volunteered with the Salvation Army and a food bank. She buildings and old homes.” painted, gardened and played jazz piano in a local senior band. Living in Santa Cruz, Chuck traded his Stetson for a straw Esther once said she felt like she had lived 10 lifetimes in her hat and became a familiar presence around town. In an 97 years. But looking back, she said, the best times were those attempt to rally the city and merchants to support a downtown days out on the road in Arizona as she and Chuck worked improvement plan, Chuck and Esther used their vast inven- together, forever helping each other in their mutual quest for tory of photos of towns and cities around the country in a the next great picture. slideshow that illustrated the potential aesthetic and business “I’m waiting for everything to be perfect,” she recalled, “and benefits of beautification. Chuck would say, ‘Take it, take it, take it!’ ”

“This is Everyman,” Esther wrote of Into Tomorrow, a photo published on Arizona Highways’ inside back cover in January 1968. “He has embarked on a long journey to an unknown destination; he carries his own burden and he is essentially alone.”

www.arizonahighways.com 35 RAY MANLEY BY DAVID LEIGHTON

T’S A RARE WINTRY DAY on the outskirts of Tucson, and in his house, decorated with vintage cameras and old family photographs, beneath the snow-blanketed Santa Catalina Mountains, Alan Manley is reaching into the past. From his closet, the bearded 70-year-old pulls out a 4x5 Linhof folding camera and numerous images made by his father, Ray Manley — whose long career, chronicled in the pages of Arizona Highways and elsewhere for decades, made him one of Arizona’s most celebrated photographers. Manley’s relationship with Raymond Carlson, this publication’s longtime editor, dated to before World War II. “He has been throughout the years a consistently dependable photographer,” Carlson wrote in the August 1956 issue of Arizona Highways, “and some of the finest studies we have been privileged to present have been the result of his skill with the camera.” Indeed, some photographers still use “Ray Manley sunset” as shorthand for a spectacular evening scene. In that same issue, Manley was more modest. “I’m a very fortunate fellow,” he wrote. “That’s what people tell me often, and that’s what I often tell myself.”

AY MANLEY was born on September 4, 1921, in the small Arizona town of Cottonwood. There, RIGHT: “If sincerity, hard work R and painstaking care will make horse-drawn carriages crossed paths with cars on a photographer, we predict the a main street that, at the time, was still covered in name of Ray J. Manley will be dirt. Weeds grew along its sides. famous in American photography one of these days,” Editor Manley grew up in the Verde Valley, a virtual Raymond Carlson wrote in the playground of wonder for a boy who loved the out- “How can one interpret a subject differently that has been photographed September 1946 issue of Arizona doors. He fished with his father in Oak Creek Canyon, Highways. The issue’s cover camped near the Verde River and climbed the lad- featured Manley’s shot of Oak many times before? It is in his answer to this problem that the photographer Creek Canyon. ders to Montezuma Castle to explore its upper rooms. places himself alongside the creative artists who are making something OPPOSITE PAGE: Manley, on Inspired by the natural beauty around him, he began horseback, fits his camera making photographs while attending grade school in different out of the same old elements. Look what authors do with the same into a camera holder that was the Cottonwood area. A few years later, he earned a a gift from one of his employees. twenty-six-letter alphabet, and painters with the same red, yellow and blue.” Courtesy of Carolyn Boy Scout merit badge for his photography. Manley Robinson In Manley’s chemistry class at Clarkdale High — RAY MANLEY

36 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 37 School, his teacher encouraged him to pursue that passion, ing orders. But his superiors saw Manley’s work in Arizona introducing him to film processing and allowing Manley to Highways and, instead of sending him overseas, assigned him experiment in the darkroom. During his senior year, he used to the Navy’s photography school in Pensacola, Florida. Before a World War I Signal Corps camera to shoot for the school’s long, he was an instructor of still photography, a position in yearbook. which he remained until the war was over. He drove the rough roads to the Navajo Nation the summer The change of fortune was a turning point in Manley’s life after he graduated, in 1939. The trip likely was when he met and career. “As yet, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do Harry Goulding, the amiable Monument Valley trader who’d for the rest of my life, in or out of uniform,” he wrote in 1956. recently introduced Hollywood director John Ford to the area. “I have no doubt that if I had been assigned to duty in some That fall, Manley enrolled at the Flagstaff school now called other field for this length of time, I would not be where, or Northern Arizona University, with what, I am today.” the intention of becoming a sci-

ence teacher. According to Alan, he OPPOSITE PAGE: Manley photographed Havasu Canyon’s Mooney Falls for our planned to cover his expenses by July 1963 issue. “The sun strikes all of the falls only during midsummer,” he wrote, doing photographic work for the “so the best possible time [for photography] is near the longest day — June 21.” college newspaper and yearbook. LEFT: Manley’s stint as a student and instructor at the U.S. Navy’s photography school in Florida was a turning point in his life and career. He wouldn’t graduate, but he would Courtesy of Alan Manley meet the love of his life. BELOW: Cowboys round up cattle on the Diamond A Ranch, near Seligman, in “Dad had a roommate in college one of several Manley photos from our September 1951 issue. “Photographers named Charles Osterberg, who later who cover cattle drives must work hard to keep up with busy activities making became a renowned oceanographer,” up roundup,” the caption read. Alan says. “Dad met Charles’ sister, Ruth. After that initial meeting, the two were inseparable and did everything together.” Around the same time, Manley saw a photograph by well- known Arizona photographer Esther Henderson (see page 22) and was inspired to take photography more seriously. He acquired a 4x5 view camera and bought his first 10-sheet box of Kodachrome film. At $1 a sheet, the film stretched Manley’s budget, so he scrutinized subjects around Flagstaff prior to exposing it. The young photographer ultimately produced a set of images that included an old tree stump, his bright-eyed girl- friend and the San Francisco Peaks. The latter shot was what got Manley into the pages of Ari- zona Highways. Carlson purchased it in 1940, and Manley’s photograph of the Peaks appeared on the back cover of the October 1944 issue.

ITHIN A FEW YEARS, Manley dropped out of college W and began working for the Phelps Dodge Corp., split- ting his time between his work as a chemical analyst and his love of photography. He married Ruth in 1942, and she joined him in Clarkdale, where they resided in a small, company- owned house near the high school. Their daughter, Carolyn, was born in 1945, and Alan followed in 1949. Before that, at the height of World War II in the summer of 1944, Manley completed U.S. Navy boot camp and was await-

“The scene, as far as the placement of natural features is concerned, remains the same for all comers. Cameras, lenses and films are essentially alike and the techniques of handling them may be mastered by anyone. Obviously, the difference must lie in the interpretation.”

— RAY MANLEY

www.arizonahighways.com 39 “Bracketing the correct exposure is important, even at $2 each with 5x7 color. It is false economy to skimp on exposures, as any veteran photographer will tell you. Better to over-shoot and bring back sure results than to economize on film and have nothing to show for the trip but near misses.”

— RAY MANLEY

ABOVE: Manley discussed his approach to photography in Arizona Is My Studio, a feature in the August 1956 issue of Arizona Highways.

RIGHT: Manley’s The Green Fields of San Xavier accompanied a March 1957 story on U.S. Route 89, which at the time ran past the Southern Arizona mission. “San Xavier still serves the Indians of the area, who have been tilling the fertile land nearby for generations,” Manley wrote.

After his military career, Manley returned to the Verde Val- ley and eagerly pursued photography for Arizona Highways. His first photographs from the Navajo Nation, Old Man and Sheep Camp, were published in the August 1946 issue. The following month, his shot of the West Fork of Oak Creek appeared on the magazine’s cover. The same year, the family relocated to bustling Los Angeles to allow Manley to fulfill his long-held desire to attend the Art Center School, now known as the Art Center College of Design. This educational institution — where legendary photographer Ansel Adams once taught — turned out to be a disappointment for Manley: He learned that students weren’t allowed to study color photography until their third year, and color was the only type of photography he was interested in. Soon, he decided he could learn more in the field than in the classroom, so he again dropped out of school and returned to the Grand Canyon State. In February 1947, he began a stint as a struggling freelance photographer in Tucson, working for Charles W. Herbert, founder of Western Ways, an independent photo- and story-producing outfit. Manley realized that Herbert might sell the business and leave him without a steady income, so he and another Western Ways photographer, Naurice “Reese” Koonce, struck out on their own, opening Ray Manley Commercial Photography on Tucson’s Broadway Boulevard in 1954. “Dad was taking a big chance by going out on his own with his best friend, Reese, since many small businesses fail,” Alan says. “He had a young family to provide for, but he wasn’t left much of a choice. Thankfully, it worked out well.”

HILE THE STUDIO PROVIDED a good life for him W and his family, Manley continued to devote time to his other true love: scenic photography. He even branched out as a writer, authoring several articles that accompanied his images in Arizona Highways. In the September 1957 issue of the magazine, Manley shared

40 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 41 Navajo Shepherd and Flock, Manley’s shot of a snowy Monument Valley, was made in early 1957 and appeared in “Success, I believe, depends upon two factors: the willingness to plan and prepare our December 1957 issue. “Nearly a foot of snow had fallen but melted rapidly,” Manley wrote. He made the image and the ability to anticipate the unusual and take advantage of it.” with a 5x7 Linhof camera. — RAY MANLEY

with readers a trip he’d taken to his boyhood home. In the arti- While Manley’s love of Arizona was legendary, he eventually showed her his camera, but she wasn’t impressed and began pretty much anything else to get the job done. What he did in cle Return to My Valley, he wrote about three Verde Valley towns wanted to broaden his horizons. In 1958, he and his family took to close the door. When Manley put his foot in the doorway Rome was nothing out of the ordinary for him.” of his childhood — “I came remembering Indian legend and their first trip to Europe, where, using his 5x7 view camera, he and handed her money, she became a bit more impressed. Hav- In 1959, feeling that his business needed a change, Manley tales of the ranchers and miners who in time had established photographed Italy, Scotland and Norway, as well as the Brus- ing made his own good fortune, Manley spent several hours had a $50,000 studio built on Tucson Boulevard and invested the towns of Clarkdale, Jerome and Cottonwood” — and sels World’s Fair. waiting by the window, then took a nighttime photograph of another $50,000 in modern equipment. The studio was 150 feet shared how each community had changed in his lifetime. And Manley’s daughter, Carolyn, remembers her father wanting the Colosseum, using the lights from passing automobiles to deep, and its biggest room was 40 by 30 feet — large enough to the front cover image, of a boy wading through the Verde River to photograph Rome’s Colosseum from a higher vantage point. illuminate it. photograph an automobile. By this time, Manley was one of the beneath the ruins of Tuzigoot National Monument, harked He went to a nearby apartment building and knocked on the “If my dad saw a picture in his mind, he would do almost most respected commercial photographers in the nation; later back to Manley’s own youthful experiences. door. A woman who didn’t speak English answered. Manley anything to get it,” Alan says. “Nothing illegal, of course, but on, he’d earn the coveted title of master photographer from the

42 SEPTEMBER 2019 www.arizonahighways.com 43 “The everlasting view camera and tripod are a must for scenics, with about four first-rate lenses of varying focal lengths, a filter assortment, a light meter, basic flash equipment, and a sufficient quantity of film holders to make frequent reloading unnecessary.”

— RAY MANLEY

Professional Photographers of America. In the 1960s, Manley took three world tours, carrying with him his trusty 5x7 Linhof, several lenses and a Hasselblad roll film camera for lecture slides. On his final global jaunt, he and his wife met up with world travelers Herbert and Eleanor Ullmann to discuss the book Eleanor would write to accom- pany Manley’s photographs. The two combined their talents to create World in Focus, which featured an introduction by Senator Barry Goldwater — a fellow photographer and, by this time, a good friend. Years later, after Manley had circumnavigated the globe five times, he published a similar book, Ray Manley’s World Travels. Ruth wrote the colorful text, and the book featured 260 of the Arizona — Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, the Sonoran world’s most photogenic places, with some of the unrivaled Desert — and having his photos published in Arizona Highways images being Celtic crosses in Ireland’s Monasterboice ruins, led to increased travel and migration to the state,” Alan says. the Shah Mosque in Iran and the Christ the Redeemer statue in “Years later, his tours offered Arizonans the opportunity to Rio de Janeiro. explore and appreciate the state.” The photographer paid homage to the Grand Canyon State, But the self-described “fortunate fellow” had one more bit too, with Ray Manley’s Arizona. The magazine-style book con- of good luck: In the mid-1990s, Alan came upon thousands of tained about 75 color photographs, including a Navajo man black and white negatives he’d never seen printed. They were looking out at Monument Valley, a snow-covered Oak Creek photos his father had made in the 1940s and ’50s in both color Canyon and Mooney Falls in Havasu Canyon. Carlson, Manley’s and black and white, but only published in color to sell many longtime associate, wrote the foreword, and the book was sold years before Alan had found them. The rediscovery led to Man- at newsstands and through the magazine’s gift shop. ley’s final book, Ray Manley’s Navajoland, an entrancing portfo- The 1970s saw big changes in Manley’s life. He opened the lio that ranks among the photographer’s best work. Manley Gallery, in the lobby of his studio on Tucson Boulevard, In 1997, a stroke left Manley partly paralyzed and unable to and sold autographed prints of Arizona scenes such as Mission speak. He saw his final “Ray Manley sunset” in 2006, six years San Xavier del Bac, Oak Creek and the Grand Canyon. The before Ruth did. By any measure, though, he lived a life full of Manley Gallery eventually moved to its own building on Fort the people and landscapes that brought him professional suc- Lowell Road. cess and personal joy — especially in his native state. Manley then turned the commercial photography business “This is a land that might be measured in terms of infinity over to his son to focus on a new endeavor, Indian Land Tours. and eternity,” he wrote of Arizona in 1956. “It takes nerve, I Through the new company, he took visitors to places such admit, even to hope to catch either the reality or the spirit of as Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, sharing his own this country on a sheet of film. But who would be content to unique experiences along the way. This business, later called work always under the controlled conditions of an indoor stu- Ray Manley Tours, also offered guided international trips. dio with this challenge at his doorstep? “My dad’s years of photographing his favorite places in “Certainly not I.”

LEFT: Evening on the Range, which appeared in our December 1955 issue, shows a group of cowboys around a fire.

ABOVE, RIGHT: The Navajo Nation and its people were among Manley’s favorite subjects. Here, he photographs a Navajo medicine man making a sand painting. Courtesy of Carolyn Manley Robinson

www.arizonahighways.com 45 JOSEF MUENCH BY KELLY VAUGHN

RIZONA WASN’T HIS FIRST STOP in the United States — Michigan was. Josef Muench went to work at the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit after immigrating to the United States from Bavaria. He was 24, and he still had the camera his parents had given him when he was 11 in his native Schweinfurt. By 26, though, Josef was restless. He’d worked Ford’s assembly line for two years. He had taken English classes. A sense of boredom — that American sensation of understimulation — overtook him. In German, the sensation is called Langeweile. In French, it is ennui. In all languages, buying your own car and hitting the road is far better than any of that. So, Josef bought a Model T and drove north, into Canada, with his cameras. From there, he traveled west along the U.S.-Canada border. By the time he hit Santa Barbara, California, on his way down the Pacific coast, his savings were running on empty. Luckily, his evolving eye for landscape photography helped fund more travel, and in 1936, Ari- zona was a stop. It proved to be a lengthy one. In the November 1969 issue of Arizona Highways, Josef wrote about his very first venture into the desert: “I entered the state of Arizona for the first time, traveling east on U.S. 66, over the old Oatman Grade toward Kingman. There was little traffic on the road. Just a few heavy trucks lumbering along the winding, narrow highway, and an occasional car whose driver was bent on getting to some distant point fast.” RIGHT: Among Josef Muench’s numerous By the time he wrote those words, the magazine Arizona Highways had been publishing his photographs for 31 years. cover photos was this Monument Valley shot for HEN I FIRST SAW THE DESERT, I liked “The photographer’s dream is of finding a place that gives him our June 1946 issue. “ it,” Josef said about laying his eyes and his OPPOSITE PAGE: Muench W a new angle on a fresh subject, with special lighting effects, big views holds a camera at lens on Arizona for the first time. “It was new and Northern Arizona’s Glen different. It immediately took on a meaning to me. interspersed with challenging details, so many and varied that he can Canyon in 1958. I had heard it was barren. It isn’t. A little cactus — so Northern Arizona go right on shooting and shooting until all his film is used up.” University Cline delicate and beautiful — can hide from you. You have Library to go slowly, and look carefully.” — JOSEF MUENCH

46 SEPTEMBER 2019 “Other important rules almost teach themselves to those who have ceased to ’snap’ pictures and who like to feel that each picture is a faithful and fine record of an experience in their own lives. They are: Pick your subject carefully. Try to keep it simple. If there are too many points of interest, the eye will jump and the result is never satisfying.”

— JOSEF MUENCH

That’s probably why Arizona Highways Editor Raymond Carl- particularly as it relates to Josef’s frequent visits to the Navajo son paid attention to Josef’s work, to his attention to detail and Nation. They were, in a sense, a meditation for him. to his passion for the landscape during a fortuitous meeting in Having become friends with renowned trader Harry Gould- 1938. A few months later, Carlson published one of Josef’s pho- ing, Josef made inroads with the Navajo people, visiting their tographs of Rainbow Bridge. In subsequent decades, as biog- hogans and photographing them at work and at rest. But he raphers at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library assert, also paid special attention to the landscapes of the Navajo “Muench’s name became synonymous with Arizona Highways.” Nation — to delicate sandstone arches; to the mesas and Mit- The biographers aren’t wrong. And it’s in large part because tens of Monument Valley; to the ancient walls of Canyon de Josef had such a delicate, respectful relationship with Ari- Chelly, with their patina and their layers and their shadows. zona’s diverse geography and people. Within a few years, all of those visits paid off, thanks in Indeed, in that same 1969 article, Josef admitted that his large part to Goulding and his grand idea. The Navajo people, “life’s necessities are earned with the camera as my tool — an along with most everyone at the time, were swimming in the artistic medium to record nature’s beautiful, often fantastic belly of the Great Depression. If Goulding could lure Holly- vagaries, because art is more than a mere repetition of things wood film directors to Monument Valley to shoot, the Navajos found about us.” might find some economic relief for years to come. There is something to be said about repetition, however, So, Goulding and his wife, Leone (whom Goulding had nicknamed “Mike”), flew to Los Angeles. They walked into director John Ford’s office without an appointment, and when a secretary told them Ford wasn’t available, the Gouldings rolled out a Navajo blanket, fanned Josef’s photos out across it and waited. And waited. Despite the secretary’s protests. Finally, they garnered the attention of an assistant director, and Josef’s photographs caught his eye. The assistant went to find Ford. Ultimately, the famed director gave Harry Goulding two weeks to hire extras and build facilities to feed and house a film crew — and gave him a blank check to do it. When Goulding succeeded, Ford and a young, up-and-coming actor named John Wayne, along with a supporting cast and a mas- sive crew, descended on Monument Valley to film Stagecoach, 1939’s breakout hit. Two icons were born out of the experience: Wayne as the country’s biggest Western star, and Monument Valley as a premier destination for the film industry — which, at the time, was hellbent on canning as many cowboy movies as possible. Because, as the Duke said: “All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink; they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood

LEFT: Muench’s photograph of Betatakin, one of the ruins at Navajo National Monument, appeared in the June 1953 issue of Arizona Highways. “I was there at about 10 o’clock in the morning and had to be very careful not to step on any of the fragile walls and the roofs when looking for the angle I wanted,” Muench wrote.

RIGHT: A Navajo girl tends to her sheep in Muench’s photo from our August 1950 back cover.

48 SEPTEMBER 2019 with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. for the shutter. He’d run and join our little grouping, or have I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep someone else take the photo. The red shirt was something of a hitting him.” must. He felt that would sell the work.” Eventually, Ford filmed multiple movies in Monument Val- Talk of those red shirts makes David laugh a little. There is, ley. The Navajos named an iconic sandstone plateau for the however, a more reflective discussion of those early years, when director, and he and Wayne — and Josef, the man whose pho- he accompanied his dad on countless photographic adventures. tographs made it possible — are memorialized in Goulding’s David, who is Arizona Highways’ longest-serving contributor, Lodge today. says those journeys to Navajoland with his parents are among some of his most formative experiences. HE MAN FROM BAVARIA often wore red. In self-portraits, “I traveled with him and my mother quite a bit in Monument T as well as in photographs by Josef’s wife, the writer Joyce Valley,” David says. “We’d go out with the Navajos, and Harry Rockwood Muench. And, later, in portraits by Josef’s son, would take food to them. This was just barely into the 1950s, landscape photographer David Muench. and I’d change films for my father. It was all 4x5 and color. The reason, David says, is because it’s a powerful color — one that stood out against the landscapes to which Josef was trying to pay tribute. OPPOSITE PAGE: Muench and his son, David, joined forces for an extensive “From very early on, my father would put us all in red shirts,” March 1969 portfolio that celebrated John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition down the Colorado River. It included the elder Muench’s shot of a canyon at Lake Powell. he remembers. “I remember doing fishing shots for him where BELOW: Chiricahua National Monument’s hoodoos dominate this photo from I was in a red shirt. He had a very particular way he wanted us our April 1948 issue. The people in the photo likely are David Muench (left) and to stand, and I remember so clearly that he had a cable release a National Park Service ranger.

“Every landscape will have its special problems, its own combination of elements which must be juggled correctly to gain a harmonious, meaningful picture.”

— JOSEF MUENCH

www.arizonahighways.com 51 “Let me make a statement with emphasis: It’s not necessarily the camera which one uses that ‘makes or breaks’ a good picture, but that it is the person behind it who conceives with eyes and mind the end results, before pressing the shutter release.”

— JOSEF MUENCH

We’d load them into folders, and it was a very hands-on learn- ing experience for me. Still, I didn’t think much of it until later.” More than anything, all of those experiences — with the Navajos and, later, the Hopis and Apaches — were an exercise in patience for both Josef and David. Many of Arizona’s indig- enous people are quiet, reserved. They’re protective of their culture and their deeply spiritual heritage. Relationships, particularly with outsiders, can be slow to start. Josef approached them with humility and decency. He didn’t push to make photographs. Often, he would compensate his subjects for their time. Take advantage? Never. “He learned the culture down deep,” David says of his father. the Navajos and connecting the world to images of Monument “He learned about sheepherding and how delicate it was to live Valley.” on that land. His legacy, really, is in working early on with There was other work, too, of course. Photographs of Cen- tral Arizona’s Mogollon Rim and Eastern Arizona’s White Mountains — as in those fishing photos David references. Of Southeastern Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains. Of California coastlines and Colorado’s Dolores River Canyon. And there is parallelism — along with subtle (and not-so- subtle) variations in the work of Josef’s son, David, and grand- son, Marc. All three men have been published in these pages. All three men have an unflappable respect for horizons and stillness and the way photography is the art of bringing the Earth to its people. And beyond: In 1977, Josef’s work was launched into space as part of the “Golden Record.” His photograph of a snow- covered sequoia in Kings Canyon National Park lives some- where outside our solar system now, on the unmanned Voy- ager probes. It, along with 114 other images of the planet and greetings in many languages, might someday find its way to a galaxy far, far away. As of today, the two Voyager probes have communicated with the Deep Space Network for 42 years, and Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object from Earth. “Part of what he believed in was, always, looking around

LEFT: Muench’s skill as a nature photographer was on display in February 1951, when these desert wildflowers appeared on our back cover.

ABOVE: Arizona Highways Editor Raymond Carlson frequently paired Muench’s photos with words by the photographer’s wife, Joyce Rockwood Muench, such as in this March 1960 story.

RIGHT: A saguaro blooms near one of the namesakes of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Southern Arizona. This photo was shot on an April afternoon and ran in January 1959.

52 SEPTEMBER 2019 “There are so many different aspects in the Southwest that it is possible to spend a whole lifetime there devoted to photography. A careful study and a determination to find the best position, timing and all the rest, will lead you and your camera to increasingly satisfactory results, as well as a deepening appreciation for all that there is to see and to love in the desert.”

— JOSEF MUENCH

the corner and exploring,” Marc says. “He spent so much time looking for images — for places — to photograph. He really was a pioneer.” Marc and Josef had only a brief relationship, but Marc’s grandfather’s work has profoundly influenced his own. He reiterates Josef’s inclination toward putting people in unusual places in the landscape. “That was quite inspirational to me,” Marc says. “One I remember is the portrait of the Navajo in Monument Valley, looking down through the North [Window] or South Window. It’s black and white, and he has a branch of a juniper tree arch- ing over the composition in the foreground. That’s certainly one of the photographs that was inspirational to me.” Really, the idea of shooting through something seems hard- wired in the Muench family of photographers. It’s a concept David didn’t acknowledge or even think about, really, until just recently — as he was preparing for a project. “Now that I see some of his older work, I see that I picked up framing distant subjects — the Mittens, Ship Rock, what have you — through something,” David says. “I have a hard time with the straight, wide-open landscape. I want to bring in a tree frame, or a rock, or something that leads to the distant thing.” And although Zandria Muench Beraldo, Marc’s sister and But if you ask David what his family’s photographic legacy is, David’s daughter, doesn’t have too many memories of her there will be a quiet space of about 15 heartbeats. He will tell grandfather — Josef died in 1998 — she, too, feels a sense of you that you should probably talk to someone else about it. reverence for his work. Humility. Patience. “I loved his photography of the Navajo people doing everyday “For me … it was him teaching me a way to see,” he’ll say. things,” she says. “He was a treasure trove of history — most of “My dad and others started it really early in Arizona Highways. his work can be seen at Northern Arizona University.” Ray Manley and Dad and others. They were the first ones It’s an impressive collection that’s preserved at NAU’s Cline working with a 4x5 and a tripod and bringing those land- Library, in the careful hands of those biographers and archivists scapes to the people. It was early. It set a pace — that idea of who linked his name to this magazine. It is documentation of the “near/far.” You find natural connections at your feet; then the man from Bavaria’s growth as a photographer, as well as a you find the far-off. And you want both things to be sharp. You chronicle of Arizona’s history. Of Arizona Highways’ history. find something to draw your eye through the photograph.”

LEFT: Joshua trees reach toward a full moon in the Mojave Desert, as photographed by Muench for our August 1972 back cover.

ABOVE, RIGHT: When Muench made himself a subject of his photos, such as in this Petrified Forest National Park shot from our August 1951 issue, he donned a red shirt to stand out from the landscape.

www.arizonahighways.com 55 PARTING SHOT TRAVEL, LEARN & BE INSPIRED. Learn photography from the pros in amazing workshop destinations throughout Arizona and beyond. MARICOPA POINT BY ESTHER HENDERSON

n the 1950s, longtime Arizona Highways contributor Esther Henderson started writing and Iphotographing Way Out West With Esther Henderson, a weekly feature for the Tuc- son Citizen. One of our favorite install- ments featured this photograph, which is titled Maricopa Point, from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. “Jay Gaza was just about the best photographic model we ever had,” she wrote. “He was a wrangler on the mule trip down into the Canyon and, unlike a lot of other wranglers, he didn’t try to typify the West — he just did. “We never had to tell him how to stand, sit or lean; he always looked right. Only when you’ve worked with models do you understand how important a talent that is. At the Canyon, there was never light or time enough to do a lot of explaining. The fact that Jay ‘melted’ Photograph the best into natural position was the greatest advantage. of Arizona “Jay had his favorite mount, and while Canyon de Chelly, Grand it took a little maneuvering to get this Canyon, Ironwood, Jerome, long-tailed fellow’s cooperation, he, Lake Powell, Monument too, was a fine model — in Jay’s hands. Valley, Sedona, Slot Canyons, What we wanted wasn’t so easy. White Pocket “Even a man’s horse-sense tells him it’s a long drop off the rim; a horse’s horse-sense forbids him the rim. You wouldn’t believe the number of appoint- and beyond ments made and broken because of Alaska, California, Canada, weather; time and again Jay galloped Italy, New Mexico, forth during his free time only to find Switzerland, Texas, Utah, too few or too many clouds over the Vermont, Washington, location. Wyoming “On our third rendezvous this picture was taken just minutes before the storm broke; Jay galloped back to El Tovar in a driving rain. What price pictures? Plenty wet shirts.”

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