Oral History Interview with Edward Dugmore, 1994 May 13-June 9

Oral history interview with Edward Dugmore, 1994 May 13-June 9 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Edward Dugmore on May 13, 1993. The interview was conducted at Edward Dugmore's home in New York by Tram Combs for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview ED: EDWARD DUGMORE MD: EDIE DUGMORE [MRS. DUGMORE] TC: TRAM COMBS Tape 1, Side A (45-minute tape sides) TC: This is an interview for the Archives of American Art, conducted by Tram Combs for the Archives with Edward Dugmore. There will be three voices on the tape. This is Tram Combs speaking. ED: This is Edward Dugmore. MD: And this is Edie Dugmore. TC: Edie is Mrs. Dugmore. She is sitting in on the interview for information that doesn’t come immediately to mind, and any disagreements about [our accuracy]. [all chuckle] Ed, tell us about your background, your family. ED: Okay, I was born in 1915. I have two brothers, approximately four years apart. Older brother and a younger brother. TC: Their names? ED: There’s Leonard, and then myself, and then Stanley is the youngest. My father came over from England, and my mother, and he was a photographer. TC: With your mother? MD: No. ED: No, he didn’t do that; that’s right. I forgot that. He was a photographer there, so when he came to this country he carried through on his photography, and I used to walk around with him when he carried his gear. He had so much stuff with his cameras. His cameras with a tripod and special things for it. And then. MD: He had to work. ED: I know. TC: Was he an amateur photographer? ED: Not necessarily, no. I still have some of the cards that he’d put out when he’d travel around on a bicycle, [all] from Birmingham—Birmingham, all through the middle country and then go right out to London—and try to sell these photographs, right then and there on the spot. TC: What kind of photographs did he make? ED: Well, most of the ones of the early days were glass plates. TC: And they were of architecture? Or landscape portraits? ED: Well, he did architecture, too, but mostly he was interested in people that would want him to take a photograph of their place. For instance, I have a photograph up there of his on the wall, which is the Heublein Tower in Connecticut. It’s on top of a mountain, and he took that for that group of men who had that tower. They put it up there; they were very wealthy people. TC: That’s the Heublein, H-e-u. ED: Yeah, the Heublein is the same as the Heublein distillers. TC: H-e-u-b-l-e-i-n. ED: That’s it, yeah. TC: Thank you. ED: And that was printed in the Hartford Current of nineteen thirty . probably ‘32 or ‘33, right in there. And it’s a rotogravure—a brownish rotogravure, in those days. And anyhow, the thing with my father was, as a photographer. He worked in different factories, like we all had to do probably in those days, but he. TC: But not in photography? ED: Well, he worked on his own photography on his own. He did things between times, like on weekends or something, he’d do that. And sometimes he would take a building, because I know buildings in Connecticut down on Main Street that were very well known. He’d take a shot of that, and that was it; he just took it on his own. And these were all glass plates. So one of the things about him was that we thought, he assumed, as I grew, well, he’d take me to the darkroom, which was the pantry. In the bathroom, the big tub, is where he printed it, where he would develop them, which is always. When I realized what we were doing. He was doing it in the bathroom because we hadn’t got any other room. He has these plates, so you couldn’t move. Pots, pans. But he said, “Now I want you to see the thing that I’m that doing.” So he’d get in the pantry. He’d have it cleaned out a bit. My mother always said, “Well, here we go again.” [chuckles] And then he’d have to put a light in there —a red light or orange light; red light—and then outside, “Don’t open the door,” and so forth, and then he’d say, “Okay, come in, Francis.” He’d call me by my middle name. And I’d go in and I’d stand there, and he’d say, “Now watch.” This is the way [it is]. [gesturing:] And in a [little lights in], and I’d watch this thing, and he’d do this with one, take it out of there with a clipper, put it in there, and then he’d say, “Now, watch this.” And I’m right there, and I watched it, and he’d get me to do this, and he kept coming up and get this images, comes right out till it’s perfect, he’d say, “Now that’s magic. That really magic. From there to there.” [patting, to illustrate] “You got that?” I’d say, “Yep.” You know, okay, and I was so exited I’d tell everybody outdoors that I saw my father make photographs that were magic, and all this stuff. But I worked with him a long time. He had me go with him some places, to these different houses, and these people were like on Prospect Avenue, on the north end, just before West Hartford. These were all wealthy men that found out that he was this photographer that was going around taking pictures of ‘em, why don’t he take some of them. So he’d go over and do that. So I’d go with him, and sometimes Leonard would do it—my oldest brother. Because he was older and he was already working somewhere. And so I’d meet all these fellows and [get, got] to know them later, you know. And anyhow, my father, between times he’d work in the Underwood . I guess, the Underwood Tool Factory. MD: Typewriter. ED: Typewriter factory, rather, and then the Pratt and Whitney small tool. And that’s where he stayed, I think, is Pratt and Whitney. He didn’t work anywhere else. That’s what he did between times. But he was also in the National Guard. He joined that thing—you know, the march and the. But my mother, she saw me drawing. She saw my drawings. I still have some of what she did. TC: How early did she. ED: Oh, this is very early, when I was very young, just I’d make some. TC: How young? ED: I don’t know. I had to be. What was it? MD: Well, you had one on the wall that you did when you were eight. ED: That’s nine or eight, is when that. MD: Yeah. ED: But I had done other drawings, but I just, with a pencil or anything, I’d just draw anything, whatever I thought of—a squirrel or anything. I didn’t look at anything; I just remembered it and said, “I’ll draw it.” And so she was the one who saw that, and then as time went on, by the time I went to. All the jobs I had, you know! I worked in all those places. My father wanted me to work in a factory. I said no. He says, “You’ve got to work in a factory.” So I had to work in a factory to get the money to help pay the bills. But my mother said, “No, he’s going to go to an art school.” And my father said, “Oh, no, he isn’t. He’s going to be a photographer. There’s more money in photography. There’s nothing in an art school.” You know, nothing in [painting, paying]—art—for him. So, okay, before that. My mother was a seamstress—at home—and she would make all these clothes for people around the neighborhood, or she was in all these lodges. People went to a lodge, and they’d live in a lodge. I mean, they’d join a lodge of whatever it was. She was in the Royal Neighbors of America. My father was in all of them. He said, “You have to go to these because this is where you can get people to know you, and they’ll be able to get you a job. You know, all of those things. Which I saw, yes, but it didn’t bother me any at the time. And so my mother said one day, she said, “You know, Francis, they have a thing they call the Civilian Conservation Corps.” TC: That’s CCC. ED: Yeah, the CCC. And then so she said, “I think maybe you could go there.” I said, “Well, what is it?” And she told me, and I said, “Oh! Great! I’d like to go there.” It was forestry, and I liked forestry.

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