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UC Santa Cruz Other Recent Work Title Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19j1h7b3 Authors Reti, Irene H. Locks, Norman Publication Date 2018-03-02 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks Interviewed and Edited by Irene Reti Santa Cruz University of California, Santa Cruz University Library 2018 This oral history is covered by copyright agreement between Norman Locks and the Regents of the University of California. Under “fair use” standards, excerpts of up to six hundred words (per interview) may be quoted without the University Library’s permission as long as the materials are properly cited. Quotations of more than six hundred words require the written permission of the Head of Special Collections and Archives and a proper citation and may also require a fee. Under certain circumstances, not-for-profit users may be granted a waiver of the fee. For permission contact: Irene Reti [email protected] or Regional History Project, McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064. Phone: 831-459-2847. Contents Interview History 1 Early Life: the San Francisco Art Scene of the 1950s and 1960s 5 Early Mentors and Influences 7 Aesthetic Studies at UC Santa Cruz 26 The UC Natural Reserve System 33 Tracking Back to Graduate School 40 Directing the Ansel Adams Photography Workshops 41 Working for Ansel Adams 53 Other Mentors and Colleagues 57 Teaching Photography 61 The Impact of Digital Photography on Teaching 74 The Shifting Nature of Landscape Photography 77 Photography and Spirituality 94 Showing in Japan and the Czech Republic 103 More on Teaching at the Natural Reserve System 106 Photography and Research 113 Locks Discusses his Photographic Work 120 Chairing the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz 129 A Case for Art Education at a Research University 143 Dreams for the Future 150 Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 1 Interview History Norman Locks was born in San Jose, California in 1947, but grew up primarily in San Francisco, where he attended Lowell High School. His father, Seymour Locks, was a well-known abstract painter and assemblage sculptor who taught at San Francisco State University for thirty-seven years. The San Francisco art scene [Beatnik, Abstract Expressionism, and Bay Area Figurative] shaped Norman’s early life. In this oral history conducted in March 2016 he recalled, “For me, a second generation artist, the artist was kind of normalized...I never had to question the nature of: do I want to be an artist, or what does it mean to be an artist? All of that was in my upbringing.” One of Norman’s strongest recollections is of the light shows his father organized in the attic of their home, where the musician Stanley Shaft would play the trumpet and members from the Anna Halprin group would come to the house and dance. These synchronicities of history placed Norman Locks in the Bay Area just as the West Coast Photography scene was blossoming. As a teenager, he took summer session courses at San Francisco State from Jack Welpott, who was drawn to California by the work of Edward Weston. When he was eighteen years old, he met Monterey photographer Wynn Bullock at a lecture at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bullock invited Norman to visit his home in Monterey and show him his Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 2 photographs. During those years, Locks’ parents also took him camping in the Sierra Nevada and to other favorite locations in the coastal ranges of California, awakening in Norman a deep and lifelong love for the landscapes of his home state. Norman studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he earned a BFA in photography, and then attended graduate school at San Francisco State, where he earned his MA. His career as a photography teacher began early, as he taught art classes for the De Young Museum as a teenager, and then summer session courses and then graduate courses at San Francisco State together with Jack Welpott. While in graduate school, Locks married and started a family at age twenty. He worked full time as a custodian while carrying a full-time course load. At this point, Locks focused his lens on family and domestic landscapes. In his oral history, Locks describes the fusion of influences upon his photographic work. After graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute, Locks was hired to direct the Ansel Adams Workshops in Yosemite Valley and Carmel, California. There he coordinated eleven to fifteen workshops a year, bringing in luminary photographers such as Imogen Cunningham, Robert Heinecken, Judy Dater, Minor White, and Linda Connor, as well as then-emerging photographers such as Jerry Uelsmann and Lewis Baltz. One of the richest contributions of this oral history is Locks’ detailed recollections of those workshops, as well as his reflections on the culture of West Coast photography from the 1970s to the present day. This narrative also delves both deeply and broadly into Locks’ philosophy and thoughts on his own practice of photography. Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 3 Locks’ oral history also records the evolution of photographic education at the college level. In 1978, Locks came to UC Santa Cruz at a time when there were only four FTE’s in photography in the entire University of California system. He was hired by College Five Provost Pavel Machotka to teach six photography courses a year for aesthetic studies, an innovative interdisciplinary major affiliated with College Five [now Porter College] that wove together the study of the psychology of creativity, art history, art criticism, philosophy and the hands-on mastery of the art of creative writing, film, photography, sculpture, and other modalities. Locks also managed the darkroom for aesthetic studies. In 1980, aesthetic studies was disbanded as part of Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer’s reorganization of the college system, which eliminated most of UC Santa Cruz’s college-based majors. At that point, Locks was hired as a lecturer in the art department. He struggled with the marginal position of a lecturer until 1990, when he was promoted to a tenure-track position in the art department. Even though aesthetic studies was disbanded, Locks continued in UCSC’s interdisciplinary tradition, especially in his collaborations with Ken Norris and Roger Luckenbach on the Natural History Field Quarter, and by taking his photography students on field trips to UC Natural Reserve locations in the Mojave Desert and in Big Sur. Locks chaired UC Santa Cruz’s art department twice. The final section of the oral history focuses on key developments in the art department’s history over the past several decades, covering hirings, the expansion of physical facilities, and the founding of new academic pathways within the curriculum, such as the digital arts and media program. Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 4 I conducted these interviews with Norman Locks in a conference room at McHenry Library on March 2, 16, and 30th, 2016. The transcript was returned to Locks for his editing. Copies of this volume are on deposit in Special Collections and in the circulating stacks at the UCSC Library, as well as on the library’s website. The Regional History Project is supported administratively by Teresa Mora, Interim Head of Special Collections and Archives, and University Librarian, Elizabeth Cowell. —Irene Reti, Director, Regional History Project, University Library University of California, Santa Cruz March 1, 2018 Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 5 Early Life: the San Francisco Art Scene of the 1950s and 1960s Reti: Today is March 2, 2016. This is Irene Reti. I’m here today with Professor Norman Locks and we are starting the oral history that we are doing together. We’re here at McHenry Library on the UCSC campus in the Gloria Anzaldúa Study Room. So, Norman, let’s start with where and when you were born. Locks: I was born in San Jose, California in 1947, and my extended family was all in San Jose, the family that I knew was in San Jose—my mother’s sister, her parent; my father’s family was there. But we moved from there the same year, from San Jose to San Francisco. So, while I was born in San Jose, I was really a San Franciscan and raised in San Francisco. I lived a year in one house and then moved into the house that I lived in for eighteen to twenty years, at various times. My father went to San Francisco to teach at San Francisco State University. He was a professor and hired to teach abstract painting. He had been a watercolorist in San Jose as a boy. He was sort of like the black sheep of the family. He had his first watercolors of San Jose, then after high school went to San Jose State, served in the army, and then out of the army went back and got his master’s degree at Stanford in painting. Reti: What’s your father’s name? Locks: Seymour Locks. He taught thirty-seven years at San Francisco State. He was in the Bay Area, really known now, in retrospect, as a teacher, although he had a show—sculpture and painting—with William Wiley in 1955. At that point he had Picture to Picture: An Oral History with Photographer-Teacher Norman Locks 6 moved from painting to sculpture.