PIRKLE JONES BIOGRAPHY Noted photographer and educator Pirkle Jones died on Sunday, March 15, 2009 in San Rafael, California at the age of 95. The passing of photographer Pirkle Jones marks the end of an era. He was one of the few remaining artists who studied with Ansel Adams and became known for his exquisite black-and-white prints whose subject matter ranged from the beauty of the California landscape to the politics of the Black Panthers. Pirkle’s photographs defined the Bay Area. San Francisco skylines with the fog rolling in and cloudscapes appear. Pirkle honored the working man: grape pickers, migrant farm workers, and cattle herders. He was attracted to the abstract compositional elements he saw in construction where he photographed workers dancing with concrete and I-beams. Pirkle’s love affair with the San Francisco Bay Area began when he came through San Francisco on his way to the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he returned to San Francisco to enroll in the new photography department at California School of Fine Arts headed by Ansel Adams. This brought him into the circle of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Minor White. The creative energy of the time was electric. Pirkle met Ruth-Marion Baruch who was also a student in the photography program and a poet. They were married in 1949 at the Yosemite Valley home of Ansel and his wife Virginia. Adams said “I think that Pirkle Jones is an artist in the best sense of the term. His statement is sound and resonant of the external world as well as of the internal responses and evaluations of his personality. His photography is not flamboyant, does not depend upon the superficial excitements. His pictures will live with you, and with the world, as long as there are people to observe and appreciate.” Pirkle’s enthusiasm for art and life led him from his tenure as a student and assistant to that of a collaborator and teacher. Pirkle was a renaissance man---a master of his own ideas as well as having the gift to inspire and nurture the creativity of others. “I am not concerned about style for style’s sake. Style i s as natural as breathing. If you are true to yourself, you’ll be original.” - Pirkle Jones Jones’ life encompassed almost a century and his time in photography represented 70 years of work. Pirkle’s legacy was his ability to bring together and express the diverse elements of the world as he saw it, and to communicate his excitement and love of creativity through collaboration and inspiration. He was a great pollinator—buzzing with ideas, touching many people and spreading his infectious enthusiasm. Pirkle was “percolating” all the time. Pirkle Jones chronicled the people, politics and landscapes of Northern California. Photography historian, Nancy Newhall has written that “There are a handful of photographers who have achieved the stature of poets, and Pirkle Jones is one of them.” As Pirkle put it: “A photograph is not real. The moment we make a picture we become political.” Some of Pirkle’s outstanding contributions include: The “Death of a Valley 1956” a collaboration with Dorothea Lange, which documented the final year of the Berryessa Valley slated to be flooded upon the completion of the Monticello Dam. Published in 1960 as a single issue of Aperture magazine under the name Death of a Valley, this essay remains a powerful testament to the price of progress. “Walnut Grove 1961” a collaboration with Ruth-Marion Baruch that recorded the portrait of a dying California town. “Black Panthers 1968” a collaboration with Ruth-Marion Baruch that characterized the changing political and social upheaval sweeping across the country from the Bay Area in the Summer of 1968.. Pirkle and Ruth-Marion connected with the Black Panthers through their involvement with the Peace and Freedom Party. Their Panther photographs become the iconic face of the Panthers and carry both a significant beauty and compassion. In 2001, Greybull Press published Black Panthers, 1968 with an introduction by Kathleen Cleaver. The “Gate 5” series which documents the counter culture houseboat community of Sausalito, California during the late 60’s to early 70’s. “If one were to dissect the influence of Pirkle’s collaborators and subjects, it might be said that Ansel Adams was the key to the visual: Dorothea Lange to the political; Ruth-Marion Baruch to the intellectual: the inhabitants of Gate 5 to the interpersonal; and nature to the spiritual. Throughout his career, Pirkle’s images have met with success and recognition through an array of mediums—commercial, documentary, and “art” photography. This, perhaps is the key to the general misperception of Pirkle’s work. His is not an oeuvre that is easily classified. All the more reason to understand and celebrate it.” Tim B. Wride, Pirkle Jones California Photographs Pirkle Jones's other achievements include the Photographic Excellence Award from the National Urban League and a National Endowment for the Arts Photography fellowship. His photographs have been exhibited at museums nationwide. Jones retired from teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997; he led workshops in California, including Yosemite workshops with Ansel Adams. In 2001, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art mounted a retrospective exhibition Pirkle Jones: Sixty Years in Photography. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited Pirkle Jones and the Changing California Landscape in 2003-2004. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute. His most recent exhibition in 2009 was “Looking for Mushrooms: Beat Poets, Hippies, Funk, Minimal Art, San Francisco 1955-68” at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Jane Levy Reed completed the documentary film “Pirkle Jones, Seven Decades Photographed- From Pictorial California to the Politics of the Black Panther Party” in 2009. Pirkle lived in Mill Valley, California for over 40 years. He retired from 28 years of teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997. Upon the passing of Ruth-Marion Baruch in 1997, he established their archive and endowment at Special Collections, University Library, U. C. Santa Cruz. San Francisco Art Commission 148 Gelatin Silver Prints by Pirkle Jones and 2 by FW Quandt 3/13/2014 Exhibition Frame/ mat Condition (see Inventory Mo/ Date of Date of Dimension Dimension Variously E, VG, G, Additional attached Page/ # No. Exhibition Title Artist's Descriptive Title Day Image Print Mount Signed Titled Dated Stamp Type Stamp Inscribed F, P Comments Retail list) Published Where Plate Series H W H W paper gevaluxe velour, exhibited pencil "Section Thessaloniki, Greece Fountain at Dayton, OH archival pencil pencil III @ Record", & Rotherham, PJ-29 Bacchus, Lima, OH Museum of Art 1938 1938 14 11 overmat 20 16 verso verso etc., VG England 1938 $4,500 38, 43, dry pencil pencil PJ-143 PG. 3 Photogram #3 1949 1949 8 10 mount rvm rvm pencil "3" E $3,500 1. NMOMA, Kyoto, verso 73, 77, 1. Modern Photography & Beyond, 1987; 2. Japan 1.plate Breaking Wave, Golden pencil pencil black photographer's image in 90, 110, Picturing California A Century of Genius, 2. Oakland Museum, 418 PJ-167 SF Gate, San Francisco 1952 1968 11 14 verso verso ink stamp pencil "11" G Portfolio II, No. 1 $6,000 188 Therese Heyman, editor, 1989 CA 2. 69 pencil pencil Woman holding Savoy verso & verso & cabbage, Farmer's archival back back PJ-559 FM Market, San Francisco 1949 1960 11.25 9.75 overmat mount mount E $5,000 pencil pencil Mother and daughter verso & verso & selling beets, Farmer's archival back back Pirkle Jones California Photographs, essay by Aperture, New York, PJ-560 FM Market, San Francisco 1949 1960 11.25 9.25 overmat mount mount E $5,000 Tim Wride, 2001 NY 24 Pirkle Jones and the Changing pencil pencil California Two women in calico verso & verso & Landscape, from the back, Farmer's archival back back SFMOMA 2004 PJ-561 FM Market, San Francisco 1949 1960 10.5 8.125 overmat mount mount pencil rvm "3" E exhibition print $5,000 pencil pencil Woman carrying sack of verso & verso & collard greens, Farmer's archival back back PJ-562 FM Market, San Francisco 1949 1960 11 8 overmat mount mount pencil rvm "2" VG $4,500 Pirkle Jones and the Changing pencil pencil California Mennonite woman verso & verso & Landscape, wearing apron, Farmer's archival back back SFMOMA 2004 PJ-565 FM Market, San Francisco 1949 1960 10 9 overmat mount mount E exhibition print $5,000 Young black boy pencil pencil carrying greens, verso & verso & Farmer's Market, San archival back back PJ-566 FM Francisco 1949 1960 10.5 8.5 overmat mount mount E $5,000 Pirkle Jones and the Changing California Landscape, SFMOMA 2004 Black man carrying pencil pencil exhibition print. 1957 USIA exhibition "I three bags of corn, verso & verso & Hear America Farmer's Market, San archival back back Singing" in Berlin, W. 66, 102, PJ-567 FM Francisco 1949 1960 10.5 8.5 overmat mount mount E Germany $5,000 215 pencil pencil Nuns carrying produce, verso & verso & Farmer's Market, San archival back back PJ-569 FM Francisco 1949 1960 10.5 8.5 overmat mount mount E $5,000 Mussel bed, Point archival pencil pencil PJ-629 PL Lobos 1947 1966 9 13 overmat verso verso E $3,500 Confidential Negative by Pirkle Jones and FW Quandt 1 SFAC Gift March 2014_NEW/ Jennifer McFarland San Francisco Art Commission 148 Gelatin Silver Prints by Pirkle Jones and 2 by FW Quandt 3/13/2014 Exhibition Frame/ mat Condition (see Inventory Mo/ Date of Date of Dimension Dimension Variously E, VG, G, Additional attached Page/ # No.