FROM COVER TO COVER

DAVID MUENCH made it look easy. Too easy.

Like Mozart and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, he was born to become a superlative, but no one expected it so quickly. Or so easily. Not even his father, the legendary photographer Josef Muench, who’d invited his teenage son to tag along on a trip to Arizona Highways in the early 1950s. They were there to see Raymond Carlson, the omnipotent editor who turned no-names into household names. As Harold Ross did with E.B. White and James Thurber.

After poring over what might have been hundreds of 4x5 transparencies made by the elder Muench, Mr. Carlson turned to the son. “As soon as you make a good picture, I’ll publish it,” he said. And so he did.

“He put one on the cover from that very first visit,” David Muench says. The cover.

With hindsight, it was an unremarkable photograph compared with what he’d eventually create. Nevertheless, in January 1955, his image, titled Saguaros, appeared on the front cover of a magazine that circulates around the world. In the caption, the prodigy described his unprecedented debut: “Ever since my first visit to Arizona, when I was 6 years old, these big desert fellows have spelled exciting scenery to me. This grouping, backed by towering clouds, west of Tucson, was one of the first pictures I took on
Ektachrome with my Speed Graphic.”

When you’re David Muench, that’s how you get a cover. For Willis Peterson, it wasn’t so easy.
 

IN THE EARLY 1950S, Willis “Pete” Peterson was working as a staff photographer for The Arizona Republic, earning $50 to $60 a week. Like most of his colleagues, he started freelancing to help make ends meet. Among other assignments, he was hired by Ebony magazine to photograph Willie Mays’ wife during spring training games — his job was to capture her reacting to one of her husband’s spectacular outfield catches. What he really wanted, though, was to work for Arizona Highways.

“The tantalizing thought of shooting for the magazine sent me down a different fork in the road,” the 96-year-old photographer says today. “I began to spend more camera time in the desert.”

Around the same time, in 1950, Walt Disney Studios came out with a full-length film called Beaver Valley. After Pete, as he likes to be called, saw the movie with his mother, she suggested to her son that he could do something similar. He gave her all kinds of reasons why he couldn’t do something similar, but, subconsciously, the Disney documentary stayed with him.

A year later, he found himself camped along the South Fork of the Little Colorado River near Greer. While Pete was “swatting riffles with a fly rod” one day, a “crusty-looking fellow” named Barney Borneman introduced himself and said he was up there to survey the beaver population.

Pete, with his mother’s words still ringing in his head, had a thought: I think beavers working on their dams would make great photographs. Maybe my mother was right. Maybe I could do something similar.

So, he worked out the logistics with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and eventually returned to the river, where he made dozens of wildlife photographs. Later, back in Phoenix, he told Roberta, his girlfriend at the time (they’re married now, and have been for 66 years): “I’m going to try to get the story into Arizona Highways.”

“I put all of the color shots in order, with captions,” Pete says. “I wrote a three-page sketch of the whole operation, with facts about beavers. Well done, I thought. Armed, I walked into Editor Raymond Carlson’s office at the appointed time and introduced myself. He laid out the transparencies on the light table. I could tell he really had an interest in the story. Then he shuffled all of my stuff together and said: ‘This isn’t complete. You have just a start. You need a definitive story. Come back later and we’ll see what we can do.’ ”

Dejected, Pete left. Then, a few months later, on February 27, 1952, he got a letter from the editor: “I think there are great possibilities in the beaver story. I am retaining all of your black and whites and three colored pictures, one of which we will use, but we do not know which one. We propose to have this article, by you, in our August issue. I would like to have, however, more information about the beaver. The article, now, is loosely done, telling merely of the moving of beaver from one stream to another. I would like to know such things as this: 1) Are there are lot of beaver in Arizona? 2) What are the laws of protecting them? 3) How old do they get? Also, more about their life habits in general to fill in the article you have. I would like to know as soon as possible if you can do this for me, so I can know now what to plan for our August issue.”

The next time they met was in January 1953.

“I handed the new manuscript to Mr. Carlson with some trepidation,” Pete says. “But the smile on his face as he read the first page said more than words. ‘Well, now,’ Mr. Carlson said. ‘We have a real beaver story.’ He turned over a couple more pages, looked over at me and said, ‘We’ll take it from here.’ ”

The story and accompanying photographs were published in the May 1953 issue. Not August.

“I first saw the magazine displayed in Sam’s Cigar Store on Central Avenue in Phoenix,” Pete says. “I gasped. There it was, my beaver picture, on the cover. I said to no one in particular, ‘I wrote this story.’ A couple standing next to me looked over, shrugged their shoulders and moved away. I bought two issues.”

 

OUR PREMIERE ISSUE is lined with dust, but there’s enough magic sprinkled in to get a glimpse of what Arizona Highways would become in 1938 under the guidance of Raymond Carlson. Our Professor Dumbledore. The wizard with a supernatural typewriter.

Before him, though, very little is known about the magazine’s editorial process. Therefore, we have no idea how Vincent J. Keating, our first editor, chose the image for our initial cover in April 1925. Much less what the photographer, who wasn’t credited, was thinking when she or he made the photograph. We do know, however, that the magazine ended up with a “scenic landscape” on the cover. And that theme continued.

“In striking contrast to our cover picture of last month showing scenery along the Prescott-White Spar Forest Project,” Mr. Keating wrote in May 1925, “the cover page for this issue is a picture of one of the prettiest bits of scenery in the Salt River Valley in Maricopa County. The picture shows a paved road — North Central Avenue — looking south toward Phoenix. Beautiful trees line each side of the highway, and looking closely between the trunks of the trees one can simply discern olive trees, and the orange and grapefruit groves just off the highways. This road is one of the scenic drives about Phoenix. The photograph is the work of Ralph A. Hoffman.”

At most magazines in the 1920s, including Arizona Highways, photography was primarily black and white. And that monotone look was still prevalent when Raymond Carlson took over in 1938. The magazine wasn’t awful, but he envisioned something more. In his July 1938 column, he used his magic typewriter to spell it out: “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.”

A few years later, in August 1942, we featured a Navajo woman on the cover. There’s no record of the photo shoot itself, but we did learn a little something about the woman from Mr. Carlson’s column, which was muddled with presumption and not-so-subtle
commentary.

“May we introduce you to a charming person who lives in Monument Valley,” he wrote. “Her portrait, which adorns our cover page this month, was made by Joseph Miller, who has quite a knack with portraits. We can’t give you her Navajo name, but translated it means: ‘Old Man Left Hand Son’s Wife.’ This young Navajo woman is the mother of two children, and she lives the simple life of her people, tending her flock, weaving her blankets, looking after the comfort and happiness of her family. She has a beauty you don’t find in jars of cold cream and lotions or in the inner and mysterious recesses of beauty shops. She has never been touched by the magic of cosmetics; no hairdresser has ever worked the wonders of the permanent wave on her hair; no manicurist’s cunning has ever transformed her strong, busy hands. She doesn’t breathlessly await each month those wonders of wonders, Vogue and Harper’s and Bazaar, to tell her how perfectly stunning and alluring she’ll look in a nightmare created by some silly French seamstress for sillier people. None of these things matter much to her. And while it may sound wholly impossible and fantastic, she manages to be happy without them.”

The Navajo people and their homeland were among Raymond Carlson’s favorite cover subjects. He returned again in the mid-1940s.

“Ray asked me to shoot some Navajos in the snow, tending their sheep,” Barry Goldwater said — when he wasn’t politicking, Mr. Goldwater was an avid photographer. “This was in late February 1946, and I told him he was out of his head, that it never snowed on the reservation in springtime. So I said I’d try to get something the next year. But, as it happened, I was up at the trading post [Rainbow Lodge] near Navajo Mountain the next week, and when I woke up one morning, there was about 2 feet of snow all over everything. So I ran down the road about 3 miles and got my picture. Just what he wanted.”

“It was a cold, raw winter day deep on the Navajo Reservation when Barry Goldwater took the picture we use on our cover,” Mr. Carlson wrote in his December 1946 column. “The snow clouds were low and the little Navajo girls, watching their sheep, were wrapped in their blankets against the wind. The whole scene is real and simple.”

Of all the milestones in this magazine’s history, that issue is among the most significant. In addition to having Mr. Goldwater’s beautiful photograph on the cover, it was the world’s first all-color issue of a nationally circulated consumer magazine — we beat National Geographic, Life, The Saturday Evening Post ... we beat them all. And even though the all-color format didn’t become standard until January 1986, the popularity of the magazine took off after World War II, and Arizona Highways began what many consider to be its golden era. The 1950s.
 

“WRAPAROUND COVERS,” as the name implies, are created when a single, horizontal photograph is used on both the front cover and back cover of a magazine. The right half of the image is printed on the front. The left half goes on the back. Wraparounds are inherently rare in publishing, because the back cover of a magazine is its most valuable piece of real estate for advertisers — that’s where the most expensive ads usually go. Because Arizona Highways has limited ad space, and no ads ever appear on the back cover, we have the option of running a wraparound whenever the right image comes along.

That’s what happened in September 1950, when Raymond Carlson and George Avey, the magazine’s longtime art director, saw Mike Roberts’ photograph of Sitgreaves Pass, near Kingman. The image, titled Sentinel of the Pass, shows “a concrete ribbon” — a segment of Historic Route 66 — wending its way through the pass.

“Twenty-five years ago,” Mr. Roberts said, “I rode a motorcycle — tied together with baling wire — up the Pass. The trip from Kingman to the top, around 30 miles, consumed most of the day, as the ride across the desert had put the cycle on its last legs, and the narrow, dusty graveled road was a far cry from the present hard surfaced highway. This being the first time I had traveled this road since I ‘carried’ the cycle up the Pass a quarter of a century ago, I couldn’t resist stopping at the top and having a look. The view intrigued me, for nostalgic reasons perhaps, and the back light on the cholla cactus fascinated me. So, I went back to the car for the camera and made the picture.”

We hear a lot about sudden inspiration from photographers. Like hobos in a boxcar, they ride for hundreds of miles at a time, watching the landscape scroll past as they chase after the sunset. Eventually, there’s a chance they’ll see something they haven’t seen before. For Fred Ragsdale, that chance came along on the Mother Road.

“We were returning from the east end of the state on ‘66,’ ” he said, “and as we neared the San Francisco Peaks, we could see that up toward the Grand Canyon there appeared a fine formation of clouds, and though it was getting along in the day, I just couldn’t resist the urge to turn off on U.S. 89 and head north. After all, what’s a couple hundred miles extra in a photographer’s day if he smells something good. I have visited the Canyon too many times to record, but I was still without a rainbow scene in my collection.

“As we came up to Desert View Watchtower at the east end of the park, I was pretty sure from the way the clouds were moving off from the North Rim that the Canyon was due for a shower, and if I could just get far enough west, fast enough, so that the sun was behind me, I just might have my rainbow!

“I had the location in mind for a rainbow picture for some years — the often-photographed juniper a couple miles south of the El Tovar Hotel on the Rim drive — and so I didn’t dally along the 25 miles I still had to go. Sure enough, when I reached the spot, one fine old cloud obligingly pulled the zipper right over the middle of the Canyon, and there was my picture. I feel the trip was worth the trouble.”

The image, titled Canyon and Rainbow, made it onto our cover in June 1951. The next year, serendipity would help facilitate another photograph. This time, down in the desert.

“It always seems to me that a saguaro has too many blossoms to properly photograph,” Esther Henderson said of her January 1952 cover. “When this sparsely blossoming plant was found, the camera was quickly set up. Only then did I notice the other tall, straight saguaro in the background. The appearance of that plant, I felt, would add interest to the picture. Because a good wind was coming up and the heavy arm swayed gently, I used a faster exposure than would otherwise have been desired.”

Of course, providence is unpredictable. Like the flip of a coin, or the exact moment when an isolated atom of radium-226 will decay into radon. And so, getting a great image usually involves a lot of work. Anyone with the means can own the best equipment, but the best photographers are those who visualize their images and do the legwork to pull them off.

Among other things, a determined photographer will scout a location repeatedly to figure out the best way to make the shot. Where to stand, which lens, time of day, time of year ... there are many variables. Weather is another consideration. Mr. Ragsdale got lucky with his zipper cloud, but knowing the weather patterns, and taking advantage of technology, can be the difference between ho-hum and holy moly.

In addition to possessing the specialized skills of a photographer, geographer and meteorologist, a basic understanding of diplomacy can come in handy, too. Hubert A. Lowman learned that while scouting locations around Hoover Dam for our February 1954 cover. Turns out, the federal government is very protective when it comes to concrete monuments.

“I found this out,” Mr. Lowman said, “as I prowled over the barren, rocky hills on the Nevada side of Black Canyon, attempting to find a spot other than the familiar Nevada View Point from which to take this picture. After being questioned and investigated, I was allowed to proceed, but only with a uniformed guide at my elbow. My goal — the hill opposite the switchyard, from the summit of which sprouted the flagpole during construction days — is certainly innocuous enough, and I am afraid my guide became bored with his assignment before I completed the long exposures. Inasmuch as the lake and desert mountains behind the dam are invisible after dark, and some detail in this area was necessary, the shot was made at dusk.

“Setting up when it was still light enough to compose the composition on the ground glass, I waited until the light had failed to the point where the light meter indicator moved only to the first mark — 0.2 on the Veston Master with the baffle open — then opened the shutter with the diaphragm set at f/16. Using a film speed of 8 for Daylight Ektachrome, an exposure of 2 minutes was indicated; although, previous tests had proven 10 minutes was necessary to properly expose the floodlighted dam. Natural light was failing so fast by then, however, that I figured correctly that the extra time required to build up the floodlighting to nighttime brilliance would not build up the background scene enough to destroy the nighttime effect.

“Demonstrating how much difference a few minutes make in such a situation, I began to expose another film immediately after I had completed the first 10-minute exposure — I could only guess whether or not the background was overexposed on the first exposure — but just those few minutes later, the background remained too dark to reproduce on the second film. I chose to use Daylight type film in this spot, rather than use film balanced for artificial light, feeling it was important to register the blues and purples of the approaching night accurately, and that the resulting warm tones in the floodlighting would add good color contrast to the scene.”

His photograph, titled Hoover Dam by Floodlight, is the epitome of hard work. That’s one of the reasons Mr. Lowman was among Raymond Carlson’s favorite photographers, along with Esther Henderson, Josef Muench, Chuck Abbott and Ray Manley. Another favorite was Ansel Adams, who made his Arizona Highways debut in March 1946. By that time, he was already considered one of the world’s great landscape photographers. But he was new to our world, and in the years that followed, Mr. Adams and Mr. Carlson would develop a deep friendship and a mutually beneficial professional relationship. In April 1954, we put one of Mr. Adams’ favorite Arizona subjects on the cover of the magazine. The photo is titled Mission San Xavier del Bac — Moonrise.

The San Xavier shoot was the first of several big projects that Mr. Adams would work on for us. “On this happy occasion, it is our pleasure to present in these pages the story of San Xavier,” Mr. Carlson wrote. “Ansel Adams, with his sensitive camera, and Nancy Newhall, with her deft prose, have joined their talents to portray in all of its romance and all of its beauty the White Dove of the Desert. As far as we know, this is the most complete coverage of this engrossing subject that has ever been done. At least this humble publication has never told the story of San Xavier so well before.”
 

AS MUCH AS WE'D LIKE to have a filing cabinet filled with detailed accounts of every photo we’ve ever published, those memoirs don’t exist. Most of what we know is pieced together from magazine excerpts and random interviews. And, sometimes, we hear from the cover subjects themselves. Sometimes, it’s a year or two later. And sometimes, as in the case of Mark Jepperson, it’s five decades down the road.

In March 1960, he was featured on our cover with his sister — their father, Dick Jepperson, had made the image. “What I remember about that photo of Sabino Canyon was the sand going though my toes and sandals,” Mark said, “and how I wanted to jump into the lake in the worst way. I have so many pleasant memories of Sabino Canyon. My father discovered the magic of this place and he showed it to me at a very young age. I’ve carried on the same values he gave me — appreciating the beauty and the struggle that this precious ribbon of water in the desert presents.”

In the case of Carlos Elmer, the story behind his cover in July 1968 comes from a conversation he had with Raymond Carlson. The photo, titled Desert Mountains Surround a Desert Lake, features Lake Mohave, a reservoir not far from Mr. Elmer’s hometown of Kingman, Arizona.

“I shall long remember this day,” he said, “when my father and I took a leisurely drive across the broad Sacramento Valley, through Union Pass in the Black Mountains, and then down ‘to the river,’ as he always used to call it, even after most of the country’s border was composed of man-made lakes, rather than the Colorado River. It was a happy day. The air was balmy, and a special cloud, one fabricated just for photographers, was present in just the right spot over the lake.”

Although most of our covers have featured photographs, we have used some artwork up front. Charles M. Russell, Peter Hurd, Ted DeGrazia, Olaf Wieghorst, Ed Mell, Amery Bohling ... an elite group of artists have a seat at our round table. Another club member is Larry Toschik. In May 1970, his painting of a Gambel’s quail made it onto our cover. The story behind the artwork isn’t especially interesting — he didn’t rile the feds while painting the bird — but it illustrates how one thing can lead to another.

“The cover portrait is a stepping stone painting,” Mr. Toschik said. “From this study, the concept for the picture on the center spread came into being. It was about a two-year metamorphosis. It crystalized one spring morning when I took my wife, Ceil, to a waterhole I had found in the desert — several days before I discovered this nursery of quail. Several broods pattered their way through the ground thickets to do all the necessary, busy things that quail seem to have to do. We spent several memorable hours in quiet, close observation, and out of this grew the painting titled The Soft, Sweet Sound of Spring. It’s a reminder of the marvel of contrasts ... such tender creatures surviving in a hostile environment ... a kind of a comment on our own course of life.”

In his editor’s letter, Raymond Carlson put the artist’s work in perspective.

“As we close these pages, our radio is blaring out more trouble in Vietnam and increasing unrest in Laos and Cambodia. It is reassuring, for us at least, to spend a few extra moments to contemplate the works of Larry Toschik, with which we are much concerned herein: the gentle world of Nature and some of the gentle creatures found in Arizona’s sunny and expansive portion of that Nature’s world. Those of us who live in Arizona can be happy that ours is a place where the deer and antelope still play. Happily for us, there is a wilderness beyond where the paved road ends, a wilderness inhabited by beautiful and fascinating birds and animals, all of which add a richness to our lives.”

Although geopolitics didn’t have a direct effect on the content of that issue, global events a few years later absolutely would shift our direction. In October 1973, Arab oil producers cut off exports to the United States as a way of protesting American military support for Israel, which was at war with Egypt and Syria. The embargo led to inflated gas prices and long lines at gas stations. In addition to making it more expensive to produce stories, the gas shortage devastated the tourism industry and, subsequently, the mission statement of this magazine. In response to what was happening, Joseph Stacey, the man given the unenviable task of taking over as editor for Raymond Carlson, began looking for content beyond traditional travel journalism. And he found it.

Known today as the “turquoise issue,” the January 1974 edition was dedicated entirely to the history and culture of turquoise jewelry, and some of the talented Native Americans who fashioned it.

“We started with a nucleus of turquoise,” Mr. Stacey wrote. “At this time of year, scarcely a day goes by without someone calling or writing seeking information about turquoise ... where are the best sources? What is the best turquoise? How much should I pay for this? Or how much can I get for that? We regret that we are not able to make mention of all the fine, reliable, dependable and deserving dealers engaged in the industry. We designed our presentation to depict examples of the best known types and classes.”

Despite the disclaimer, that issue holds the distinction of being the biggest-selling issue in the history of Arizona Highways — it was reprinted three times and sold more than a million copies. The cover shot, which was made by Neil Koppes, features a piece of art titled Last of the Herd. The buffalo skull is adorned with 9,000 carats of turquoise.
 

THE “SPORTS ILLUSTRATED JINX” is an urban legend that goes back to its first issue in August 1954, which featured Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves on the cover. As legend has it, players or teams who appear on the cover are sometimes doomed to some run of bad luck. Whether it’s supernatural, or just coincidence, over the years, an exceptional number of sports stars who have appeared on the cover have been subsequently sidelined with injuries or have struck out in some other way.

There’s no voodoo swirling around our covers, but there have been a few “scandals” in our 95 years, including the “John Wayne cover” in January 1992. There were a couple of things that steamed our readers, both of which were related to what’s generically referred to today as Photoshop.

“My recollection is that we had several discussions about digitally removing the cigarette from John Wayne’s right hand,” says Peter Ensenberger, who was our director of photography at the time. “Bob Early, who was editor, was concerned about the magazine being viewed as endorsing smoking if we left it in. I tried to make the point that most people understood that Wayne died of lung cancer, so it would be, in effect, an anti-smoking statement if we left the cigarette in. Additionally, I was uncomfortable with using the technology available to substantively alter a photo without telling the readers. However, Bob decided to go with his gut feeling — to remove the cigarette and not tell the readers we’d done it. Later, he publicly admitted what happened, but I don’t remember there being much reaction to the removal. I think most readers never knew about it.

“That said, there was a stronger reaction from our readers for colorizing the black and white photo of John Wayne. And, of course, there was plenty of staff discussion in advance of that decision, too. We wanted to make a splash with that issue, announcing the permanent expansion of the magazine from 48 pages to 56. Bob felt that a black and white photo on the cover wouldn’t have the gravitas necessary for such an important issue. We considered other options, such as tinting the black and white, or choosing a different photo, but, ultimately, we hired Bill Timmerman to add the color treatment. In the photo credit, we described the cover as a ‘photo illustration,’ which covered us for the hand-colored treatment and the cigarette removal.”

That explanation, however, wasn’t enough for some of our readers.

“Your January issue is a disgrace to the name of your fine magazine,” wrote Susan Donnell Konkel of Portland, Maine. “A publication that has for so many years had consistently magnificent photography resorting to ‘colored’ black-and-white photos? I’m very happy my parents, who I believe were charter subscribers, are not alive to see this shabby issue.”

It’s not a stretch to say that her parents wouldn’t have been happy with our August 1999 issue, either. Internally, we refer to it as the “swimsuit issue.” By Sports Illustrated standards, however, it was tame — even a Land’s End catalog is more suggestive. Nonetheless, it caused an uproar. In a subsequent explanation, Mr. Early wrote: “Television stations, talk radio and the newspapers wondered how this venerable publication could dare to put a swimsuit-clad woman on the cover. Never mind that it was a conservative photo, suggesting nothing but playing in a waterfall.”

Readers were uncomfortable, too. In a letter to the editor, Bud Lofvenborg of Prescott wrote: “Just a thought for you. Please let’s keep Arizona Highways as beautiful as it has been for years and leave the girls in swimsuits off the front cover.”

But what the media and Mr. Lofvenborg failed to understand was that swimsuit covers weren’t unprecedented in Arizona Highways. In June 1939, Raymond Carlson ran a shot of three women wearing bathing suits on the inside front cover. What’s more, the “risqué” shot in 1999 appeared on newsstands only. Subscribers got a G-rated cover, which featured the waterfall without the “prurient temptation.” It was like a Rochefort 10 without any gluten. By the way, in magazine jargon, what we did that month is called a “split cover.” One image for subscribers, another for newsstand buyers.

Our most recent flare-up, in October 2013, launched a civil war. Of sorts. At a glance, the cover photo by Derek von Briesen seems benign. Rocks, trees, autumn leaves, a waterfall. What caused a stir wasn’t the image, but rather the tongue-in-cheek cover line. Turns out, some folks in Vermont — all 623,657 of them — weren’t crazy about the words: “Autumn in Arizona & Why It’s Better Here Than It Is in Vermont.” Among the many calls we took was one from the governor’s office in Montpelier. That’s what got the attention of the Associated Press. After that, the story went viral. Even Time magazine weighed in: “It’s a leaf-peeping smackdown. A magazine promoting tourism in Arizona (yes, Arizona) is boasting that its foliage season is better than Vermont’s.”

The best response, though, came from our former colleagues at Vermont Life, which was one of the great regional travel magazines in the country — sadly, they shut down in 2018 after 72 years of preeminence. To their credit, they counterpunched with a mocked-up cover about one of their state’s scenic wonders. The cover line read: “Gorges in Vermont & Why Quechee Gorge Is Grander Than the Grand Canyon.” It was a brilliant comeback to a feud that never really was.
 

WHEN WE ASKED ED MELL if he’d be willing to create a piece of fine art for our 90th anniversary cover in April 2015, the world-renowned painter said: “I’d love to. As an Arizona native, it’s one of those ‘bucket list’ things. I did the Centennial stamp for Arizona, too.” As excited as he might have been, we were ecstatic. To have an artist of his caliber — someone who was born and raised in Phoenix — create an original work of art for our 90-year retrospective was more than we could have hoped for.

For our 95th anniversary, we selected a cover image by Eliot Porter, whom The New York Times called “the Ansel Adams of color photography” and the Metropolitan Museum of Art described as the “preeminent pioneer and innovator who first gave credibility to color photography as a fine art medium.” The photo, which was made in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, first ran in our July 1987 issue. Peter Ensenberger, our photo editor at the time, worked on that portfolio.

“I met Mr. Porter at his home near Santa Fe,” Pete says, “and his first words to me were ‘Please, call me Eliot.’ This diminutive man, a giant in his field, endured my naiveté with a mentor’s patience as we pored over his images. We talked at length about his scientific approach to nature photography and the importance of wilderness.”

He was well qualified to talk about both. In addition to his stature as one of the greatest landscape photographers in the world, Mr. Porter spent 10 years teaching microbiology at Harvard, where he also earned a medical degree. He set all of that aside, however, to document nature around the world, from China to Antarctica to Glen Canyon, a place he photographed on many river trips, including one he took with Georgia O’Keeffe.

“I take pictures because I’m interested in photography,” he said. “It’s the satisfaction of photography itself. I take pleasure from it.”

That’s true of all the best photographers. We know that because, for 95 years, we’ve had the pleasure of publishing the works of so many of them, from Ralph A. Hoffman in the dark ages to Esther Henderson, Ansel Adams and David Muench in the golden era to Eliot Porter today. On behalf of Vincent J. Keating, Raymond Carlson and all of the other esteemed editors who have had the privilege of serving as caretaker of Arizona Highways, thanks for joining us. We hope you’ll stick around. We’d love to have your company in 2025.