PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY M. GOLDWATER

Photographs by BARRY M. GOLD WATER THE ARIZONA HIGHWAYS COLLECTION

A Portfolio Edited by ROBERT STIEVE and ALISON GOLDWATER ROSS Photographs Courtesy of the BARRY & PEGGY GOLDWATER FOUNDATION

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George Avey, Arizona Highways' longtime art director, would sometimes work with Barry by cropping his photographs and printing them in black and white. This image, which first appeared on page 9 of our June 1940 issue, is one of them. "That's one of my better pictures," Barry said. "That was taken back in 1938 at an Indian fair near Window Rock. That's an old Navajo. His name is Charlie Potato, and I guess I must have printed maybe 5,000 of those and sold them and given them away. I have it in color and in black and white. I don't speak Navajo, and he didn't speak English. So he was just sitting there, and I just picked the camera up and took the picture, gave him a cigarette and that was the deal."

"You get frustrated all the time," Barry said. "You always think, That ought to be a good picture. You develop it and find that the exposure wasn't exactly the way it should be. But with black and whites, you can compensate for that." It's impossible to know how much, if any, compensation was necessary for this image, which is titled Totem Pole & Yei Bichei, 1967, but the final product ranks as one of the most impressive photographs in the photographer's extensive archive.

FELIZ NAVIDAD

This is the festive season, the season of family and friends, the season of home and fireside. This is the season when, if we are wanderers in the world, we think of familiar faces and familiar places, and our thoughts travel the intervening miles. The wounds and sorrows of War are fresh and vivid, but as the Yuletide approaches and the New Year comes we enter the season cheered with the hope that our world will be a better and happier place for all. We who are fortunate enough to be living in this blessed land, this rich, strong America, are grateful and humble for the blessings bestowed upon us. Let there be happiness in the land and good cheer!

In keeping with the festive season, Arizona Highways appears this month in festive dress. We have tried to make the pages gay and colorful and friendly, because through these pages we in Arizona are saying "Merry Christmas!" to all the world. It may or may not be an achievement, but as far as we know this is the first time in American publishing history that a magazine of general circulation appears completely illustrated from "cover to cover" in color. (That loud "crick" you just heard is a sprained elbow caused by patting ourselves on the back.) If an average of five people reads each copy of this, the December issue of our magazine, 1,125,000 people will be the happy family of Arizona Highways for one month at least. Which is quite a gathering of folks!

It was a cold, raw winter day deep in the Navajo Reservation when Barry Goldwater took the picture we use on our cover. The snow clouds were low over Navajo Mountain and the little Navajo girls, watching their sheep, were wrapped in their blankets against the wind. The whole scene is real and simple. You would have found the same simplicity many, many years ago in a place called Galilee.

So we leave you now to our December pages, thanking you for your friendship and good will and wishing you and yours all the good things in life, a Merry Christmas, or as they say south of Nogales, "Feliz Navidad," and a Happy New Year, full of sunshine and good traveling.

"The cover of the very first all-color issue Arizona Highways published [December 1946] was a picture of mine," Barry said. "Ray [Carlson] asked me to shoot some Navajos in the snow, tending their sheep. 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. But I prefer shooting black and white." Although this is not the exact image that ran on our cover, it's from the same roll of film.

This is a photograph from the family archive titled Valley of the Monuments. It was made in 1967, and it epitomizes Barry's affection for his homeland: "Someone once remarked that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and there is no horizon to my vision of Arizona's beauty. My feelings about Arizona are mingled with love: love of people, love of the land, love of country."

“Barry Goldwater created some really wonderful work. It’s a testament to his love of Arizona and its people. To be photographing during his time, and in so many of the same locations – especially Monument Valley – was a real treat for me. He was very influential, encouraging and special to me so early in my career.” - DAVID MUENCH, photographer "The Navajo reservation is a fascinating place to visit," Barry said, "not only for the lessons it teaches about the Navajo's way of life, but also for the splendor of its high desert terrain and for the traces that remain of ancient Indian civilizations." This photograph, which Barry titled Navajo Maidens Working, offers a glimpse of that. "I call the girl on the right the spinner," Barry said, "because she has a spinning wheel in her hand. She spins the raw wool into threads the other girl will use to make the rug with."

"I don't necessarily use a lot of lenses," Barry said. "For portrait work... I like to use a 200 mm, because I can get away from the person and get the face without too much background trouble." In his book The Eyes of His Soul, Barry's son Michael explained that most of his father's portrait work was focused on the Hopis and the Navajos. "He respected their ways and customs to the extent that he made a deliberate effort to record their historic transition to modernity, often with mixed emotions," Michael wrote.

www.arizonahighways.com “Many years ago, I was at the head of the Rainbow Bridge trail, southwest of Navajo Mountain, preparing to take the long hike down the rugged canyon route to the great natural bridge near the Colorado River. There I met a young man who was obviously pursuing photography, as I was, and with obvious fervor. He introduced himself as Barry Goldwater of Phoenix.” This photograph, titled The Rainbow, was published in our June 1946 issue. The natural landmark had special meaning for Barry, both personally and professionally: “Edward Weston and Ansel Adams were about the best photographers we ever had,” Barry said. “Ansel and I were friends. The first time we met was up on the Navajo Indian Reservation. He was trying to get down to Rainbow Bridge [pictured], and I was trying to tell him the easiest way to get there. We remained very close throughout his life. I’ve got quite a few letters from him and a few prints that we swapped.”

In the late 1800s, the Mormon Church was looking to expand into areas of Utah beyond Salt Lake City. A scouting party, under the direction of Silas S. Smith, left Paragonah, Utah, in April 1879 to determine a route and search for a suitable place to establish the new colony. Ultimately, the party settled on a “shortcut” through what came to be known as Hole-in-the-Rock (pictured). And on January 26, 1880, the expedition consisting of 250 men, women and children; 83 wagons; and more than 1,000 head of livestock made its way slowly down the precarious road, which dropped nearly 2,000 feet with an average grade of 25 degrees.

“The canyon [pictured] is short, not over three-quarters of a mile or, at most, a mile to where it tops out. It is most difficult of ascent and descent, even on foot. I spent nearly three hours walking up and down because of my knee and my cameras. On the way down, I slipped and fell about 10 feet, landing on my belly on my camera case. Cursing appropriately, I went on, none the worse for my clumsiness.”

— BARRY M. GOLDWATER

ABOVE: "I'm trying to record the history of my state," Barry said, "so that students, 25, 50, 100 years from now, can find a picture that didn't exist when I started." RIGHT: This image, which was made in 1959 at Canyon de Chelly, is titled Navajo Man at Spring. It ran in our September 2010 issue. "Amid the stark beauty of this desert is one of the most spectacular natural wonders in the world - Canyon de Chelly National Monument," Barry wrote. “I first saw the Grand Canyon when I was about 7,” Barry wrote. “Two years later, I went down the trail to the river, and since that time I have probably walked down every available trail in the Canyon.” He also made several trips down the Colorado River. His first was in 1940. “When a man has an itch for the greater part of his life, there comes a time when scratching is inevitable,” he wrote. “This particular itch can be classed as ‘riveritis,’ and of the particular river causing the itch there could never have been any doubt — it was our Colorado.”

“If I ever had a mistress, it would be the Grand Canyon.”

Although Barry focused much of his attention on the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, he did capture other landscapes. In this photograph, which ran in our July 1944 issue, he photographed Bill Williams Mountain. The caption read: "The beauty of the Bill Williams mountain country cannot be overstressed - a quiet vacationland, a quiet retreat."

"The northern stretch of the Indian Country falls within Monument Valley," Barry wrote. “There are many, many things to be seen in the valley, where a person can spend months traveling without doubling back and see something new every hour of the day.” When we ran this image in September 2010, we asked Barry’s son Michael about his father’s attraction to Monument Valley. “Over the years,” Michael said, “Dad shot a vast series of frames of the mesas, spires and buttes that rise as much as a mile high out of the majestic valley. This image conveys both his love of the place and his technical precision at maximizing depth of field.” “We sometimes forget that Art, in any form, is a communication. Barry Goldwater has communicated his vision of the Southwest, and he deserves high accolades for his desire to tell us what he feels and believes about his beloved land. In this age of random thrust and confused directions, it is good to know that there are such dedicated people with ideas and objectives. May their tribe increase!” - ANSEL ADAMS, photographer

"To attempt to show adequately the beauties of Arizona, either by pictures or by words, has always seemed to me a task too great for man," Barry said. "Neither the lens nor the written word can show the history or the romance that adds so much to the beauties with which this state has been endowed." Two of Barry's favorite subjects were Agathla Peak (below) and Church Rock (right).

"Flagstaff's chief natural attraction, which can be seen from many places in Arizona, is San Francisco Mountain to the north," Barry wrote. "Because it has three separate peaks - Agassiz Peak, Fremont Peak and Humphreys Peak - San Francisco Mountain is commonly referred to as the San Francisco Peaks."

"This is a Navajo who lived up in the Paiute country," Barry said. "This is one of my favorite pictures. I just call it The Chief." The man's given name was Dug-ai, and this image of him was featured in our July 1952 issue, in a piece titled Land of the People. The caption read: "This aged Navajo, who is probably in his 90s, lives on the north side of Navajo Mountain. Once you step into the serene calmness of Dug-ai's hogan, you feel the great dignity and the great wisdom that all the years of calm and just living can bring to any man's home."

“I absolutely love the image of the gentleman sitting in the shaft of sun [The Chief]. From a technical perspective, the challenge of getting detail in both the highlights and the shadows was no easy task. This shows that Barry knew his craft. Also, the texture on the log wall background plays perfectly against the subject. Having spent 400 days, over two years, photographing the Navajo people, I understand some of the challenges he faced stepping into a very guarded culture. Beautifully done!”

- JOEL GRIMES, photographer

"The roads wander in aimless fashion through the limitless land of the Navajo," Editor Raymond Carlson wrote in the caption for this photograph (above), which ran in color in our August 1946 issue (right). "To keep you company over these roads are lonely Indian hogans, miles of scenery and an occasional flock of sheep. The sheep have the right-of-way." The image, which is titled The Road, offers a glimpse of what Mr. Carlson was referring to, and what life was like in the early years of the last century. "The great thing about photography," Barry said, "is that through it, I was able to enjoy my state as it was growing up, and capture some of it on film so other people could have a chance to see it as I knew it." In searching the archives, we couldn't find the color negative for this photograph, but we were able to locate the black and white version. The color image was made from a scan of our August 1946 issue.

"Outside of the work of the Kolb brothers [Emery and Ellsworth] and [Frederick Samuel] Dellenbaugh," Barry said, "my collection of pictures from Glen Canyon to the main [Grand] Canyon itself is the most complete ever taken. I don't like color too much, but I take them."

www.arizonahighways.com “After a while, I picked up a large-format view camera, one that you look down into and that takes about a halfhour to wind up. I also used a Rolleiflex, which is what I still use for black and white, and a 35 mm for color.”

"His strength, to me, was in his connection to Arizona and its Native people," photographer Paul Markow says. "A couple of times, I have gone out to shoot some of the elders of the Navajo Nation with a friend who had a Navajo trading post. I was never really trusted, even with my chaperone. So, getting that generation of Native Americans, born in the late 19th or early 20th century, to trust you is one of the hardest things to accomplish in photography. Barry was able to record a rapidly receding culture of non-Anglo-influenced Native Americans and leave behind his wonderful visual record of that time and place."

www.arizonahighways.com

"To photograph and record Arizona and its people — particularly its early settlers — was a project to which I could willingly devote my life, so that I could leave behind an indexed library of negatives and prints to those who follow."

"A good friend of mine described Arizona as the 'Big Country,'" Barry said. "This piece of the 'Big Country' is between the lumber town of McNary and the sportsman's center, Springerville. The hill in the distance is an extinct volcanic cone, one of many that dot this White Mountains area, reminding us that out of the violence of evolution has come the quiet beauty which is ours." This image, which was made in 1953, ran in our September 2010 issue.

"Many people who have never been to Arizona think of it as only a land of desert," Barry said. "Yet, two-thirds of our state is covered with forest. In fact, the largest stand of ponderosa pine in the world is in Arizona. When the snow falls, the northern portion of our state becomes a veritable winter wonderland."

In August 1968, we published this photograph. The caption read: "Inscription House is a majestic sight in its oval-shaped cave high on the cliff." That same year, the National Park Service closed the ruins to public access. "Although limited visitation takes place at Betatakin and Keet Seel, visitation damage to the extremely fragile Inscription House cannot be mitigated," an NPS statement reads.

A decade earlier, however, Barry, who also was a gifted writer, penned a piece about the ancient ruins. "Navajo Monument," he wrote, "that great area of the Navajo country in Northern Arizona which contains three of our greatest cliff ruins, is seldom visited

in its entirety because of the distances between the ruins and because of the misconception concerning the ease with which it may be done. Let's just take Inscription House for an example. Here is a great ruin located just a few miles off of a road that, while bumpy now and then, is perfectly passable, but you can number on a few hands the people who visit this place each year. It is plainly marked on the maps, but the person motoring to Rainbow Lodge just drives on past, ignoring one more wonder left by the ancients for him to see."

LEFT: "Black and white photography gives the photographer the opportunity to tone the picture," Barry said. "He can bring out the darks, he can bring out the light shades, or he can mix them up. He can compose by moving the paper around or moving the enlarger around until he gets just what he wants." In addition to the other inherent challenges, the woman in this image, titled The Old One, proved to be a reluctant subject, Barry said.

ABOVE: "I've shot a lot of landscapes," Barry said, "but I'm proudest of my Indian photography. I think I've got about as good a recording of the Indians of Arizona as has ever been done every tribe, and parts of tribes that hardly anyone's ever heard of."

RIGHT: "Saguaros are a very difficult plant to photograph... [but] I like to photograph the flowers," Barry said. "They're a night-blooming flower. They bloom at about 9 o'clock at night, and by noon the next day, they're dead. So you get up early in the morning and just get the crown. And that makes a beautiful picture. But to just take a picture of a saguaro... that's like taking a picture of a tree." Saguaros, he continued, "are a source of food and refuge for some of the animal denizens of the desert. Before they fall, much of the fruit and their seeds are eaten by birds, and the fallen fruit is food for coyotes, peccaries and mule deer. Gila woodpeckers and gilded flickers make nest holes in the stems of the saguaro, and after their young have flown away, the holes are taken over by other species of birds."

“Edward Weston was a great photographer whom I liked to imitate. I think he was probably the purest of them all. I found these old wheels while driving north of Prescott on the Old Williamson Valley Road one day in the late 1930s. I call it Westward Ho, and it is one of the most popular photographs I have ever made. It has been displayed well over 60 times in various salons around the world.”

— BARRY M. GOLDWATER

"Barry once said about his photographs: 'They have been taken primarily to record what Arizona looked like during my life.' This is how a lot of us older Arizona nature photographers feel," photographer Paul Gill says. "After witnessing decades of change from drought and other factors, we're recording the beauty of what we see around us through artistic expression for all to see now and in the future. Some of the things that Barry and I have in common: We both started working in large format with the Graflex Crown Graphic press cameras, and we were both influenced by Edward Weston."

LEFT: "There are many good courses offered around in different cities in this country that would make certain types of photography easier," Barry said. "Portrait photography is not easy. You have to study that. That involves lighting."

"My photographs have been taken primarily to record what Arizona looked like during my life," Barry said. "I intend that they be deposited with the Arizona Historical Foundation when I am no longer here to add to the collection." This photograph, titled Sheep Grazing at Mormon Lake, harks back to those earlier times. "A century ago in the Arizona Territory," Jo Baeza wrote in our November 1986 issue, "men fought and died over sheep. From Williams to St. Johns, along the Little Colorado and Puerco rivers, in saloons and on the open range, Northern Arizona was wounded by cattle-sheep wars."

LEFT: "The women used to dress up in their velvet jackets," Barry said, "and you could always tell the approximate worth of a family by the size [of the] coins she wore as buttons."

ABOVE: "I like portraits if I can find a good face," Barry once said.

“Senator Goldwater's work captures moments when the technical limitations of film were nearly insurmountable. He had to traverse roads that were mere tracks in the mud, yet he came back with images that allowed everyone to see the backcountry of Arizona. The color work suffers from the inevitable comparison to today's images that can capture a more nuanced range of light, while his black and white images appear timeless. His composition, playing diagonals into corners and using the shadow line to mimic the ridgeline, makes for a strong image. The brilliance of the clouds supplies a destination for the eye to settle.” — JACK DYKINGA, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer

Like most landscape photographers, Barry liked to shoot when the skies were cloudy: “I think any landscape is more interesting where you have large cumulus clouds - the ‘thunder bumpers,’ as we call them - and they come in the afternoon, where you can show a mountain range with the beautiful clouds behind it, or a horse, or a windmill, or a fence with the clouds. I like clouds.”

"In 1940," Barry wrote in his book Delightful Journey, "I fulfilled a lifetime ambition to explore by boat the Green and Colorado rivers." On that trip, he kept a journal. "This book of mine first assumed form as a diary scribbled and jotted each evening as we made camp; then it was published in a mimeographed edition of three hundred copies distributed privately among employees of the Goldwater store and my family. I also adapted a small portion of the text for an article that appeared in Arizona Highways in January 1941." That "short piece" of text ran 7,560 words, and the piece featured 70 of Barry's photographs from the trip. "The most remarkable thing, to me, all the way through the Grand Canyon, was that at no place did one have the feeling that one was in the world's largest canyon. Where we were able to see both rims, they would seem so far away that they looked like mountains. In fact, my impression all along, except when we were in the deepest gorges, was that we were going through a wide, deep valley."

“As a photographer one or two generations removed from Senator Goldwater, I can only judge his skills by his contemporaries. But given the times, equipment and skills necessary to get a decent photograph, he was pretty darn good. Today’s photographers stand on the shoulders of photographers such as Barry Goldwater, Josef Muench, David Muench, Ansel Adams and Jerry Jacka, men who led the way in discovering this magnificent state.”

– PAUL MARKOW, photographer

“No one has been able to identify the exact source or sources of the ‘rules’ of composition in the world of art. But I’m pretty sure they are closely linked to the shapes and structures of Earth’s natural shapes and forms in geology and biology. In Barry Goldwater’s photographs, I can see some of these natural guidelines – the curves of rock, for instance.”

– GARY LADD, photographer

There aren't many places on the Navajo Nation that Barry didn't explore. But one of his favorites, his "piece of heaven," was Rainbow Lodge, a trading post that he co-owned from 1946 until it burned down in 1951. "While Dad was flying cargo missions during World War II," Michael wrote, "Mom arranged for Dad to become a partner in the Rainbow Lodge, located at the head of the trail leading down to Rainbow Bridge near Navajo Mountain. Built by S.I. Richardson around the turn of the 20th century, the lodge was situated in one of the most remote and picturesque regions of Navajo Country." The primitive "road" in the foreground of this image led to the lodge.

"I started taking pictures as a boy, using my mother's box camera," Barry said. "But I really got serious in 1934, when my wife, Peggy, bought me a camera for Christmas. It was an Eastman 2½ x 21½ Reflex. Then Tom Bates, a portrait-photographer friend in Phoenix, taught me how to make prints in his darkroom." This photograph is titled Carrizo Creek Crossing, which refers to a place on Apache land in northern Gila County.

“Dad's belief in the value of direct experience was such that he oftentimes pulled us out of school for these trips, under the guise that we were off to study Arizona. And study Arizona we did to the extent that all four of us came to share his passion for off-the-beaten-path Arizona.” “You can go anyplace in Arizona. Anyplace,” Barry said. “From the Mexican border clear up to the Utah border, it is all photogenic. In the south, you have the desert. You have the biggest stand of pine trees in the world in the central part. We have mountains that go up to 12,000 feet. Our lowest elevation is about 50 feet. There's just no end. You can literally spend your life out there and never quite get it all.”

"The fun is getting the picture," Barry said. "You see a picture, and you take one or two or three negatives. I don't believe in taking hundreds of negatives of one subject. I take usually one or two, and if I don't get it... I don't get it. But out of that one or two, you're bound to get a picture someplace."

"Landscape photography is very simple," Barry said. "You just go out and look for something and take it." In the case of this photograph, which was featured in our July 1947 issue, he went out and found what would come to be known as Margaret Arch. Although he didn't "discover" the arch, per se, he is credited with being the first person of European descent to see and photograph the landmark, which is named for his wife, Peggy.

Barry made several photographs of Grand Falls, including one that ran in our July 1953 issue. The negative for that image could not be found, but this photograph likely was made at the same time. About the falls, in that 1953 issue, Editor Raymond Carlson wrote: "The Little Colorado, which begins its life in placid and cool springs in the White Mountains, at times becomes a rowdy and turbulent stream in its journey to the Colorado near Cameron. When rains are heavy, the stream tears up a lot of country, which it pours as silt into the Colorado. This is dramatically shown at Grand Falls, about 35 miles north of Flagstaff. When the river is full, you see a cascade of mud, which tells of the cruel cutting power of the river."

“I’ve published six books of photography and I was a salon exhibitor before World War II. And I was very active with Arizona Highways - I am the oldest photographer that they have.”

"People often ask me to recommend the best way to see the Grand Canyon or the best time to see it," Barry wrote, "meaning not only time of day, but time of year. To tell the truth, it is absolutely breathtaking and beautiful at any time and in any season. But my favorite way to see the Grand Canyon is to rise before the sun even thinks of getting up, find a seat on the edge of the rim, and just sit and watch as the light of the dawning sun begins to illuminate the rock formations in the Canyon, painting them from top to bottom."

“I have photographs I've taken in South America that I'm very fond of. I've been to the South Pole — pictures that I've taken down there that I like. But I still like Arizona better.”

"I think [photography] is art," Barry said. "I think it's becoming more art than it used to be, thanks to people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and some of the modern photographers who do art type of photography." This photograph, which is among the family's favorites, was published in our July 1949 issue. AH www.arizonahighways.com