Editor's Letter

It wasn’t far from Ritchie’s house to the high school. If there wasn’t too much snow, we could make it to first period in the time it took for one song. One long song. For 17 minutes and 4 seconds, we’d blast In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida from the house speakers we’d installed in the back of his Barracuda — they filled the bay beneath the wraparound rear window. We played that song so loud, so many times, I think it’s still hovering in space somewhere over the Wisconsin River.

Everyone, from the street urchins to the kids in the basement of the science building, was into that song. It was rock ’n’ roll euphoria — the definitive rock standard — but it wasn’t a big commercial hit. It only made it to No. 30 on Billboard. Seasons in the Sun, however, like a punchline in some kind of cosmic joke, made it all the way to No. 1. And stayed there for three weeks. As different as they are, those two songs have something in common: Both were recorded by one-hit wonders.

We’ve had some one-hit wonders, too. Two of the best were William Becker and Ivan Dmitri, whose work was limited to one issue each in the 1940s. Mr. Becker was a fashion photographer from New York. At the time, according to Vanity Fair, William Becker Studios, which was located in Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue Fur District, was the largest commercial photography studio in America. Somehow, Mr. Becker connected with us after a photo shoot in Navajoland.

“The unforgettable Canyon de Chelly,” he wrote, “can make you forget almost anything, including the reason you went there. When our party first headed north, we had made plans for fashion pictures to be taken against the backdrop of Arizona beauty. But from the minute we came upon its towering stone castles and subtle stone tapestries, we knew that only the majestic Canyon would command our undivided attention and homage. Nearing our destination as the sun was rising, we watched the horizon’s metamorphosis from a deep pink to a glowing yellow.”

The image, titled October in the Canyon, was made with an 8x10 Kodak View Camera. “The scene,” he said, “shows one of the brazenly colored cliffs which rise here like monuments sculptured by countless ages of rain and sun and fierce wind.”

It ran on the inside front cover of our September 1949 issue. Three years earlier, in February 1946, we ran some photos by Mr. Dmitri. When I first saw his byline, I was intrigued. Most of the names in our index are ordinary and ubiquitous: Wallace, Henderson, Roberts, Reed, McClain, Bradshaw. Ivan Dmitri was different. I’d imagined a Bolshevik revolutionary who’d defected to the United States, picked up a camera in Poughkeepsie and landed on a barstool next to our editor.

“Is that a Linhof 4x5?” Raymond Carlson might have asked. “I’m in the market for good photography.”

But that’s not how it went.

Ivan Dmitri’s real name was Levon West. Born in North Dakota, which is 5,000 miles from St. Petersburg, Mr. Dmitri made his mark as an artist in 1927. While studying at the Art Students League in New York, he drew sketches of airplanes, including The Spirit of St. Louis. After Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic, the artist sent his sketch to The New York Times. The next day, the paper used it on the front page. Like Nirvana after Nevermind, Levon West was an overnight sensation. A rockstar painter poised to add some color to the gray realities of the Great Depression. He was just getting started.

In the subsequent years, he developed an interest in cameras, too, and became a pioneer in the field of color photography. To keep his day jobs separate, he started using a more memorable name for his work in photography. And he was very good at photography. The first-ever color image to appear on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post was a shot by Mr. Dimitri — it featured a Ken doll sitting in a bright red roadster. Eventually, he did 11 covers for the Post. And three photographs for us.

“He has traveled around the world, across arctic wastes, oceans, jungles, deserts and mountains, and through many nations in order that his camera might record history in the making,” our caption reads. “But when he is in search of sunshine and sheer breathtaking scenic beauty, Ivan Dmitri comes to Arizona. This world-famous color photographer has been doing that for six years now.”

One of his photos for us was made at a strawberry stand in the Valley of the Sun.

“I was driving along a rural highway,” the photographer said, “and happened to see a palm-thatched hut in the middle of a field of strawberries. Pickers were taking the fresh-picked berries to the hut for inspection and packing. I immediately saw picture possibilities in the colorful scene. Hardly a thing had to be changed, and the result was a lovely picture.”

He was proud of all three photographs, he said, “because they’re authentic in detail, and they depict life in the Sun Country as it really is — beautiful, happy, carefree and typically American.”

For whatever reason, that was his one time in the magazine. It’s too bad, because his color photography radiates off the page — like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida blasting from the back of a Barracuda.

One-hit wonders … sometimes less is more.