Editor's Letter

I DIDN'T REALLY THINK ABOUT IT.
Like the kid at Stanford in the late ’60s who couldn’t wait for a second marshmallow, I just sent it off. Straightaway. A sneak peek. That’s not something we usually do. Usually, we keep our covers in a vault and make the photographers wait like everyone else. Not this time. The marshmallow was too tempting. So I sent a screenshot to Claire Curran with a few words about her cover being one of the best we’d ever seen. She texted back — seven days later — and said, nonchalantly, “That works,” as if I’d just handed her a fresh-baked blueberry muffin. That smells pretty good. 

“When you go into the end zone,” Vince Lombardi said, “act like you’ve been there before.” Claire Curran has been there before. So many times. She gets a lot of our covers — in January, she had the front and the back. This month, she’s up front again with an image she made at Crescent Lake in the White Mountains. I suspect she’s proud of it, but she hasn’t said so. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, Claire’s not keen on talking about herself. Or her artwork. One of the few times she opened up was back in October, when she singled out a shot of a maple leaf on the Mogollon Rim. “I think this is one of the best fall photographs I’ve ever made,” she said. “This maple branch was very symmetrical, the wind was still, a cascade formed the backdrop, and a few leaves in the creek provided added color.” 

It’s artistic and beautiful. The kind of photograph Esther Henderson would have loved. Ms. Henderson was our Claire Curran in the Golden Age of Arizona Highways. Like Claire, she was exceedingly talented and would go anywhere to make a great photograph. She made her debut in this magazine in December 1938. And got her first cover in December 1939. Her favorite photograph was an image titled The Brave Poppy. It came to her serendipitously. In 1942.
 

“One of the best poppy-blooming areas was near Bowie,” she said. “But when we got there, we found that much less rainfall had produced only scattered plants in the caked mud of a dry lake. We had come so far and had such high hopes that I was reluctant to leave without something. And so, since I couldn’t photograph an acre of poppies, I took a picture of just one growing out of a mud crack. I called it The Brave Poppy, and it was my — and some others’ — favorite picture … a picture with a message.”

Dr. J.J. McCarthy of Lakewood, Ohio, was one of the others. “The color plate entitled The Brave Poppy in your December 1949 issue is of inspirational value and may save a few lives,” he wrote. “It should be printed with the title The Will to Live and distributed for framing by some drug company to be hung in waiting rooms and clinics. It has had a good influence on several people I know who were discouraged at their progress. The print is provocative of courage and should be properly distributed.”

At the time she made the photograph, Ms. Henderson was in the early stages of a career that began with a hazing in Tucson — a psychological root canal administered by an oligarchy of unwelcoming competitors.

“When I first came to the city and applied for a license to open the photo studio,” she said, “I learned there was a law on the books requiring a newcomer to take a written examination at the courthouse, and then make a trial sitting in the studio of Al Buehman, the leading commercial photographer at that time. The examination was conducted by a board consisting of five photographers from various cities in the state. The questions were preposterous. I still remember many of them. The very first one was: ‘Define light.’ I answered, ‘Light is what enables me to see that this is a frame-up to eliminate competition.’ I answered all of the questions in a like manner and, of course, that didn’t win me any friends and greatly influenced the examining board to refuse the license.

“The whole thing smelled like burnt toast. I was mad as a stuck pig and went to a lawyer, who told me to go ahead and begin the business without a license, and to let them start an action against me. I followed that advice, produced good work, and never failed to explain to my customers that I was unable to get a license.”

Today, Esther Henderson is in the Arizona Highways Hall of Fame. Al Buehman is not. And probably never will be. Claire Curran, however, seems destined. Not that it would matter much to her. I think she’s happiest in the shadows. Walking in the footsteps of Esther Henderson. And finding her own special places along the Mogollon Rim and the shoreline of Crescent Lake. “There are no rules for good photographs,” Ansel Adams said, “there are only good photographs.” 

Claire Curran’s are good. They’re so good.