A Very Special Kind of Photographer

Arthur A. Dailey... A Very Special Kind of Photographer

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”-HENRI CARTIER BRESSON, one of the world's foremost photographers.

Photography and photographs are with us and around us from cradle to bier. We'll leave that statement for you to contemplate upon at your leisure because here we are concerned with a very special individual who stands apart even in his very special group of photographers who regardless of their time or modus operandi can be classified as fine art photographers.

In the hands of the truly great photographers, the camera is something more than a mechanical device for recording an image. Through the mind of certain photographers the camera is indeed a medium of artistic expression to be considered in relation to other art forms. Today, museums once categorized as classical institutions are exhibiting photography, and the enthusiastic response from critics, photographers, the press and the public has been rewarding to all.

My first exposure to the photographs of Arthur A. Dailey was at the Phoenix Art Museum less than a year ago. In gallery people's parlance, the exhibit was beautifully hung, and as I walked into the room the walls seemed to come alive with a dreamy, misty kind of action. This must be what the kids refer to as “turning you on.” Here, for the first time in my life, I felt the face-to-face impact of what fine art in photography really does to the senses. And I state this without discrediting or disparaging the fine photography I've seen at the Museum of Modern Art, and hundreds of prints by masters such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White and others of that stature, whose works I had seen for the most part in black and white prints, each a masterpiece in itself.

Arthur Dailey's show was something else. Here was a visual presentation of 16 x 20 prints in full color . . . an entire room full of masterful prints . . . you just had to come up for a close look to convince yourself they were not paintings. Our day was made, for we had come upon a new name, a great talent and a subject most of our readers would welcome and appreciate.

Arthur A. Dailey was a very special photographer from his very first camera, a pre 1920 Kodak Hawkeye . . . the cheapest camera the company made, and the only one Arthur could afford after graduating from the University of Illinois. His first job was in the advertising department of Eastman Kodak Company. One day, as young Arthur was showing his pictures to some of his co-workers, one of the company's top execu-tives saw them and was so impressed with the prints that Dailey was assigned to work with the company's best photog-raphers and technicians from whom he received the finest training available to anyone at the time.

He left Eastman Kodak to enter the field of photo journalism as a free lance agent, and soon sold features to National Geographic and The Saturday Evening Post. He spent three years traveling the world seeking pictures for travel folders. Arthur Dailey was a natural for anything photographic. For Quaker Oats, Cream of Wheat and Wrigleys he portrayed babies and children. After employment by several of Chicago's leading advertising agencies he connected with the Santa Fe Railroad, holding senior executive positions in the company's advertising and public relations divisions until his retirement from "organized labor."

While with Santa Fe, he became acquainted with the best Western and Southwestern artists and painters of his time, many of whom he commissioned to do art for his company's promotional and advertising graphic requirements.

The first time I interviewed Arthur Dailey at his Sun City home I was aware that this was a strangely wonderful man, and a very special photographer.

Our very special photographer, who likes to be called "Pete" by his friends, turned out to be a man I'd never forget if I lived forever. A widower, he lives in Sun City, Arizona six months of the year; and spends most of the other six at the Eaton Ranch, at Wolf, Wyoming. Pete Dailey is a senior citizen by vital statistics only. Physically and mentally he is a challenge to any hard-riding, quick-thinking hombre of half his age.

There are photographers, and there are photographers, and I know all kinds. Regardless of their rating by standards of their work, you know you are in a photographer's home because photographs are everywhere on the walls, on tables, and in the albums. Arthur Dailey, the very special photographer, has not one photograph in sight. The walls of his home are tastefully hung with paintings, drawings and etchings by the great artists of the Old West, many of them signed to their good friend Pete Dailey. A most interesting framed composition holds the 5 Aces (joker wild) poker hand he held one memorable night with friends whose names are inscribed under glass. That same night Pete held a 4 Kings hand . . . "Couldn't make a dollar all night," Pete commented . . . "No-body else was getting any cards."

We talked a lot about this and that camera, film, and techniques, when I asked Pete if he had any black and white prints to go with his feature. Pete said he enjoyed doing black and whites even more than color. In fact, he added, his black and white prints had won gold medals, silver medals, bronze medals and blue ribbons at almost every national and international salon. From a closet he brought forth several portfolio cases full of prints and as he started to stand them up on the floor along the wall and furniture, my whole body shivered from the waist up, and all I could exclaim was . . . W O W!!!

Here we are proud to show you only a very faint preview of Pete Dailey's mastery of black-and-white photography, because we are holding the best of the rest for a future issue featuring the story of the evolution and development of the western range horse, which James Serven is authoring for us.

The more one knows about Arthur Dailey and the way he works the more very special he becomes.

Dailey's favorite camera, used in more than 95 percent of his work, is a Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta, with a Carl Zeiss 2.8 lens. Due to the unexplainable phenomenon of a retrogressive something the camera industry calls progress, this

Arthur A. Dailey

simple, uncomplicated, exquisitely designed camera has been "orphaned" for more than thirty years, and the new automated improvements of today's cameras will not co-ordinate the electronics of progressive gadgetry to man's need for selective adjustments and at times his osmotic response to emotions and reflexes So like the bumble bee who is not supposed to fly, Pete Dailey wins gold medals with a camera that most photographers would sell for junk.

Remember now, Pete Dailey is past most men's retirement age and remember that every shot he makes he sees, composes and executes from a saddle, and his working day is for as long as there are horses stirrin' up dust. Ο.Κ. now comes the very, very special part of this extraordinary photographer. All of Pete's exposures are on a 21/4 x 21/4 square format made of moving objects shot from a moving subject and the man and his camera are so good that 16 inch by 20 inch color Prints are made from them, and from those color prints the color reproductions in this magazine were made.

Wherever Pete lives, he enjoys the life around him and the comradeship of friends. At Sun City, many of his best days are spent on the golf course, and his smile and story telling are favorites with the Club House dinner set. Wyoming and the Eaton Ranch are his true loves because the mountain slopes, dashing brooks and rolling foothills are the settings and the scenery for his camera masterpieces, and every day he becomes more and more intrigued with the dramatic photographic possibilities of a herd of horses and the clouds of dust stirred up by pounding hooves. Like a choreographer and ballet master working with his human group, Pete observes and mentally records the cause and effect of every move in relation to the terrain, dust and coloring of the horses, rehearsing every possible composition over and over until that fraction of a second when the precise organization of forms moves the senses to Shoot!

We have not titled any of Arthur Dailey's photographs, although they have been titled in gallery showings. We feel that after the first shock of pleasure these pictures will be savored differently by each viewer and will be appreciated to a lesser or greater degree for their universal and timeless interpretation of beauty preserved forever, and you appreciate the photographer and the medium which can freeze these "fractions of a second" of life for a lifetime.

feel that after the first shock of pleasure these pictures will be savored differently by each viewer and will be appreciated to a lesser or greater degree for their universal and timeless interpretation of beauty preserved forever, and you appreciate the photographer and the medium which can freeze these "fractions of a second" of life for a lifetime.

I close with the words of Henri Cartier Bresson again: "We photographers deal in things which are constantly vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again... The writer has time to reflect. But for photographers, what has gone, has gone forever."

And now, dear reader, as your senses feel the pleasure of the beauty of the photographs on the following ten pages, please reflect for a moment on the miracle of photography...and But for a very special photographer, these unforgettable realities of our life would have been only something dreams and fantasies are made of in memories.

Thank you, Arthur Dailey, from whom I learned much about the art of photography and of living.

The artist discerns the difference between the commonplace and the significant.

No other medium can capture the scene and the mood with such accuracy and rapidity.

But for the man behind the artless camera these artistic reproductions would be memories.

There are no boundaries to the range of his skill and insight.

Transferring the image into print via the camera lens and the latitude of the film's emulsion is something else.

That in these reproductions. This is a high mark in exposure control technique.