The Center for Creative Photography

In retrospect, it seems as if the image had scarcely appeared on his first successful plate when the world looked over L. J. M. Daguerre's shoulder and muttered, “Gee, that's interesting, Louie – but is it art?”And for at least a century after the persistent Frenchman made public in 1839 the process which probably more than any other single development gave birth to photography, the myopic world continued in ludicrous debate, arguing: Is there artistry in using a camera to pluck single instants of time, single images of substance, from a fleeting moment of the space-time continuum?

Now, with most of that kind of pondering behind us, questions are arising on how to appropriately preserve and display photographic masterpieces, and how to save historically significant memorabilia of the major photographers of our time.

The University of Arizona, in establishing the Center for Creative Photography, believes it has found an ideal answer.

Beginning with its first public show in May of 1975 at the Museum of Art on the U of A campus in Tucson, the Center now stands as an archive and research facility without parallel in the academic world, according to director Harold H. Jones. Moreover, its premier holdings – photographs by six of this century's leading photographers – give the Center, Jones declares, an artistic ranking equal to or surpassing the photo collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

In addition to their photographs, the Center has acquired the personal and professional papers of Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, and the late Paul Strand and Wynn Bullock. With these materials on file (most for the first time), historians and scholars will be able to study the photographers' lives and the context of their pictorial creativity.

It is anticipated that state funds will not be used for acquisitions – an invest-ment expected to reach nearly a million dollars over the next decade.

With headquarters on the University's Tucson campus, the Center serves researchers' special needs, organizes regular exhibitions of touring portfolios and its own materials, sponsors lectures and workshops by top professionals, publishes a journal, answers the public's questions about old pictures and photo equipment, and works with other University departments in utilizing photos as a teaching aid.

Jones and his staff (and a number of student volunteers) work to ease the public's access to the collections and to enhance scholarly appreciation of the archive.

It was Ansel Adams who played a fundamental role in establishment of the Center; director Jones says the Center's correspondence files show that Adams was concerned as early as the 1950s about finding a suitable place to leave his career work for both display and study.

The idea for the Center crystallized in part through conversations between Mr. Adams and the University's president, John P. Schaefer (whose own affinity for the photographic arts has been known to keep him behind a camera more than a few minutes past the time of an appoint-ment on campus).

The Adams collection was the first to be purchased, and Jones considers that acquisition as the seed to further development of the Center. But sounding like a father who loves all his children equally, Jones stresses that the Center is most valuable because it is concerned with a wide variety of photographic styles and expressions.

Those expressions, both pictorial and verbal, are by pioneering visualists who recognized photography as a glorious new art form and championed it elegantly.

A major exhibition of Ansel Adams photographs, featuring his work in the Southwest over a 40-year period, will open at the University of Arizona's Museum of Art, Speedway Boulevard at Olive Road, Tucson. Mr. Adams will attend the opening of the exhibition, at 8:00 PM, Friday, October 8. There is no admission charge.

Mr. Adams will give a lecture the following evening, Saturday, October 9, in the auditorium of the Modern Languages Building on the University's Tucson campus. His lecture is sponsored by Friends of Photography, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the support and advancement of photography as an art form. Ticket price and availability information for the lecture may be obtained from the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 845 North Park Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721; telephone (602) 884-3094.

The Ansel Adams exhibition will run through November 21. The Museum is open free to the public 10 AM to 5 PM Monday through Saturday, and from 2 PM to 5 PM each Sunday.

As a service to readers who do not have access to bookstores, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is offering the handsomely produced book Photographs of the Southwest, containing the artistry of Ansel Adams and an essay by Lawrence Clark Powell. The book may be ordered directly by writing — Arizona Highways 2039 West Lewis Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85009 $32.50 prepaid