Al Weber,
a great photographer
among the great.
A tribute to the master.
Hans Arend de Wit
It would become more than a photoshoot, a trip to more than one location and we would have more than one little adventure during our journey. Most importantly we would meet Al Weber on the third day. The first surprise was that our hotel was located opposite Disneyland Anaheim. Fred Schmidt of De Verbeelding, the renowned Dutch publisher of photo books, suggested with cool enthusiasm to fly there with the monorail before dinner. After our flight into fantasy we immediately were absorbed by the American Dream.
The next day, on the book fair, a short stroll from our hotel, I made a photo of Raymond Carver, who was signing books at the end of a long line of supposedly dedicated readers, another unforeseen surprise. Not much later we learned that Carver had died soon after that day.
Large format.
Tell me again how that Busch camera came into the picture, asked Fred.
In the Large Format Camera Magazine, I said, I had read an article on Douglas Busch. Fascinating photos, I said, and an intriguing story of how he had worked with Deardorff, and how he had worked at building these cameras. Before long he got a vision of a better camera he would one day build himself. That’s what he did indeed. He didn’t live far from Deardorff. On my first coming trip to Chicago I went to talk with a man whose name was on the camera. It was quiet in the place, which was decorated in the somber style of the thirties, and most people were to a fair or convention. I talked about a folding camera that would be handier than my Sinar. To give an idea of my background I told about my client Time-Life, for whom I produced mailings for the book series, in which a regularly came across work that was made with Deardorff cameras.
From there I drove North to the town where Busch lived. After showing and discussing his Golden Busch he showed me a black portfolio box on which a title was lettered in classic silver letters saying “Victor, A Tribute To Al Weber, 1981-1986.” The portfolio with large, magnificent black and white photographs was dedicated to his master teacher in photography, the same Weber we were going to see on the third day.
As I had told Fred, the Golden Busch, which Douglas was going to build for me, would be forwarded to our hotel in San Francisco. I had brought ten double 8x10 cassettes with me, loaded with black and white film, and two Rodenstock lenses of my Sinar, as I had communicated with Busch. My plan was to make photographs on the way back through Death Valley.
Our first shoot was a hotel on the boulevard in Santa Monica, from where we took California State Route One, the Big Sur section of San Luis Obispo to Carmel, an official National Scenic Byway, the most beautiful coastal highway I’ve ever seen in the movies. We drove as far a motel near the Randolph Hearst Castle. Early next day we didn’t visit the Castle but went on to Carmel.
Carmel - a Walhalla of photo galleries.
Such a charming place! We had lunch on a patio terrace and saw two photo galleries, where we saw photos by the finest photographers of whom we had the books on the shelves at home. Spectacular ‘archival’ prints, most of them black and white, and priceless. But prints in color by my favorite Michael Ruetz, whose magical books I had at home, and whose photos I was familiar with, sold at a price that I could afford, like the Hills of Rome, in a dramatic light and grandiose historic depth, which I bought without hesitation on the spot. A bit excited we phoned Al Weber with whom we made the appointment to see him in front of a petrol station in front of the Carmel Highlands General Store at the foot of the mountain on which he lived. Before we expected him Weber came down the mountain road in a pick-up truck. He at once recognized us as the Dutchmen he was to pick up. His wooden house, with an enormous sundeck that loomed over a steep mountain, looked like we had seen in the American magazines, and which was my ideal American dream that I was destined never to realize. To think of it, I said to Fred, that he’s a photographer! But then he also owned a school, and was a consultant to big corporations.
Photo Hans Berkhout
Photo Hans Berkhout
Photo Hans Berkhout
Fred brought a book for Weber. And Weber gave us a book, me a precious book, a ‘paper movie’, a Journey to Land’s End, van Lou Stoumen. While Weber made coffee we looked at the view I had so often dreamed of.
Moren than fifty years Al Weber had been a successful photographer and one of the most appreciated teachers of photography. We already knew that he grew up in Colorado and soon followed his father as a hunter and a fisherman. “But I merely wanted to photograph what I experienced and saw. I developed and printed myself. I got some help in a camera shop down the street, and soon enough I started working for them. In the University of Denver I learned photography, studio and portrait photography as it was done in the forties in Hollywood. In 1950 I got my degree.
But I had to wait, for I was destined to join the Marine Corps, Camp Pendleton. On my way to Korea I had a few free days to visit my uncle and aunt in Carmel. I was astonished by the beauty of the place. My uncle suggested that I’d come back when I returned from Korea. That’s what I did, and I found work there at the Monterey Herald. That was in 1955.”
A start with a newspaper and soon a teacher among the best.
”First local work, and then industrial and commercial assignments. My income provided me with the opportunity to move into the desert and do my own thing. Wynn Bullock was one of the men who inspired me to go into that direction. In the beginning of the sixties a teacher on Monterey Peninsula College went with sabbatical, and I was asked to fill in. That way I met Ansel Adams, who asked me to come to his place and take some of my students along. He appreciated what I was doing. In ’63 Ansel invited me to Yosemite as a teacher, and do a workshop there. Ultimately we ended with sixty workshops until we both stopped in ’81.
At Monterey College we started our first workshop with Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, Imogene Cunningham, and Minor White.
The costs for a workshop were a mere $35. In the end we gave two or three per week. Teachers were Jerry Uelsmann, Todd Walker, and Marie Cosindas. Barbara Crane also came in the Summer.
I always had been on the lookout for very good teachers. And it all seems to work out well, for about 80 to 90% of the students come back.”
After all those years a friend enjoys going to a workshop.
Early 2011 Weber successfully still gives workshops, Hans Berkhout, a friend of mine in Calgary, told me. After Hans had been a GP all his life and dedicated classic black and white photographer, who after his retirement was inclined to give his whole attention to photography.
You’d be my ideal deputy to make photos when you’re there, the photos I never made, the petrol station down the mountain road, the view from the deck, a portrait of Weber. Then I’ll write the piece on him, which I should have done a long time ago.
When we had left Weber at the time we drove further up to San Francisco, time and again stopping to make photos of the impressive coastline, the rocks and the surf. Peter Paul Huf made fine prints and Fred organized an exhibition in his bookshop.
When I phoned Weber in the Spring of 2011 he immediately remembered the hour when we were his student. Yes Busch, he moved to California and he saw him regularly and his son was working with him in Carmel.
How’s it going lately?
“I’ve said it before, nothing is everlasting. The students have changed, the costs changed, adapted to the changing times, nothing’s permanent. And I’d admit that I also changed myself. I seriously asked myself which photographer today I would suggest to use the Zone System, or would be inclined to try. And who, by all means, has an interest in a guided tour through Yosemite, Point Lobos, or Death Valley?
Since I was born in Colorado, the enchanting landscape will never bore me. I’ll never stop giving workshops, but I intend to downsize. I’ll be home more, I’ll spend more time in the darkroom with my early work, more time at the computer, and more time with Suzie and the boys who are no boys anymore. I don’t come in Yosemite anymore and I don’t feel comfortable anymore in the Colorado High Country, which has become too high. Who’d ever thought it would turn out that way?”
The way Hans Berkhout experienced a workshop.
”The workshop I signed up for this Spring, Hans told me, soon was complete with 25 students. Fortunately Al decided to organize a workshop a week later, which also soon was full, mostly with ‘repeaters’. It was amazing to see the success Weber still reaped. When I was there Al celebrated his 81st birthday! Every day there were three lectures, so we could follow our interest and decide lecture to join. There was a wealth of information and resources, Al included, and an archeologist, a historian, an architecture photographer, a studio photographer, digital, analog and alternative darkroom techniques. They all were experts, who remained available for individual assessments of recent work, with advice, and possibly encouragement. They were there all three days, and accessible for a discussion.
The workshop that I attended was in California, in and around the old Mission San Antonio de Padua, 1771, with room and board. No time was lost by travel to the shooting grounds and back. It was totally photography, an intense immersion of three long days.
It pleasantly surprised me that the equipment was modern and diverse: large format, medium format, 35 mill, Holga and even box and even pinhole. But naturally also digital, dslr and medium format. It was unique to get acquainted with so many techniques up close and work with them. About one third of the students was female, and specifically this category was most interested in off-beat methods, like photographing with the Holga, and alternative ways of finishing, with the non-silver process Salt printing.
The secret behind the success seems to lie in the ambiance, the combined spirit and concentration, and the mutual stimulation.
Back home in Calgary I saw that following the underlying training I had started to visually approach life in a different way.”
About Douglas I. Busch I’d like to tell sometime later. I still have the beautiful portfolios.
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDtfgYNDxtc
http://www.stare.net/weber/newsletter/2002newsletter.html
