By Monica Beeler
Oakland Tribune
February 3, 2003
A brief tour of his wood-paneled Berkeley home confirms Partridge's
perennial preoccupation. The dining room holds archived negatives from
some 60 years. The swinging kitchen door serves as a photo gallery of
random and amusing public signs: "Public nudity prohibited," "Shop/Here/First" and "Naked
Ladies in Cans."
The living room, strewn with cameras and photography books, doubles
as his work space. The best light-filled nook stands empty, awaiting
his next experiment with decaying leaves and flowers, at least on this
day. With Partridge's perpetually roving curiosity and drive to try the
most challenging photographic processes, such as making time-consuming
platinum prints, he's never focused on a single subject or technique
for too long.
From Depression-era documentary photos of rail riders and field workers
to more recent irreverent self-portraits reflected in toasters and airport
bathroom mirrors, Partridge's wide-ranging interests -- flavored with
a healthy dose of humor -- have been both a strength and hindrance to
his long career, photography experts say. His dedication to making photos
everyday -- the photos his artist's eye compelled him to make, and no
others -- meant he has built an expansive body of work, including unusual
documentary images, touching family portraits and stirring, sometimes
abstract still lifes. His disinclination to take the photos dictated
by others also meant he passed up career opportunities with the once-famous
Black Star Agency in New York, Life magazine and other institutions that
might have assured him fame and fortune, issues of secondary interest
to Partridge.
"If you do what other people want you to do, you don't see what
you see," says a bushy-haired Partridge, ensconced in a deep red
side chair that matches his red eyeglasses. "I don't look for photographic
opportunities. They look for me."
Long confounded by Partridge's depth and range, the art establishment
has never launched a major retrospective of his work, a situation corrected
by the January opening of two Bay Area exhibitions devoted to his primarily
black-and-white photography. Drew Johnson curated one show at the Oakland
Museum of California.
"Curators and art critics like to put people in boxes,"
says Johnson, curator for photography for the Oakland Museum.
"You absolutely cannot say that about Ron (Partridge). You look
at this show, it could be the work of three different artists."
"Quizzical Eye: The Personal Photography of Rondal Partridge" at
the Oakland Museum of California begins with documentary work such as "Entering
California 3" (late 1930s) in which the artist depicts a faceless
newcomer to the state lying in the dust working under his car, identified
only by thick-soled boots and eponymous striped work pants. The exhibit
concludes with a selection of self-portraits, including "Old Photographers
Never Die" (1994), a distorted image of the wild, white-haired artist
shot in the reflection of a sheet of mylar he found in a garbage can.
The artist's lifelong environmental concerns are reflected in
"Quizzical Eye: The California Photography of Rondal Partridge," on
display at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. Both exhibitions
opened Jan. 18 and run through June 22.
Even Partridge's environmental photography bears his humorous stamp,
a trait that earned him few points with Ansel Adams. Adams disapproved
of a now-famous image Partridge made of Half Dome in Yosemite National
Park. The glacier-carved mountain stands at a distance, seen across a
sea of cars in a parking lot. Partridge titled the mid 1960s photo, "Pave
it and Paint it Green."
"I admire and love Ansel," Partridge says. "I worked with
him and disagreed with him, but I never took a photo like him."
Partridge reserves his highest professional esteem for Dorothea Lange,
best known for her poignant 1930s portraits of migrant farm workers,
impoverished mothers and their children. "Dorothea did a job, a
work-a-day job to use photography to change the world -- and that she
did," Partridge says.
One of the most valuable lessons she taught him, he says, was to photograph
people from behind in a way that the viewer imagines what the subject
looks like from the front. Determined to illustrate this point, Partridge
jumps out of his chair and heads toward a tall wooden chest. "Somewhere
in here I have an original Dorothea Lange, in one of these drawers," he
says. Thunk-thunk. He opens and closes drawers, rifling through stacks
of prints. "Yes! Here it is." He returns to the living room
and tosses onto the coffee table a black-and-white image of a thick-waisted
police officer in old-fashioned cap and high boots. Without seeing his
face, one clearly imagines the officer's florid complexion and no-nonsense
demeanor.
Partridge adopted the technique for one of his most successful portraits, "The
Eye." Taken in 1953 for Life magazine, the photo appeared in a series
about the birth of Partridge and his wife Elizabeth's second daughter,
Margaret. In the frame, Elizabeth, who appears nude above the waist,
props up her head with one hand as she lies on her side. In the triangle
created by her bent arm, one eye of the infant Margaret gazes out directly
at the viewer.
"I think 'Quizzical Eye' is a good (title)," Johnson says. "He
has a very unusual viewpoint on things. It's a little askew."
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