My grandfather shot thousands upon thousands of rolls of film throughout his life. My father and I both spent countless hours, days even, saving what film we could find when we were moving my grandmother from their home in New Canaan years ago. Precious few roles from the 30s, 40s, 50s have survived the test of time. They are tightly wound up in small metallic canisters with barely legible scribbling on them. They have titles like "Chuck - folks at Woodstock, NYC BLDGs, East River, Geissman and family, etc."
They are dangerous and hard to handle so I've only looked at a handful of them. They consist of mostly family scenes, but some are field research he conducted for his illustrations, and some may be of him and his fellow artist friends from inside his studio at home or the Charles E. Cooper Studio in New York.
While these rolls have been developed into negatives, scanning them is no easy task. The older roles have a layer of nitrate embedded into the exposed side of the film stock, which is fascinating to look at but extremely volatile: if ignited it will literally continue to burn even under water. I don't have the funds to send them off to some specialty store, nor do I feel comfortable mailing such rare and intrinsically valuable material.
Enter Benjamin Lipiecki. He's a friend and coworker, a recent graduate from Emerson College who has a degree in Digital post-production. He has a love for old cameras and old film, with quite an impressive collection of his own, and approaches his material possessions and projects with a keen eye, thorough and scientific. He's got a respect for old film like the rolls I have inherited. It's because of my grandpa, my father and Ben that we are finally, after all these years, getting to see this film come to life in a photograph format: high resolution scans on a computer screen.
In this blog I will post some of the photographs Wally, Glennie and their friends have taken through the years. To preserve their originality I've decided not to touch them up, such as remove scratches, improve contrast and exposure (yet). I hope you enjoy them, they have already brought thrills galore. I will upload every single photo I scan to this blog's corresponding Flickr account, so look for more pictures there if you are interested.
Thanks again to all who have read this blog! 2,600 views from around the world and counting!
In 1999, Wally held his last major exhibition at the Connecticut Graphic Arts Center* in Norwalk, Connecticut. Called "Walter DuBois Richards: A Career Spanning Seven Decades," it was a collection of his works that ran roughly from the 1920s through the 1980s.
I didn't attend the event, instead I was in Costa Rica participating in a college study abroad program at the UCR. However, I was able to hold onto at least one of the booklets from the exhibition. After re-discovering it, I enjoyed the introduction, biography and interview of WDR so much that I've decided to re-print them over the next three blog entries.
Howard Munce, the Honorary President for the Society of Illustrators wrote the introduction. He skillfully articulates Walter DuBois Richards life and career in a brief but gracious way. Here it is verbatim from the 1999 exhibition booklet:
"For those who erroneously regard illustrators as lesser artists, they can be set straight by perusing the lifetime output of Walter DuBois Richards: Wally.
There are some illustrators who dream of and speak of the day they can put commercial work behind them and "paint." Wally Richards never waited for that day; he spent years at a drawing board as an illustrator, then spent every spare day he could manage out of doors doing watercolors and visiting museums.
He followed this regimen from his early days in Cleveland through his successful days at the renowned Cooper Studios in New York. His vacations became painting vacations.
In 1948, along with colleagues Stevan Dohanos and Hardie Gramatky, he organized the Fairfield Watercolor Group, which consisted of a dozen painters and illustrators who felt as he did about picture making beyond magazine and advertising work. They met once a month at each other's houses with a new painting and were critiqued by the other eleven.
Wally was the first president of the group and has never been out of office since. Many other members have come and, alas, gone. Not he. Meantime, all during his mature years he produced lithographs, an exacting and demanding discipline. To add to the difficulty of working in reverse, there is the problem of working with greasy soft crayons that must constantly be sharpened and deftly applied to a delicate stone surface. One needs a sturdy heart and a steady hand in this no-man's land of no erasures. He has both.
Over the years Wally has recorded many landmark buildings in New Canaan [Connecticut] and environs. His prints hang in scores of area homes, and he has made Green's Ledge Light in Long Island Sound his personal model. He has rendered this landmark in all the many moods that sky and water and weather can offer. His ability to portray expanses of water in any medium is unique. In addition to capturing the many looks of the sea's surface, he is also able to express the mighty lift and swell of it.
Still another of Wally's accomplishments is his contribution to the U.S. Postal Design Program. He has designed and executed 37 stamps.
Now at the age of 92, Wally is hampered a bit by sight problems but that hasn't stopped him from working or teaching or zeroing in on the weakness or the strength of the output of others.
Welcome to the work of a superb talent expended to the nth degree."
- Howard Munce, Honorary President, Society of Illustrators
*I looked and did not find a website for the Graphic Arts Center in Norwalk. I did find the following description on an unrelated website: "The Connecticut Graphics Arts Center was founded in 1995 as a non-profit, multi-media studio workshop and gallery devoted to the creation of original prints, photographs, artists' books and related disciplines through its year-round workshops conducted by nationally recognized master printers. Visitors may see changing exhibitions, and view artists making prints. Free." The Connecticut Graphic Arts Center is located in Mathews Park, 299 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT.
