Sparsely, Sage and Timely
Point Reyes Family Album on display
Photographer Art Rogers debuted his Point Reyes Family Album in the July 3, 1975, Point Reyes Light. A month later on Aug. 5, my former wife Cathy and I bought the newspaper, and in less than a week, we converted The Light from old-fashioned hot-type (i.e. text typeset in molten lead) to offset printing.
The conversion to offset printing not only reduced production costs, it meant Art’s photos no longer had to be etched in metal – with the horizontal-engraving lines visible in print. Offset printing made use of halftones (dot patterns to print photos), and these usually are much clearer than etchings. In a week’s time, Art’s Family Album portraits went from slightly blurry to sharp. The weekly portraits back then were called Point Reyes Nation: A Family Album. However, beginning with Aug. 5, 1982, issue, Art began calling his weekly portraits simply The Point Reyes Family Album. The original name was beginning to sound like a relic of the 1960s’ counterculture, he later told me, sort of like "Woodstock Nation." It didn’t fit his subjects, which included ranchers, tradesmen, horsewomen, and not just hippies.
The Family Album is now beginning its 30th year, as is my involvement with The Light, and I’m sure Art and the rest of us will have quite a celebration 10 months from now. This past April, The Light celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Pulitzer Prize, and this month Light cartoonist Kathryn LeMieux is celebrating the 10th anniversary Feral West. Toby’s Feed Barn Gallery is exhibiting her cartoons and paintings throughout October. It used to be said: "Time is Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once." Well, it ain’t working.
On Sunday, the Mumm Napa Photo Gallery in Rutherford will open a five-month exhibit of the Yesterday & Today series from Art’s Family Album. The series typically shows people in the same location and poses they were in when Art photographed them years earlier. "Initially, I just came back and made another photograph that was similar to the first one," he recalled. "Then I realized that the dynamic of having people in the same spot was pretty powerful."
People who were children in the original portraits often reappear as young adults. The series documents the life of this entire community, for The Point Reyes Family Album is in reality The West Marin Family Album.
The Mumm Napa Photo Gallery is "world class," Art told me with pride, and his work is being exhibited alongside that of famed nature photographer Ansel Adams (1902-84). The gallery is at Mumm Winery, maker of sparkling wines in the style of Mumm’s French champagne. Art will have more than 60 portraits in the exhibition, and the show is being widely advertised, even on the sides of San Francisco’s cable cars.
Art, 56, was born in North Carolina where he grew up to be the photographer for a rock group in Raleigh called the Heavenly Blues Band. It was actually a pretty good band, he told me, and was once booked to play a gig at the Fillmore Auditorium. The lead guitarist, however, got sick, and that was the end of that.
Art and several members of the band moved to San Francisco in 1966. He subsequently lived in Berkeley and on the Peninsula, where he was a parttime news photographer for the former Redwood City Tribune. He also worked in a photo lab in San Francisco, and for five years he taught at the San Francisco Art Institute.
In 1971, Art moved to West Marin and in 1974 opened a studio upstairs at the Old Western Saloon where he remained (in the studio, not the saloon) for 13 years. For 10 years after that, Art’s studio was where the Point Reyes Station Library is today. Eight years ago, he built a studio at his home on the Point Reyes Station Mesa.
Art and his wife Laura, a long-time teacher at Nicasio School and before then in Shoreline School District, have two daughters, Hannah, 15, and Julia, 18. Probably more professional portraits have been shot of the girls than of any other pair of sisters not in public life.
Art’s portraits have appeared in countless newspapers and magazines in the past 30 years. But a turning point in his life came when pop artist Jeff Koons pirated one of his portraits, a 1980 photo titled Puppies. Koons found the picture, which showed Jim and Mary Scanlon holding eight German shepherd puppies, on a greeting card in an airport gift shop.
Koons then hired woodcarvers in Italy to copy the photograph and make four sculptures. One was an artist’s proof, he sold two for $125,000, and a third for slightly less. Art’s lawyers responded by filing a $2.8 million plagiarism lawsuit against Koons and the gallery that represented him. In 1990, Art won a summary judgement; it was appealled and in 1992, Art prevailed again in the Appeals Court; later that year, Koons took the case to the US Supreme Court which refused to hear the case. Koons then settled for a moderate amount.
The litigation was exhausting, Art said. "When we started, Laura was pregnant with Hannah. "When it was over, [Hannah] was in preschool."
More important in financing Art’s continued portraiture and supporting his career has been a series of honors and grants: a SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) award in 1982, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986, a Marin Arts Council Fellowship in 1990, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1991. "Those grants really help," Art said. "They allowed me to produce a lot of this work," he said, which along with income from his portraiture helped pay for The Family Album."
One picture the grants didn’t pay for but which earned Art worldwide exposure was his November 2002 photo of 50 naked women spelling out "PEACE" with their bodies while lying down on Love Field in Point Reyes Station. The photo (shot during light rain) was first published in The Light and inspired scores of copycat photos around the globe.
Although he took the picture, Art gives a lot of credit to Donna Sheehan of Marshall: "It was Donna’s concept to do it." Notwithstanding all the ribbing he took for getting to work with 50 naked women, Art insisted, "All I saw was letters...
"I swear that was a tough photograph. You have all those naked ladies, and it’s cold." Making the shooting all the harder was that Art had to arrange the women into letters while he balanced atop a ladder and using a tall tripod Art had built to photograph large groups. When it was done, "I liked the homegrown quality of it," he said, noting that the field created a universally understandable background.
Art’s exhibit at Mumm Napa Photo Gallery will be up until March 13. If you happen to be heading toward Rutherford, you can find the gallery at 8445 Silverado Trail.