Barry Goldwater

I don't know who he is. Everything that I know comes from Wikipedia. And how Henry Kissinger described his office, "rakishly wrongly hung original Picassos." But now I see his name and his doings all over the place.

Two examples.

Just now I'm reading about Hillary Clinton saying Europe must address its immigration problem or the far right will use is as an issue to gain power. Of course she's speaking by proxy to American Democrats about Democrat power. The commenters at Legal Insurrection know Hillary's psychology better than Hillary can admit to herself, and her two-year book tour blaming everyone but herself for her failure proves it.

I think you’re giving Hillary too much credit. I don’t think she gives a damn about the Progressive Establishment, the progressive movement, America or Europe. 

The only thing Hillary cares about is Hillary. Else, she wouldn’t have stumbled around blindly for 2 years trying to comprehend why she lost. 

I think Hillary would start identifying (again) as a Goldwater Republican if she thought it would lead to President Hillary.

The whole thread is good.

There I am in the bathroom making doo reading the latest issue of Arizona. I meant to say "making do" just now. Flipping through the magazine and pulling out all the annoying dropout cards and stapled offers that ruin magazines, thinking, "Goddamnit, another black and white issue." I could tell it was going to be this lame by its black and white cover.

The whole thing is about Goldwater.

Goldwater. What a cool name. It's like Rockefeller. Come to think of it, Maybe Henry Kissinger was writing about Rockefeller and not about Goldwater. Whomever. I get them mixed up.

Arizona magazine explains that Barry Goldwater was a devoted photographer. He saw his photographic mission as bigger than himself. He saw it a duty to record Arizona people, its natives, and its settlers, its natural resources, its plants and animals. A segment explains Goldwater was an associate member of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and often signed his prints with that credential.

I'm trying not to hold that against him.

I flip through. The photographs of native people are not very nice. The native people are either very young or ancient, mostly ancient. One gets the sense they couldn't get away fast enough. The photographs of children show them terrified.

Of the photographer.

The photographic subjects don't understand the intrusion. They don't understand why their parents made them line up. And they don't understand the strange equipment nor the strange white guy suddenly appeared in their space.

I sense this because one day a photographer showed up at our house and we four kids were dressed neatly and lined up on the sofa. Mum was recording us kids for our dad overseas. But I did not know that. I recall that day very well, my brother was all, "What kind of camera is that? How much did it cost? Is this your real job? How much does it pay? Are these color photographs? Why is your camera on a tripid? Is this what you wanted to be when you grew up? Are you happy doing your job? How long does it take? Do we have to wait? Who develops the pictures? Do we get to pick the best ones or do you? Can I take a picture? Can you show me how?"

I recall Barry asking the guy a million questions that I wouldn't even think of, but I did not recall until I saw the photos again after them aging 40 years in a box that my bewildered four-year-old head was leaning on Barry's shoulder. It's an adorable photo of brotherly connection but it also shows me as energy vampire. I was massively vexed by the intrusion into our lovely peaceful secure home and I relied on my brother's composure. Sucking the energy out of him. Our responses to the photographer were opposite. Barry really dug the photographer showing up bossing us around. I wanted him gone.

That's what Goldwater's photograph of native children shows. They're terrified and they want Goldwater gone.

I took this photo with my cell phone from the magazine. The words under the photograph read:

"His strength, to me, was in his connection to Arizona and its Native people," photographer Paul Markow says, "

Yeah. We see that connection quite clearly. Touching.

A couple of times, I have gone out to shoot some of the elders of the Navajo Nation with a friend who had a Navajo trading post. I was never really trusted, even with my chaperone. So, getting that generation of Native Americans, born in the late 19th or early 20th century, to trust you is one of the hardest things to accomplish in photography. Barry was able to record a rapidly receding culture of non-Anglo-influenced Native Americans and leave behind his wonderful visual record of that time and place." 

Google has a good number of Goldwater photographs in the article, but not this one.

Then, on the last page is a color photograph of Goldwater, profile in Stetson hat and light tan jackedt with typical layered mesa multi-colored background.  

Evelyn S.Cooper writes in The Eyes of His Soul: The Visual Legacy of Barry M. Goldwater, Master Photographer:

Barry Goldwater's photographs should be viewed as visual love letters crafted by gifted artist with a facile mind wedded to a cause larger than his own axis.

Come on, Evelyn, you're killing me, "axis." Really? Reach, Evelyn, reach for the stars.

What began as a hobby turned into a lifetime pursuit that enabled him to 'pay rent' in ways and arenas as boundless as the landscape he routinely celebrated as home.

"Pay rent?" Really? He was out taking pictures. Doing what photographers do. Looking for interesting subjects and finding them in his home state.

Beauty stirred his sense, but conscience controlled his hand. The evidence rests richly in his photographs, which are best viewed as two-dimensional windows into the soul of a human dynamo far too intrigued with the fine art of doing to ever pause long enough to admire the sophistication that kept him forever uncommon." 

Except that his photographs are common. Ansel Adams level they are not. He had the best cameras available and yet the same shots are taken everyday by tourists using their cell phones.

And everything looks worse in black and white.

What Barry Goldwater recorded was poverty. And his photographs of nature are surpassed everyday by people not committed to any kind of imagined mission. I'll admit there are very good ones and many worthwhile, but too many just don't cut the mustard. Like this.