{"id":44532,"date":"2019-05-03T15:37:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T21:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=44532"},"modified":"2019-05-17T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T16:43:29","slug":"james-swensens-in-a-rugged-land-is-a-dense-but-easily-digestible-look-into-a-unique-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/james-swensens-in-a-rugged-land-is-a-dense-but-easily-digestible-look-into-a-unique-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"James Swensen’s “In a Rugged Land” is a Dense but Easily Digestible Look Into a Unique Collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nLife magazine published \u201cThree Mormon Towns\u201d on September 6, 1954. Today, the photo-essay by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams \u2014 two of the best-known photographers in the medium\u2019s history \u2014 is largely unknown. James Swensen\u2019s new book, <\/span>In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954,<\/span><\/i> argues for a new look at the collaboration. Rich with historical context and insight into how Lange and Adams worked together, Swensen\u2019s book goes beyond a description of the photographic process and a discussion of the subsequent photo-essay. The Brigham Young University professor of art history adeptly weaves a narrative that contextualizes the outsider interest in Mormon communities, the change that photography as a medium and profession was undergoing at the time, and how the publication of the essay was perceived. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lange first came to southwestern Utah in 1933 when her first husband, painter Maynard Dixon, took an interest in the landscape surrounding Zion National Park. The couple traveled from town to town, staying with Mormon families along the way, starting relationships that would last decades. Lange respected the Mormons and, as Milton Metlzer has written, saw them in a \u201cheroic mold, living against a demonic landscape.\u201d She thought rural life was disappearing in America, and in 1941 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship (the first woman to win one) to study and photograph it. Her experience with the Mormon community and the rural West directly led to Lange\u2019s pitch to Life. She organized a team: Adams, with whom she had previously collaborated, Paul Taylor (her second husband), to act as community diplomat, and her son, Dan Dixon, to write descriptions of the experience. Life was interested. \u201cWith a strong sense of nationalism and American superiority, Life<\/span> had a vested interest in stories extolling the \u2018American Scene,\u2019\u201c writes Swensen. He goes on to discuss<\/span> the magazine\u2019s view that Mormonism was a \u201cvestige of America\u2019s pioneer past\u201d and that it deserved discussion in that context. In addition, images of southwestern Utah\u2019s remarkable landscapes and the perception of Mormons as somewhat peculiar would grab public curiosity and could sell magazines. <\/span><\/p>\n

Life reached 22 million people weekly (one-fourth of the U.S. population) and Lange and Adams had mixed feelings about working for it. The paycheck and audience were enticing but Life<\/span> controlled what was published and how it was presented. Lange and Adams wanted to control all printing and editorial choices \u2014 just as the Mormon communities wanted to control their image. Swensen beautifully contextualizes this trifecta of interests \u2014 publisher, photographer, subject \u2014 throughout the book, describing how the sausage got made at Life and how the field team worked with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to secure permissions to photograph Gunlock, Toquerville, and St. George while staying true to their (or maybe just Lange\u2019s) vision.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lange was the organizing force. Among the documents Swensen references is Lange\u2019s daybook of notes taken during the team\u2019s time in the field. He also sites numerous letters written by Adams to collaborator and friend Nancy Newhall. These sources are incredibly interesting and Lange\u2019s daybook contextualizes her approach. She jotted down phrases like \u201cPioneering Never Stops\u201d and \u201cThe Glory of God is Intelligence\u201d on the drive south. Swensen cites a list, \u201cItem[s] which must be photographed,\u201d which included \u201cthe Mormon home and barn, subsistence gardens, canning, music, dances, road signs, Juanita Brooks, the drive-in movie screen, and the Priesthood \u2014 a shorthand term for the authority given to worthy white male members of the LDS Church.\u201d She ultimately wanted to photograph religion \u2014 not the symbols or practice of religion but the less tangible qualities. <\/span><\/p>\n

The LDS Church\u2019s control over the narrative is described like this: \u201cThe pioneer generation was largely gone by this date, but their legacy was more palpable than ever. As the primary \u2018architect of collective memory in Utah,\u2019 the LDS Church and its leadership were particularly active in reviving the pioneering past.\u201d In order to photograph the Mormon towns, Lange, Taylor, and Dixon went to Salt Lake City to request permission from church leader J. Rueben Clark, who, Swensen writes, \u201cendorsed projects that celebrated the triumph of the Saints over works that portrayed the harsher realities of the faith.\u201d When requesting permission, Taylor discussed the photographs in terms of a museum exhibition and never mentioned Life \u2014 an important mistake. Clark gave overarching permission but each community had final say. The bishop in Gunlock, Ivan Hunt, was suspicious of the field team partially because weeks earlier Arizona authorities had raided the small town of Short Creek (later renamed Colorado City and Hilldale) on the Arizona-Utah border, arresting many in the polygamist Mormon community. Remarkably, Toquerville\u2019s bishop, Howard F. Fish, gave Lange and Adams total access to the community including permission to photograph a Mormon church service from the Sacrament ordinance to the emptying of the chapel once service concluded (ultimately not included in the article but images reproduced in the book are remarkable). St. George was large enough that an individual bishop did not need to be consulted. In each community, the team never mentioned the Life article. Adams expressed frustration with Taylor and Lange for not expressly disclosing Life\u2019s plan to publish the photographs. He felt that ethically this detail should not have been withheld. <\/span><\/p>\n

Adams and Lange did not always agree and both photographers were known for their sharp personalities. Swensen describes them thus: \u201cBoth photographers were strong-willed, opinionated, and deeply entrenched in their ideas and opinions. According to their collaborator Daniel Dixon, \u2018I … learned how and why to keep my mouth shut in the presence of two tautly-strung prodigies who certainly needed no other opinion to persuade them that they should alter their own \u2026 I can\u2019t remember any conversations to which I had anything to contribute. I simply used my eyes and ears, and my mouth only to murmur agreements. It was a very valuable lesson.\u2019\u201c \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among their strong opinions was a core philosophy behind the role of the photographer. \u201cLange believed that photography had become detached and isolated from life, and she urged her fellow photographers to remember their responsibility to use their cameras as a tool of passion and humanity,\u201d Swensen writes. Photography was moving away from an objective or documentary approach, becoming more subjective. Swensen quotes photography writers Ward Pease and Andreas Fieningeras describing documentary photography as dealing with \u201cperversions,\u201d including a focus on the \u201csmelly side\u201d of life and the \u201csordid aspects of our society.\u201d Lange wanted to show that documentary photography was still relevant and necessary, and she believed that focusing on the power and beauty of the familiar would prove her point. Adams\u2019 philosophy embraced aesthetics: \u201cI am not afraid of beauty, of poetry, of sentiment. I think it is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a \u2018document\u2019 of ugliness, squalor, and despair.\u201d Adams saw photography as an artistic pursuit that involved high-level craft. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lange and Adams were also known for different strengths. Swensen cites an article in Fortune magazine which \u201cpraised Lange as \u2018quite possibly the most penetrating documentary photographer.\u2019 Adams in contrast was \u2018an eminent technician, teacher, and writer, whose love of mountaineering has made him the foremost photographic interpreter of the West.\u2019\u201c Lange was clearly perceived as the expert on people, Adams the expert on landscape. In many ways this makes for a great pairing, but both refused to limit their work. \u201cEven at the start of the collaboration both photographers crossed over into the assumed \u2018specialty\u2019 of the other,\u201d Swensen explains. \u201cNot only did this complicate the process but it would have lasting consequences.\u201d Swensen goes on to explain that the photographers borrowed each other\u2019s cameras, making attribution difficult. \u201cDuring their time in southern Utah Lange and Adams worked closely together and were, more or less, engaged in a common pursuit. Moreover, they viewed the project as a full collaboration rather than the work of two distinct individuals. This is corroborated by Ansel\u2019s statement: \u2018We did it as a joint thing \u2026 What was Dorothea\u2019s idea, what was my idea, whether she or I did the photograph what difference does it make?\u2019\u201c The resulting photographs are primarily attributed to Lange even though many must be by Adams. He seems accepting of this deep collaborative spirit, but also expresses frustration with it. Swensen says that Adams \u201cfretted that only seven of his works, as opposed to twenty-eight of Lange\u2019s, were selected. It was \u201899% Dorothea,\u2019 he exaggerated. For a project that was a \u2018total collaboration,\u2019 Adams seems to have been overly concerned about the imbalance and not getting his due.\u201d He was also frustrated with Lange\u2019s checklists and themes for each town. In a letter to photographer Minor White, he wrote, \u201cBelieve me, it was NOT a collaboration \u2014 it was A[nsel] A[dams] manipulated around an imposed idea by D[orothea] L[ange].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Swensen describes Lange as using Gunlock, Toquerville, and St. George to illustrate the narrative of rural America\u2019s urbanization and the loss of different aspects of Americanness. Her shot lists were used to guide the photographers along this narrative while in the field and during editing (something she learned from Roy Stryker and her time as an FSA photographer). This is not new in photography but a reminder that photographs are just one version of the truth. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lange described Gunlock as \u201ca hamlet, like one family; a place where everybody knows everybody.\u201d It represented everything that Lange and Taylor thought was disappearing in America. Lange and Adams photographed the buildings in Gunlock, focusing on the church in the center of the community, the geography surrounding the town, and the people. The resulting images are quiet. The photographs of people are intentional and confrontational \u2014 not aggressive, rather full of life and sensitivity. They photographed church leaders in the modest chapel, the Sunday congregation, women canning vegetables in their homes, and children standing on top of horses. Lange and Adams were enveloped in the community and they made it feel vibrant and young in their images. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Toquerville was more established and its buildings showed their age. Its tree-lined Main Street attracted the photographers and they documented every structure alongside it. The residents were also photographed, with a focus on the older people. <\/span><\/p>\n

St. George was by far the largest of the three. Lange and Adams photographed its Main Street, lined with large shops where giant window displays were optimized for drive-by viewing, as a panoramic document just as they did in Toquerville, resulting in a stark contrast. The motels, roadside signs leading to town, and bustling traffic became a focal point. They did not photograph bishops, chapels, or farms as they did in the previous towns. Portraits compared the older generation to the younger, comparing the past to the future. <\/span><\/p>\n

After fieldwork was complete, Adams printed the negatives and Lange began organizing and editing. She selected 135 images and carefully sequenced them on panels according to themes with Dixon\u2019s accompanying text. Swensen includes images of these remarkable layouts. They tell a beautifully conceived and executed story of the disappearance of American rural ways. Life published 35 images \u2014 more than most essays received but far less than what Lange and Adams thought was adequate. Both photographers felt slighted. <\/span><\/p>\n

The article followed Lange\u2019s themes, starting with Gunlock as the idyllic rural town. Residents were pleased with their portrayal even though the publication was a surprise. Bishop Hunt personally wrote Lange a letter thanking her for the photographs and stating that \u201cthey caused a great deal of commotion in our little town.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Toquerville was second and contextualized as a decaying town \u2014 evidence of the abandonment of rural life. Dixon wrote, \u201cToquerville is old and quiet but its children have gone away.\u201d Swensen provides the response: \u201c … Bishop Howard Fish wrote Lange and Taylor to tell them that the members of his town were discussing the \u2018pro and con\u2019 of the article. Evidently the cons won out. Understandably there was \u2018widespread displeasure\u2019 with the story in Toquerville. No community wants to be portrayed as dying.\u201d One Toquerville resident, Vera Betty, \u201cwho was photographed in and around her home in Toquerville in her canning apron, housedress, and disheveled hair \u2026 felt humiliated that she was presented to millions of people in this way without her knowledge or consent.\u201d She sent a letter to Life demanding $1,000 in compensation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Third was St. George. For Life, Dixon wrote, \u201cSt. George has taken up worldly ways.\u201d Commerce and transition to urbanization was the focus of his article. \u201cWhile they seem to have given up the past for the present and abandoned the plow for the gas pump their struggle is unchanged,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey seek, like their grandfathers, to wrest a living from the desert, and in their way they, too, are pioneers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The photo-essay and collaboration became a quiet footnote to the careers of both Adams and Lange. But the images have proven to be an important document in at least one specific way. Swensen discusses Carole Gallagher\u2019s use of the images from the project for her book <\/span>American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War<\/span><\/i>. The people in southern Utah were learning about the dangers of their exposure to nuclear activity at the time Lange and Adams were photographing. Gallagher was able to use the images of people from Gunlock, Toquerville and St. George to \u201creach back in time to show you the good and gentle people that were being victimized.\u201d In fact, both Lange and Adams had cancer though we cannot know if their downwind exposure was the cause.
\n<\/span>
\nIn the end, Lange and Adams were proud of the photographs they made, even if Life\u2019s editing and their poor decision to not disclose the publication aspect soured the project. Swensen explores how the images fit into the context of Robert Frank\u2019s <\/span>The Americans<\/span><\/i> (1958)<\/span>, <\/span><\/i>a decidedly different approach to documentation. Lange and Adams\u2019 work marked the end of an important chapter in photography as Frank showed us \u201can America that was strange, lonely, and diverse,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt was a portrait of a nation that was decidedly different from the rosy vision of the country that was typically broadcast in Life<\/span> magazine.\u201d Swensen also discusses (briefly) how Lange and Adams influenced contemporary photographers like Mark Hedengren and Christine Ambruster to photograph Mormon religion and rural life today. <\/span>In a Rugged Land<\/span><\/i> is a dense but easily digestible look into a unique collaboration between two stubborn, committed, and visionary photographers.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954
\n<\/i>James Swensen
\nUniversity of Utah Press<\/a>
\nPaperback
\n432 pp.
\n$34.95<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life magazine published \u201cThree Mormon Towns\u201d on September 6, 1954. Today, the photo-essay by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams \u2014 two of the best-known photographers in the medium\u2019s history \u2014 is largely unknown. James Swensen\u2019s new book, In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1541,"featured_media":44533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[3439,3440,3438,3441,1381],"class_list":["post-44532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-ansel-adams","tag-dorothea-lange","tag-james-swensen","tag-life-magazine","tag-university-of-utah-press"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/inaruggedland.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 18:15:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44532"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45086,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44532\/revisions\/45086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}