Towards the end of September 1951, an extraordinary gathering of photographers, photo editors, historians, and hobbyists gathered in Aspen for ten days of workshops, panels, events, and socializing. Although its impact was limited, the gathering has the feel of a seminal event in Colorado’s photo history—perhaps the most important ever in terms of the stature of its participants.
The one tangible result it produced was Aperture , which was conceived of there and agreed to the following year in San Francisco, with Minor White being installed as the magazine’s first editor. Other outcomes are less clear, other than it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for many hobbyists to rub shoulders with photography’s elite.
Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Aspen conference, Jerome Hotel, Aspen, 1951. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. L-R: Front Row (lying down): Will Connell, Wayne Miller; Middle Row: Milly Kaeser, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walter Paepcke, Berenice Abbott, Frederick Sommer, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall; Back Row: Herbert Bayer, Eliot Porter, Joella Bayer, Aline Porter, Marion Frances Vanderbilt, Minor White, Constance Steele, John Morris, Ferenc Berko, Laura Gilpin, Fritz Kaeser, Paul Vanderbilt.
I first heard about the event from Eric Paddock, the Denver Art Museum curator of photography, when he told me about a famous photograph of conferees made in the lobby of the Hotel Jerome by Robert C. Bishop. Eventually I found the image in a 2008 issue of Aperture magazine, with a fascinating commentary by Anne Wilkes Tucker who delights in the attendee’s obvious pleasure in each other’s company (aside from a “glowering” Berenice Abbott) and describes them all as “mid-career impish,” which seems about as good a description of anyone as possible. [1]
Original Aspen Golden Days flyer. Aspen Historical Society Collection
What I think of as a conference was actually billed as the Golden Aspen Days seminar; a reminder that the fall colors along Independence Pass and the Maroon Bells would have been a compelling incentive for scenic photographers to attend. Given today’s traffic-clogged streets it’s hard to imagine just how small and ramshackle Aspen was in 1951, but under the patronage of Aspen Institute founder Walter Paepcke it was regenerating at a rapid pace—as a ski resort in the winter, and as a cultural destination in the summer.
Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Ansel Adams teaching workshop at the 1951 Aspen conference on photography. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. Eliot Porter standing behind Adams, Dorothea Lange in white beret and Nancy Newhall wearing scarf seen to his right. Laura Gilpin, back to camera with white hair. Lange and Adams would work together on a project titled Three Mormon Towns for Life magazine in 1953.
The event was programmed on short notice by Paepcke as a way of rounding out that summer’s program of film screenings, classical music concerts, and the inaugural design seminar. Getting word out quickly to a national public was difficult, so organizers did what they could to generate a local audience: fees were held to a minimal $2 a day ($15 for the entire conference), and townspeople were encouraged to volunteer or attend at a discount. For out-of-towners, rooms at the Hotel Jerome cost just $4 a night—about one-fifth the cost of a hamburger in the hotel bar today!
Photograph by Christina Gardner: Dorothea Lange at Maroon Bells during Aspen conference, 1951. Courtesy of James Baker.
Out-of-town presenters included photographers Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Wayne Miller, Frederick Sommer, and Minor White; and historians, writers, and photo editors who included Paul Vanderbilt, John Morris, Beaumont Newhall, and Beaumont’s wife, the curator, writer, and Weston Daybooks editor Nancy Newhall, who was notably not listed as an official participant. (The same applied to Laura Gilpin and Eliot Porter.) Locals included Herbert Bayer, Fritz Kaeser, and Ferenc (Franz) Berko, who worked for Paepcke alongside Bayer and was charged with organizing the event.
As no official records survive the total count of attendees is hard to confirm: estimates range from forty to 150, including the weekenders. Although there were undoubtedly many more, I’ve only been able to identify a few Colorado photographers who attended sessions: Charles E. Grover, described in the Aspen Times as a “Denver-based commercial photographer [who] visited with his family;” Robert C. Bishop, who functioned as staff photographer; and Winter Prather. (The Arizona-based scenic photographer Bill Belknap also attended and took many candids.)
Winter Prather self portrait, ca. 1950s. History Colorado collection.
If you saw the Winter Prather retrospective at Gallery Sink in 2005 you’ll know that he was a superb technician and a mentor to Walter Chappell, Arnold Gassan, and others in the mid-fifties. He was in Utah documenting underground explosions for an atomic research program when he heard about Golden Aspen Days. According to his friend Nile Root, “Winter would run up one day to the conference and come back the next day to tell us what Ansel said or what Minor did or all about Imogene [sic]. He was always on a first name basis with the giants.”[2]
One of Prather’s notes archived at History Colorado mentions that Beaumont Newhall lent him “some of his priceless personal collection—prints like Weston, Strand, etc. for a photographic Austellung [exhibition] I was to have seen in Denver!” Although there’s mention of an actual exhibition, the note indicates just how cavalier curatorial practice was in those days—any such loan would be unimaginable today.
Photograph by Bill Belknap. Minor White talk at the Aspen Conference, 1951. NAU.PH.96.4.324. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library.
Although panel discussions could be contentious (Frederick Sommer and Berenice Abbott locked horns, for instance), attendees were all united by their passion for photography, whatever the genre. Jim Baker researched the conference during his time as director of Anderson Ranch, and like Tucker he was able to interview several of the attendees; “I just think of them all being there together, debating, drinking together, having fun, disagreeing on certain things,” he told me. “I mean to me that’s what real education is about.”
Summing it all up in 1955, photo-historian Beaumont Newhall wrote that its value “seems to lie in the questions that it raised and the cross fertilization of ideas and experiences that it engendered in the participants. Both of these,” he noted, “are intangible, and next to impossible to communicate.”[3]
Part Two will delve into the conference program and also take a closer look at Bishop’s iconic lobby photograph. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion and visit the #Colorado Photo History Instagram and Facebook pages. @coloradophotohistory.
[1] Anne Wilkes Tucker, Mind’s Eye, “On the 1951 Aspen Conference Attendees,” Aperture 193 (Summer 2008): 88.
[2] Root, 1987 letter to Jim. It’s interesting that Root refers to “Imogene”—presumably Imogen Cunningham—because there is no other mention of her attending.
[3] Newhall, “Aspen Photo Conference,” in Aperture 3, no. 3 (1955): 10.