Ruth Bernhard
In 1976 I received a grant from the California Arts Council to create a series of oral history videos of several important California photographers who had not been much studied. At that time the medium I used was 1/2-inch, black and white, 30-minute, reel-to-reel videotape.
One of those interviews was a four-hour conversation with 71-year-old Ruth Bernhard. The pre-edited sessions took around 10 hours of taping. I didn't know Ruth yet, but I knew her work and I knew she was a major artist who was also a link to Edward Weston and several other f-64 photographers. Her father, Lucien Bernhard was an important designer in Germany in the 1920s. He designed fabrics, costumes, posters, and most notably, typefaces, some of which are in use today. In 1927 Ruth moved to the U.S.
I visited her regularly in her home in San Francisco. To get there one had to climb 60 or so stairs. I'm sure that exercise kept her young and fit. She had a young assistant from England to spot her prints. The young Michael Kenna has subsequently enjoyed great success as a photographer. I once attended a class she gave in her garage, at street level. Her adoring students seemed to absorb her words as if they had the power to heal. Another time she happily announced to me that the house directly across the street from her was occupied by baseball great Willie Mays. I asked if she followed baseball and she said she hadn't any idea about it but she knew he was famous.
Ruth was generous with her time and insight. We primarily discussed her art and the trajectory it took from her days as an art student in Berlin to the present. She had a spark of intensity in her expression and she loved to expound on an amalgam of philosophies that guided her life and her art, part Zen, part Theosophy, some pantheism and dash of hippie spirituality. I found her enormously fun to talk too, and more than that she gave me a strong sense of the connectedness and even sacredness of all things. She once stated, "If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won't see anything."
We became friends for the next 30 years. I exhibited her work at the museum and in 2002 we awarded her the Museum's Century Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was reluctant to come to the gala festivities because she found traveling, at the age of 97 to be exhausting, but she relented when I told her that a limo would pick her up and she would be flown by private plane to and from San Diego. Actress Diane Keaton made the presentation of the award. Ruth was radiant in a gold three-piece pantsuit, basking in her own celebrity till late in the evening.
In 2005 I was one of 100 fortunate people to be invited to her 100th birthday party in San Francisco. Ruth died in 2006.