Posts Tagged ‘William Carter’
William Carter – Discovering the World and Ourselves
Ed. note: this guest post written by Ms Esther Wan was originally published on the blog Special Collections Unbound of the Stanford University Library Special Collections, authored by Laura Wilsey.
American photographer William Carter’s collection of digitized photographs was my first project for Special Collections and having just joined the team at the end of February, I soon found myself sheltered-in-place by mid-March and working from home. Despite the shrinking of my physical world, Carter’s images enabled me to continue exploring far-away places and times past – a fortuitous experience as one who now finds everyday life sometimes more strange than visually traveling through parts unknown.
Spanning a career from the 1950s until the 2000s, Stanford alum (1957) William Carter’s work and travels gave him access to diverse subjects and places and enabled him to document not only specific moments in time but also broad themes common to all cultures. Concepts such as friendship, spirituality, and survival, and human expressions found in curiosity, pride and tenderness can be seen in his imagery – caught from observing people just going about their daily lives or while waiting for those glimpses of quiet vulnerability.
His early works came from assignments that included the New York Times, Trans World Airlines, and Women’s World Daily and spanned far-flung places such as New York, London, Egypt and Yemen in the early to mid-1960s. Photos of celebrities, farmers, children in play and work, street life in villages and cities abound from these travels. Carter’s career-making moment as a photojournalist was established during his journey with Kurdish Peshmerga guerrilla soldiers in northern Iraq while on assignment for Life Magazine in 1965 and yielded a 6-page spread and imagery of a Kurdistan and its peoples still unknown to many. Later, he became involved with longer-term book projects for Sunset Publishing and his portrait close-ups and landscapes of California and the American Midwest of the late 1960s and 1970s resulted from these ventures. William Carter’s personal interests in jazz and blues music, spirituality, and fine art also led to subjects ranging from master musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Manny Sayles and De De Pierce to Tibetan monks and Indian peoples, and abstract landscape and nude photography.
Researching and creating metadata for William Carter’s digitized photographs across such diverse geography and time without the ability to directly consult his film negatives and prints required some creative thinking. First-hand sources such as Carter’s 2011 book “Causes and Spirits”, his blog, video interviews with Tony di Gesu and Dawn Hope Stevens and tapings of his book launch at Kepler’s Books enabled me to identify some images. When these avenues fell short, other institutions’ digital photographic collections – such as those from the J. Paul Getty Museum, SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art – were also helpful. Occasionally, Carter’s image names provided clues as in the cases of his step-grandson’s portraits and that of the 6th Marquess of Bath. While in other instances, elements in the photos themselves gave chase down various ‘rabbit holes’ such as the name of a Royal Canadian naval destroyer on a sailor’s cap, seeing Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at a gala premiere, or identifying legendary Illinois football coach Bob Reade during a team practice. As one who enjoys “finding things”, it was immensely satisfying for me to be able to establish connections between seemingly disparate images and to locate details needed to accurately document this collection.
Viewing William Carter’s photographs, one is often left with a haunted feeling of times and places that no longer exist – and yet also the temerity of the human spirit to survive and flourish. At this moment when our worlds are in uncharted territory due to pandemic and unrest and we have been asked to re-examine our own human frailties and strengths, there is much to be found in William Carter’s imagery for reflection and inspiration. The digital images are projected to be accessioned into the SDR and made available via SearchWorks for viewing by the end of June.
Gone Tomorrow?
Musings on Permanence/Impermanence
Rhyolite, Nevada 1970
In a nation often characterized by its frontier past, the zest for the Now has always contended with its opposite: the urge to constellate older, permanent values. Centuries of the wide open West brought us the enduring myth of cowboy who roamed freely across open spaces but whose assignment was often to save a threatened town. Trappers, miners and farmers kept moving on to the next big thing. Less romanticized, other farmers and their town-dwelling cousins put down roots, planting for permanence.
Today the theme lives on in other forms, such as in the struggle between development and preservation. Or between the risks of global thinking and the reassurances of old-time religion. Universally, man struggles for immortality against his evident mortality.
My first two books – Ghost Towns of the West and Middle West Country – probed America’s frontier tensions in detail. My most recent one, Causes and Spirits, is a photographic art book of worldwide scope; yet it, too, explores the contest between “dust to dust” on the one hand, and surpassing vision on the other. Threaded through the book in varying dimensions, the underlying polarity can be summed up here in two images involving the widespread deployment of Greek classical architecture. References to a shared European ancestry and taste, such structures served as emblems of a hoped-for permanence as America unfurled its banner westward.
Northern Minnesota, 1973
Some dreams were broken. Some dreams survived.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
The Kit Kat Club
Google Announces New/Old Name for its Operating System
———————————————by William Carter————————————————————–
Every city has its seamy side. More so, perhaps, ancient Mediterranean ports long accustomed to serving a variety of visitors — from circulating sailors, to Saudi sheiks, to sun-seekers, to sidewalk speculators.
When Google announced “KitKat” as the name for the latest version of its Android operating system, I thought both of the Nestlé candy bar and of a formerly well-known Beirut strip joint. That bustling city has always attracted a large supply of entertainers — featuring European blondes — to work at every level, from the posh Casino du Liban, on down.
The Kit Kat Club was on the waterfront not far from where I lived from 1964 to 1966. I photographed dancers there, and later in their apartments, as part of a wider magazine story — “Women of Beirut” — a multi-leveled portrait of this tribal/sophisticated city which I never got around to finishing.
The bottom image. below, shows a larger, seamier section of town which appeared to feature brunettes.
A year later came the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, followed by Lebanon’s long, brutal internal conflicts — but by then I was gone.
Fast forwarding 47 years, on November 6, 2013 I was heartened to note this passage by Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal: “While the primary goal of KitKat was to run in a much smaller amount of memory, it has a few notable new features. The phone app now places recent and frequent callers first in its favorite call list and de-emphasizes the full list of contacts…”
photographs © William Carter 1966
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
More on Egypt, Mother of the World
BELOW: Checking the View: Supreme Egyptian Military Headquarters, Heliopolis (Cairo):
BELOW: “Meanwhile, the rich get…”: U.S.-favored former Tunisian ruler Habib Bourguiba, 1965.
All of above photographs © William Carter. Below photographs uncredited, via William Carter courtesy Camera Press (London).
Meanwhile, fundamentalists of every stripe have always liked to impress with “shock and awe”:
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Egypt, Mother of of the World
I landed in Beirut in 1964 knowing nothing of the region. I was there to represent a New York photo agency — when such outfits had their people stationed around the world doing photojournalistic assignments.
One of the first people I met was the New York Times’ Middle East bureau chief, Dana Adams Schmidt. A seasoned writer, he was just leaving for Egypt, Yemen, South Arabia and Yemen: did I want to go with him? I jumped at the chance.
In Cairo I accompanied Dana on some of his political interviews. Nasser was in power trumpeting his anti-colonialist, pro-socialist, Arab-nationalist agenda. Since time immemorial the Egyptians, with their proud history, had considered themselves the cultural and political leaders of the Arab community.
The term for this outlook was — and is — Masr, Um al-Dunia: “Egypt, mother of the world.”
I had time to explore the teeming, wonderful streets. The following year I would return to the Nile Delta photographing for a UN agricultural development agency. The country’s problems were deep — seemingly intractable — yet the faces were joyous. I can only hope some of that spirit survives the latest crisis. Half a century seems less long inside a seedbed of civilization.
All photos © William Carter 1965
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Yemen: Then as Now? Part 4
Photos and Text © William Carter
Many Yemenis are short, and their donkeys more so
Protecting himself from the sun with a vestige of British colonial times
The hot, humid valleys north of Sanaa are rich in agriculture — and malaria
Yemen’s indigenous architecture long contributed to its reputation as a quasi-mythical land
In 1963 the Brits still hung on
Late in the day a colonial officer reviews a dwindling number of troops
Street life in Aden survived longer than the politicians on the walls
Building for an uncertain future — then as now
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Yemen: Then As Now? Part 3
Where there are children, there is hope
Photos and Text © William Carter
In 1964 we were told these were the first girls who ever went to school in Yemen; those who survived would now be nearly 60 years old
Building sites can also be fun
In traditional societies, gender-defined roles start early
Too old to be in the first school for girls?
Was this his first view of a camera viewing him?
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Yemen: Then As Now? Part 2
Photographs by William Carter © 1964
House in Sanaa, the capital
Tribal representatives pleading with Egyptian “anti-colonial” troops
Heading north, where Egyptian-backed revolutionaries were fighting Saudi-backed royalists
View from a British helicopter
Outpost in South Yemen: note man in prayer on wall
Modern town of Taiz
Traditional town of Sanaa
Traders in the southern port of Aden
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Yemen: Then as Now?
Photographs and Text © William Carter
Tribal elder near Sanaa, Yemen during the 1964 civil war. He carries a sprig of “ghat,” the mild national narcotic, in his hat
When Condoleezza Rice popped up in Cairo a few years ago to lecture the pharaohs that she and the other neocons were going to bring democracy to the Middle East, I had to laugh. It was redolent of the U.S. promising, a century earlier, to “make the world safe for democracy.” More distantly, I was reminded of the “enlightened self-interest” pronouncements of the colonial centuries. I was in Yemen and Aden in 1964 when the Brits were withdrawing none-too-gracefully from the last vestiges of their empire “east of Suez.” Reading the sad news of today’s Yemen, I am checking my files for photographs I took that fall in the company of my colleague, the New York Times’ Dana Adams Schmidt.
Chinese laborer, Yemen 1964: the Americans, the Soviets, and the Chinese raced to win hearts and minds in a road building competition while the Egyptians and Saudis sponsored a proxy war of factions that included the use of napalm
After flying by Egyptian military plane from Cairo to Sanaa, we slept for a few days in a mud brick skyscraper. I sampled “ghat” (the local mild narcotic), and we interviewed Yemen’s Egypt-friendly President and other local officials. We traveled north to the medieval town of Saada, close to a civil war then raging between the Royalists (backed by royal Saudi Arabia) and the Republicans (backed by Nasser’s Egypt). Sound familiar today? In the nearby town of Taiz we interviewed an American foreign aid official who explained that the U.S. and the Russians were competing for influence in the country by building major roads, sending in Caterpillars from Peoria and asphalt from some Soviet province; even the Chinese were already in that game, shipping in laborers with picks and shovels. We also interviewed a British official who knew far more about the tribes and sub-tribes than the Americans ever would, because the Brits had been there so long and taken a deeper interest in the native culture.
Then as now, the ultimate victims were the children
Next came the toughest road journey of my life. In a vintage Land Rover we bumped and slid over hundreds of miles of nearly trackless dessert, south toward Aden, past some of the most destitute, disease-ridden villages in the world, stopping a few of times in this region then called “South Arabia” to overnight with jaunty British troops and cheerful colonial administrators, enabling Dana to fill up his notebook with more quotes and me to take more pictures. Aden was a depressing, dangerous place in the throes of a Marxist sub-revolution; a cafe we had sat in an hour earlier was hit by a terrorist bomb. Most interesting (and quaint, now): we visited polling stations where British colonial officials, as prelude to their withdrawal from this final outpost of empire, were staging elections: fair, square, and meaningless.
In the strategic port of Aden, the British were preparing to depart from a last vestige of Empire by holding an election
All this was a long way from palm-fronded LA where I had grown up. But I shipped the uncensored shoot to New York by air freight (with the requisite bribe to the Beirut Pan Am agent). That was the start of my career as a photojournalist based in Lebanon. Eventually I got most of the filmstrips and slides back, but that was half a century ago, and I’m still looking for more of them to scan. I now see that even at that early stage (I had only taught myself photography 3 years earlier), I was more of a sucker for humanity than for the hard violence needed to sell news to a civilized society then preoccupied with race riots and Vietnam.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
The Tones of Stones
Sometimes, in our wanderings across the landscape of ancient Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, my wife Ulla and I would stumble into a silent, ancient amphitheater. Persuaded to try my clarinet in that dry air, I’d soon be assured that even the softest tones carried well into the high rows.
Ulla and I treasure such sweet memories. But now they are jarred with bitter undertones — endless war, brutal destruction at such magnificent sites as Palmyra.
Below, our sentimental snaps of twenty years ago have an implicit simplicity, a clarity of tone hard to recall today.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Jazz Emerges Part 7
Sing Miller: This Little Light of Mine
Visible Roots of America’s Most Original Cultural Product
Photographs by William Carter 1970 — 1989
Born in 1914, pianist-vocalist Sing Miller was active on the New Orleans scene from the late 1920s until his death in 1990. If Sing didn’t like something, he’d let you know. “Man…that ball don’t bounce,” is a Sing-saying drummer Jeff Hamilton remembers.
Early one winter morning in Iowa in 1984, when I was traveling as a photojournalist with the Percy Humphrey band, Sing sat alone in the lobby for most of an hour, staring glumly out at the blustery weather. Finally he lumbered over and checked out. “Have a nice day,” said the lady at the desk. Sing: “How I’m gonna have a nice day when you took all my money?”
But he was also a bon vivant. When a reporter asked him, “Where did the blues begin?” Sing replied, “I’ll tell you where the blues begin. Blues begin with fish fries.”
Like many early New Orleans musicians, he had an alternate profession: as a paving contractor. On gigs he gave out business cards that read, “Let me pave the way for you.”
But Sing is best remembered for captivating audiences of five, or five thousand, with his vocals on blues and spirituals. After a performance one night at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center, the famous folklorist Alan Lomax told me:
“The first note he sang, I began to cry. That first note of Sing’s made me burst into tears. This little, humble, crushed-looking man was in great big Avery Fisher Hall, and he knew it. And the first note he formed was as beautiful as a garden of flowers. It was a sunburst of the soul.”
CLICK HERE TO HEAR SING DOING “SING’S BLUES” WITH WILLIE HUMPHREY AND OTHERS AT PRESERVATION HALL.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR SING DOING “AMEN” ON TOUR WITH THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Jazz Emerges Part 6
Visible Roots of America’s Most Original Cultural Product
The Basses of Our Music
Photographs by William Carter, 1971-1985
Above: listen to bassist Pops Foster with the Luis Russell Orchestra from 1929, “Jersey Lightning.” Also on this record are New Orleans men Henry “Red” Allen, Albert Nicholas and Paul Barbarin. Virtually all of the New Orleans bass players depicted in this post played in an energetic, percussive style very similar to Foster’s.
FUNDAMENTAL: Historians and scholars have long believed the world’s first jazz band to have been that of Buddy Bolden, whose powerful cornet was heard from the bandstands of city parks and dance halls across New Orleans in the early years of the twentieth century. The only member of the Bolden band known to have survived into the 1960s was bassist Papa John Joseph, shown above in an upstairs room at Associated Artists gallery, which morphed into Preservation Hall. Joseph played concert sets downstairs until 1965, when, at 87, he collapsed and died seconds after performing When the Saints Go Marching In. Photograph by Bobby Coke, early 1960s
IN PERPETUAL DEMAND around New Orleans, and on numerous road trips across the U.S. and Europe, muscular bassist Chester Zardis (1900-1990) employed a powerful style that belied his physical shortness of stature and earned him the nickname “Little Bear.” In the post-World War II years, younger proteges flocked to hear and meet early New Orleans masters like Zardis. Thus was a once-obscure, pre-electronic bass plucking technique revived and carried forward across generations and over continents.
Photograph by William Carter, 1984
NEW ORLEANS BASS STYLIST Wellman Braud (1891-1966) reached the top of his profession as a
mainstay with Duke Ellington, plus many other engagements. Like a number of the classic jazzmen, Braud descended from a Creole musical family — several of whom, such as his cousin, bassist McNeil
Breaux, used an alternate spelling of the French-derived last name. Like many another jazz pioneer,
Wellman eventually settled in California, accepting gigs such as with blues singer Barbara Dane. Photograph by William Carter, c. 1960
FAMOUS BASSIST Pops Foster (lower right), 1892-1969, was already playing professionally in New Orleans by 1907. Amid a busy career of touring and gigging with top jazz names, he lived mainly in New York and (eventually) San Francisco. He is shown here (bottom right) in a photo from his own collection with an all-star band that included New Orleans natives Alvin Alcorn (trumpet, center) and Cie Frazier (drums, top right). Photograph: San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation Collection, Archive of Recorded Sound, Stanford University (date unknown)
Listen to bassist Pops Foster on “Ostrich Walk” with Mutt Carey’s band
TALENTED SON of bandleader Henry Allen, trumpeter Henry Red Allen (1906-1967) played extensively in New Orleans, on the Mississippi riverboats and in Chicago before settling in New York, where he was featured as soloist and sideman with top jazz orchestras of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s including those of Luis Russell, Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson and Eddie Condon — besides leading several of his own bands. Photograph by William Carter, 1964
UNDISPUTED EMPEROR OF TRADITIONAL JAZZ, Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) enjoyed a career too spectacular to summarize. While occupying center stage in America’s mainstream musical culture for virtually half a century, in his music and in his words Satchmo never ceased to recall, with great affection, his formative New Orleans years as a streetwise orphan and fledgling brass band cornetist. Photographs by William Carter, 1962
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Jazz Emerges Part 5
Visible Roots of America’s Most Original Cultural Product
Preservation Hall Won Hearts Across U.S.
Photographs by William Carter, 1971-1985
New Orleans
New Orleans
San Francisco
San Francisco
Middle West
Napa, California
Napa, California
Jim Robinson and fan, California
San Francisco
Santa Rosa, California
Jim Robinson at Stanford
Frank Demond in Santa Rosa, California
Sing Miller en route
Allan Jaffe, California
New York City
Chicago
Minneapolis
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Jazz Emerges Part 4
Trumpeter Percy and Clarinetist Willie Humphrey
On Tour and At Home
Visible Roots of America’s Most Original Cultural Product
Photographs by William Carter 1973-1985
Birthday party with kin folk and friends after a gig in California in 1976; musicians included the Humphrey brothers (center), drummer Cie Frazier (behind Percy), and banjoist/singer Narvin Kimball (seated).
In a long caption in my book, Preservation Hall (W.W. Norton, 1991), I told the story, quoted below, of the Humphreys’ long lives and distinguished lineage. I never met their trombonist brother, Earl, who died relatively young. Their father, Willie Humphrey Sr., was a clarinetist who spent much of his life on road tours; in a surviving publicity shot he looks just like Willie Jr. The pioneering grandfather’s story says something about the rich artistic and cultural complexities underpinning the birth of what has been called “America’s classical music”:
“The work of the front-line Humphrey triumvirate stemmed from the teaching of their grandfather, James Brown Humphrey, who played a unique role in the earliest years of jazz. That “fair-skinned Negro with red hair,” as the authors Berry, Foose and Jones told it, in Up from the Cradle of Jazz (1986), “starting about 1887, boarded the train each week, wearing a swallow-tailed coat and carrying a cornet case and music sheets in a satchel. The professor had many New Orleans pupils who entered the ranks of early jazz; he is also said to have taught whites. Most students on his weekly tour of the plantation belt — 25 miles either way from the city — were illiterate workers who lived in shacks behind the sugar and cotton fields along the river…Humphrey by 1890 was a rare commodity, a black man who lived off his talents as an artist. He played all instruments, directed bands and orchestras, and became a catalyst sending rural blacks into urban jazz ensembles.”
The essence of classic New Orleans jazz is the ensemble. The essence of that essence is a tough, growling, cut-down, loose-limbed, abbreviated lead trumpet or cornet — allowing the other horns lots of space. Trumpeter Percy Humphrey gives us a fiery taste of his lead in the excerpts below.”Running Wild” and “Panama” were recorded in Oxford, Ohio by the great George Lewis Ragtime Band of 1952.
Click below to listen to segments of “Runnin’ Wild” and “Panama.”
In the following solo on “St. Louis Blues,” clarinetist Willie Humphrey demonstrates two cardinal components of the New Orleans style.
Rhythmically, the horns and piano never cease to play off of, and around, the beat as strictly laid down by the rhythm section. Attacking microseconds before or after what would be correct in a more European or “white” reading, this constant off-beatness serves to trip up the listener. “What’s your music for? Mine’s for dancing!” exulted a classic player. Making people move their bodies out on the streets and in the dance halls is the musicians’ fundamental assignment — which extends to foot tapping in concert halls. Syncopation is key.
Structurally, Willie gradually, logically builds his variations from lower to higher pitches and intensities. Employing St. Louis Blues-derived themes and a faux-stumbling manner that helps release micro-rhythms, he gradually weaves a baroque edifice soaring above the underlying foundation.
Click below to listen to “St. Louis Blues.”
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Jazz Emerges Part 3
Spirit Matters
Visible Roots of America’s Most Original Cultural Product
CLICK THE ARROW ABOVE to listen to The old Eureka Band, led from the 1930s by Percy Humphrey., Tops in the city, as late as the 1950s its joyous processions were marked by a dignity and decorum since overtaken by the wild and garish. Photos by Tom Sharpsteen, compiled with sound by Clint Baker and Katie Cavera, used here with permission.
Years ago, the French Quarter streets were amazingly quiet. Especially in the mornings, before the few tourists were out and about, this historic section – located near the river, yet built on high ground for good reason – retained its residential feel. New Orleans’ slow-going, personal style, out of the national mainstream, had much to do with how it cradled classic jazz for most of a century.
But other than a couple of sleazy joints on Bourbon Street, it was hard for a musician to feed his family, or for a visitor to hear the real deal. Still, the city’s close-knit neighborhoods proclaimed their musical birthright at pop-up parties, funky dance halls, street events, church memorials. “Let the good times roll,” translated from the French, was always there, highlighted by everyone’s anticipation of the Mardi Gras Carnival, which they prepare for all year long.
The past has always loomed large in this survival culture where one never knew what tragedies the future might hold. Generations of musicians have long been linked by family ties, spiritual traditions, personal musical tutelage, people caring for neighbors. By the 1970s I had met and played with musicians in several cities of the world, but only in New Orleans did you learn so quickly where they lived — on which block of which street, in which ward, near which landmark. And no other city has ever spawned so many tunes named for beloved streets, from Basin to Canal to Bourbon to Burgundy to…
Within weeks of arriving, I knew I had arrived when I was invited to jam on the sidewalk to celebrate the birthday of an old lady named Miss Carrie. Then on ten minutes notice I donned a parade hat to go play a gig at Antoine’s fancy restaurant. Then I joined a procession of Japanese visitors marching to the graveside of clarinet great George Lewis. There were plenty of weeks of no action at all. But one thing was sure: in New Orleans nobody ever needs to be asked to “play with feeling.”
Preservation Hall, St. Peter Street, French Quarter, New Orleans, early morning, after the streets have been freshly washed and workers are filtering back to their jobs in the tourist industry.
Photograph by William Carter, 1984
Serenading a friend of the musicians, Miss Carrie, at her home typified the informality of French Quarter musical culture. Left to right: Miss Carrie; bass drummer Booker T. Glass; student Jennifer Hamilton wearing band hat; washboard player Allan Jaffe. Photograph by William Carter, 1974
Left to right: trumpeter De De Pierce; tubaist Allan Jaffe; clarinetist Willie Humphrey with Preservation Hall Jazz Band on tour in California. Under Jaffe’s marketing expertise the warm sincerity of the players was welcomed as part and parcel of their music by adoring fans in major concert venues worldwide.
Photograph by William Carter, c. 1970
Pianist-vocalist Sing Miller at concert; “You gotta have soul to do this work,” he told a photographer. Photograph by William Carter, 1975
Trombonist Louis Nelson at a private party in the French Quarter. For many years Nelson was
featured in the bands of Barry Martyn and others on countless European tours, as well as with trumpeter Kid Thomas and others across the U.S. under the Preservation Hall banner. The watchword of such brass players was a simple, honest sound derived from decades of experience processioning through the streets of the city by day and working down-home dance halls by night. Photograph by William Carter, 1984
Drummer Paul Barbarin’s manuscript of his song, “The Second Line” © circa 1960: the term “second line” refers to the enthusiasts who walk and dance and exult beside the brass bands along the routes of the street parades. Collection of William Carter
Clarinetist Paul “Polo” Barnes’ manuscript of his tune “My Josephine,” New Orleans, prior to 1960. Polo was remembered by jazz buffs for his tours and recordings with Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver around 1930. He was remembered by his neighbors for playing sweet songs by himself on summer evenings in his back yard. Collection of William Carter
Entertainers in a Bourbon Street nightclub: some clowning is traditional among New Orleans musicians, but in the commercial joints they often faced degrading conditions. Bassist at right is jazzman James Prevost. Prior to 1960. Courtesy Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University
Sister Gertrude Morgan at Associated Artists gallery, New Orleans. Photograph by Dan Leyrer, before 1960.
Revival service, Church of God in Christ, New Orleans. Photograph by Ralston Crawford, 1950s. Courtesy Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University
Clarinetist George Lewis with his mother, Alice Zeno, New Orleans. An internationally influential jazz stylist, Lewis loved playing simple hymns. He said, “I consider myself as a beginner from the time I started till now.” Photograph by Stanley Kubrick (?), c. 1950.
Reedmen Tom Sharpsteen & Ryoichi Kawai; banjoist Junichi Kawai and others pay homage at clarinetist George Lewis’ grave, New Orleans. Photograph by William Carter, 1984
Tubaist/entrepreneur Allan Jaffe paying his respects at a New Orleans memorial service for trombone star Jim Robinson. Photograph by Grauman Marks, 1976
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Hands Are Us (Part 2)
Moment, 11/25 ©William Carter 1973
Closure, 1/25 Platinum Print, ©William Carter 1992
Suggestion, 1/35 Vintage Silver Print, ©William Carter 1994
Dance, 2/25 Vintage Silver Print, ©William Carter 2006
Shiva, 2/25 Vintage Silver Print, ©William Carter 1989
Actor, New York City, printed later, ©William Carter 1963
Near Ganeshpuri, Maharashtra, India, ©William Carter 1981
Wrestlers 1/35 Vintage Silver Print, ©William Carter
In Touch: Dominique and Sramana
Sramana
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
The Old Glory That Was Kodachrome
70 Brilliant Years
How great it was — while it lasted, until 2012 — something like 70 years.
It still lasts archivally: those chromes retain their slightly salmon, yet accurate, saturated colors while so many others have long since faded. The film of choice for top magazines, many folks’ travel slides, and countless other applications. This post features some of my Kodachrome slides of the western U.S. from the 1960s on. (We hope to present a few international Kodachromes later; then eventually a selection from that fine new medium — digital color.)
We are fortunate to be living through a major transition in the history of photography. Five centuries ago, Western art was revolutionized by the invention of oil painting. Artists old enough to have been trained in older techniques like tempera, but young enough to master oil — Venetians like Titian, for instance — combined both skills in highly creative ways. (See my earlier post, “Tone in Art — and in Life.”) So I’m always pleased to hear of today’s art schools continuing to teach the older “wet darkroom” alongside the newer digital technologies.
See also “Bound for Glory: America in Color,” Kodachromes by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, property of the Library of Congress.
All Kodachromes © William Carter
Murphy’s, California c. 1970
Columbia, California 1970
Illinois, c. 1973
Preservation Hall, New Orleans, circa 198
Preservation Hall, New Orleans, c. 1985
Preservation Hall, New Orleans, c. 1986
San Francisco, c. 1970
Granite, Montana, c. 1970
Silver City, Idaho, c. 1970
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
The Middle Americans (Part 3)
Quiet Truths Near the Center of Our Lives
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Living Spaces 10
1. Dusseldorf, Germany
2. Weimar, Germany
3. Weimar, Germany
4. Dusseldorf, Germany
5. New York, N.Y.
6. Paris, France
7. Dusseldorf, Germany
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Living Spaces 9
Response to this post:
Earlier this month I received Living Spaces 9. Thank you so very much for having the sequence sent to me. It is always a treat when I open my mail and see that there is something with your name attached, and then, well, it is a bit like unwrapping a gift, that moment of holding the breath a little, and then that involuntary first response in the first encounter. For example, # 7 (Southern California) had me chuckle, then pause, then hum… the photograph is such a feast of listening and speaking, and how much of that listening we do with our backs, a barely turned head, even the hat hears it and the ocean rolls in to listen along as words bop up and down the belly. Delightful — and loud!
There was also a picture that almost hurt — the last one, # 8, Salisbury, England. Perhaps some gestures ache us when we see them because they awake something we long for even as we might fear it? That gesture of reaching out, its vulnerability, — isn’t that always the most precarious and most dangerous first step in any reconciliation and also its grandeur de vivre? Yes, this picture has accompanied me, just like the Corconio Couple, through many nights. It will continue to challenge me, and that is a good thing.
Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Rahel Hahn
1. Alexandria, Virginia
2. Alexandria, Virginia
3. Illinois
4. Northern California
5. Northern California
6. Northern California
7. Southern California
8. Salisbury, England
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Living Spaces 8
This series of posts elicited two particularly eloquent responses via email (other comments below):
“Dear Sir, Thank you for these photographs. In the clutter of my daily life your pictures invite me to living and living spaces that are clear, nuanced, simple, textured, and — especially when I look at the 4th one with that lovely gentle veiling and unveiling— not beholden to fear, the fear of peace or of dying. But lest I get too serious here: they also remind me of the sweet smell of laundry drying outside (I live in paradise, no pollution here). Best wishes and thank you again.” —Rahel Hahn
“Each picture is like a visual poem calling to mind Emily Dickenson in their spare and ambiguous content.” —Weston Naef, Founding Curator of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum
1. Ameno (Lago di Orta), Italy, circa 2005
2. Ameno (Lago di Orta), Italy, circa 2005
3. Ameno (Lago di Orta), Italy, circa 2005
4. Gualala, California, circa 2013
5. Gualala, California, circa 2013
6. Lago di Orta, Italy, circa 1989
7. Orta San Giulio, Italy, circa 1992
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More William Carter Prints Held by SF MOMA
My previous post of May 8, 2016 brought you news about the sparkling exhibition celebrating the massive expansion and re-opening of the redesigned San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a William Carter picture, “Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970″ hangs in the photography galleries.
This Arizona print is also reproduced in the large book cataloguing the exhibition: The Campaign for Art.
The official re-opening date of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions, including my print, is May 14 and run until Sept. 5. Members have earlier admission dates.
Click here for more information on admission and tickets.
Here are more William Carter prints held in the SF MOMA’s permanent collection:
Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970
Geneseo, Illinois, 1973
Detroit, 1973
Mississippi River, Bellevue, Iowa, 1973
Atherton, California, 1972
Concornio (Lake Orta) Italy, 1989
Sa’da, Yemen, 1964
William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
William Carter Print Featured in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Re-opening Gala
As part of the sparkling exhibition celebrating the massive expansion and re-opening of the redesigned San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a William Carter picture, “Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970″ hangs in the photography galleries.
Near Jerome, Arizona, 1970
This Arizona print is also reproduced in the large book cataloguing the exhibition: The Campaign for Art.
The official re-opening date of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the exhibitions, including my print, are from May 14 until Sept. 5. Members have earlier admission dates.
Click here for more information on admission and tickets.
Twenty-four Carters are held in SFMOMA’s permanent collections, including these:
Central City, Colorado 1970
Seattle, 1962
Northern Minnesota, 1973
Lower East Side, New York City, 1963
San Francisco, 1969
Northern Minnesota, 1973
William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Living Spaces 7
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Living Spaces 6
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Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
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Living Spaces 5
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Living Spaces 4
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Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
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Unchanging Greece
Months ago, when Egypt blanketed the western news, our friend Ginny Papadopoulo contributed accounts of real life on the ground in that troubled nation. Now — with the Greek banking crisis grabbing world headlines — Ginny is reinstalled in her modest home on a Greek island, and has sent us this achingly personal memoir of her life there.
Ginny writes: It is hard to believe I wrote this almost twenty years ago. I never gave it to Michael. So much of what I wrote is still here in the villages; people and customs. I am happy I was able to fulfill my dream, even if it is alone.
Images of Greece that Will Never Leave Me
by Ginny Papadopoulo
2/1/97
Lying behind shuttered windows at midday waiting for the heat of the sun to be drawn from my naked body.
The only sounds are the cicadas interrupted chorus, and the solitary cry of the gypsy selling his wares.
A quiet walk through a village street which leads to a square that is covered with a blanket of shade that offers a small table with two chairs, black sweet coffee hotter than the day, and a moment undisturbed by anything but your own thoughts.
Black interior of a church whose door is open to all, and the only light is reflected off the gold that adorns the icon on a far wall. The haze of incense and candle smoke so thick you can cut it.
The colors of Greece are a blinding balance of white upon white, then suddenly a blue door or window holding back fear and superstition. Walls of terra-cotta that balance so beautifully as they cut through a blue sky untouched by a single cloud.
An island. The top of a hill. A building identifiable only by the symmetry of a half buried foundation of ancient marble slabs. An endless view of the sea which conjures up a villa with cool dark rooms that open in every direction to the Aegean Sea. A view so sweeping that the sight of a small fishing boat draws your eye like a magnet, to hold you hypnotized with thoughts of a solitary man pulling in his nets, as he has done forever. A walk around this imaginary home where life is created, and lived for the moment, with such clarity and hope, that the only thing that draws you back to reality is the glint of the sun on a tiny object. A half buried key so ancient it fuels your imagination and hope. The key is kept close as a talisman which will bring you back to finish this dream one day.
The evening sun is setting and the heat of the day is pulled from the earth. The smell of the sea, smoke and fish drift around you. A calmness pervades, which pulls the tension from your body towards the sinking sun, and another day has escaped before you can lock its memories away for another day and time when all you have are the memories.
Watching the light disappear and night slowly approach holds you in a moment of anticipation. Will this last forever? A fear so deep inside doesn’t let you answer the question.
How to describe the people. One thought. One idea. A thousand thoughts and a thousand ideas. Driving through a mountain village. Men sitting in the doorway of a kafenion, never taking their eyes off you and never revealing their mistrust or suspicion. Women in black and their heads covered, divert their eyes and dart into doorways to stare out, observing your naked arms and flowing hair, as you laugh out loud to break the silence. When eye contact is finally forced by you, two thousand years of culture block any hope of understanding. You drive away sadly wishing you could pull them into the present. Anything to find a common ground for understanding. We are not so different. We love, fear, dream, and hope for the same things.
Every thing about Greece draws me back to the sea. Walking into the water so cold on my legs, and the sun so hot on my back. Watching you swim with strong pure strokes, then walking towards me, and as you rise from the water the hair on your chest is covered with diamonds. I laugh to myself at the pure innocence on your face and the happiness in your eyes. What was it that gave you a moments reprieve from your torment of mistrust and suspicion? Why could I never hold on to those profoundly beautiful moments for more than a blink of my eye. Knowing it is hidden so deeply inside and never to be shared, deepens the grief I feel at my loss.
An ancient key must be two peoples’ dream to become reality.
Near Hydra, Greece circa 1955
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Versions of Ourselves
I am as addicted to digits as the next person. But my caring comes from elsewhere.
Culture wars, like other wars, take their toll. Unexpected outcomes flow into our sinews and, welcome or not, affect our feelings and expressions.
I grew up in a town dedicated to change — in an era summed up in the famous motto of a leading corporation, “Progress is our most important product.” Postwar LA, powered by newborn defense industries, famous for its movies, a thinly peopled, dry basin lacking deep cultural roots, facing the vast Pacific, was perfectly placed for the unfettered growth and change that was soon underway.
My own personal model was the opposite. I sought permanent values, humaneness, the depths not the surfaces. Spiritual affirmation — particularly in the arts. So, physically and mentally, I went the other way from LA. The older tradition of great West Coast photographers had inspired me, but by the 1960s I needed to move on from there to places like New York, London, the Middle East and India – where close-up tenderness and long-term values still seemed alive and honored.
In California there were plenty of photographers of the old school to inspire me. But their dynamic was gradually being eclipsed. Although not particularly “outgoing,” I did go out. I developed the unfashionable notion that the role of the artist was not to stand off and snipe at the ugly aspects of world, but to offer a positive alternative: in that most unfashionable of words — beauty. In an era beset by counter-cultural attack modes, I remain a counter-revolutionary.
The two photographs below, by Struth and Cunningham, are well-known offerings of contrasting states of soul. Which would you rather hold close?
Thomas Struth, “String Handling,” SolarWorld, Frieberg 2011
Imogen Cunningham, “The Unmade Bed,” 1957
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A Letter to H.E. Masoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
May 4, 2015
Mr. Masoud Barzani
President
Kurdish Regional Government
Erbil, Iraq
For delivery in Washington, D.C.
Dear President Barzani:
With great pleasure we welcome you to the United States. I am so happy about the evident progress of the Kurdish people in their long struggle for their rights and autonomy, and their partnership with America.
Fifty years ago – in the spring of 1965 – I interviewed and photographed your esteemed father in Kurdistan. I was traveling through the mountains with a group of pesh mergas under the command of Colonel Akrawi, on assignment from Life Magazine, which published my article and photographs.
I have never forgotten that experience. Mullah Mustafa Barzani asked me to help the Kurdish cause with the people of America, and I have tried to do that in my modest ways as a photographer and writer. Much time and many events have passed on the world stage, but in my heart I have never forgotten the wonderful hospitality and special character of the Kurds.
In the last two years I have published a series of blogs of these photos on https://bywilliamcarter.wordpress.com I have corresponded with Kurds in the U.S. and in Kurdistan, who warmly invite me to travel to Erbil. My wife and I must think realistically about this at age 80!
Perhaps a comprehensive pictorial book can be published celebrating the dynamic present and inspiring history of the Kurds on their long road to autonomy. As part of that story. my diaries and pictures of your father, the pesh mergas, the hospitable village life and beautiful landscape would be available.
Please accept the enclosed photograph of Mullah Mustafa Barzani as a token of my admiration for all that you and your people are doing to honor his memory.
William Carter
I received this reply from Mr. Barzani dated May 17, 2015:
Letter from Masoud Barzani to William Carter
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More on Louis: Tone and Tonality
all photographs © William Carter 1965
When You’re Smilin’, Trummy Young and Louis Armstrong
What do we mean by “tone?” The word has precise meanings in music, photography, literature and other forms of art. More broadly, tone signifies the attitudes and intentions and feelings behind our literal expressions. This is basic to human communication: babies — even dogs — respond to a mother’s tone of voice long before they literally understand her words.
The generation who created jazz — and spawned Satchmo — well understood this primacy of tone as a universal human communicator. Cornetist Joe “King” Oliver, Louis’ adored mentor, marshaled an arsenal of mutes to tug at our hearts with his blues-based entreaties. Long before blowing a horn, Louis, a semi-orphan steeped in New Orleans vernacular sounds, sang in church pews and sidewalk quartets.
The evolution of Armstrong — his gravelly voice, his commanding trumpet, the public showman and the private persona — is recounted in a number of books, including excellent ones by Thomas Brothers. He was available and himself for anyone who wanted to speak with him: sharing his kindness and humor, his generosity of spirit, and — usually off camera — his all-too-human moments of weariness or (less often) sadness or anger. As once, when reedman Sidney Bechet, standing next to Louis in a festival, tried to outshine Armstrong by loudly playing the melody, causing Louis to inform him: “Ain’t but one lead horn in this band.” And another time, when Satchmo issued a rare public outburst at authorities trying to prevent a black child from enrolling in an all-white school.
Black and Blue
You Rascal You
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Professionalism and Creativity
Once in the late 1950s, when our friend, the bassist “Squire” Girsback, was on the road as a member the Louis Armstrong All Stars, Squire invited us to his home on the San Francisco Peninsula to enjoy red beans and rice and meet the great man.
Louis was sitting on the floor in a back bedroom with his pants legs rolled up and a big plate of the beloved New Orleans dish in his lap. He was glad to meet Squire’s friends but looked slightly sheepish at first because he was hiding from a road manager one of whose jobs was to prevent Louis, who was afflicted with stomach problems, from eating the wrong foods, including such good ole spicy n’owlins fare.
I was not yet a photographer, but would soon become one, and would meet Armstrong one more time — in 1962, at Rutgers University — and photograph him there. The picture on this page was never printed until 2014, 52 years later. A print of it is going to the unique Louis Armstrong archive in Queens, New York, and another will be donated to Stanford University, whose Archive of Recorded Sound holds important jazz collections. These include those of the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation, the original Monterey Jazz Festival tapes, and the over 400 Jim Cullum radio shows which Stanford has been streaming free worldwide, 24 hours a day.
Squire, in semi-retirement, sometimes regaled us with stories of those two years with Louis — the highlight of the bass man’s life. Constantly playing one night concerts in huge auditoriums on the road, the All Stars used a set routine, like most successful touring shows. Squire told us the players mostly played the same notes, in the same places, with the same crowd-pleasing antics, every night. With some exceptions — especially Satch. Now and then, Louis would seemingly receive some message from outer space and blow — or sing — a flurry of notes Squire never heard before or since. The band just kept the same routine going, but Squire would answer these flourishes with a special flurry of his own, which caused “Pops” — who heard everything happening in his band at all times — to turn and give his bass man a big wink. Squire carried those winks in his heart until the day he died.
Professionalism in any field means producing, or reproducing, a reliable product. Careful preparation, good chops and perfect execution. Big bucks in the top echelon of the entertainment industry is no different in this respect from bands remaining stable, and stable enough to get invited back every year to established festivals.
But is this middlebrow predictability not fundamentally in conflict with a premise of jazz, namely spontaneity? Many musicians will tell you that some of the great moments in jazz happen out of the limelight, in dim bars or backroom settings allowing for creative chemistry — happy accidents. Which means leaving open the possibility for bands and players to depart from expected routines, even at the cost of the occasional wrong chord or creative “mistake.” Dimly lit Bay Area joints like Pier 23 and Café Borrone and Nick’s and Berkeley’s old Monkey Inn are and were the seedbed for such creativity. As were, in the whole history of jazz, a precious few record labels, and leaders whose DNA understands not only reliability but freshness.
Louis’ crowd-pleasing was the opposite of a circus routine. It flowed directly from his heart in communication with other hearts — from an understanding, in his personal DNA, which was inseparable from the DNA of New Orleans jazz, that this music is about a kind of inner and outer openness in which spontaneity is key.
Squire Girsback, San Francisco Peninsula, 1970s © William Carter
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Much More on the Kurds Part 6
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
They defended their birthright as a people.
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Much More on the Kurds Part 5
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
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Much More on the Kurds Part 4
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
Mullah Mustafa Barzani (right) with an assistant
Marching peshmergas getting directions from locals
Shepherds in spring: Kurds and their lands are distinct from others in the Middle East
Migrant shepherd family in spring
Relaxing in a village tea shop
Christian girl sheltering in a cave from Iraqi bombing
Mullah Mustafa Barzani during our last interview
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Much More on the Kurds Part 3
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
This Carter photograph was taken in Yemen, prior to William Carter’s visit to Kurdistan. Newly arrived Carter had been traveling in Yemen with veteran New York Times correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt, who told Carter about then little-known Kurdistan and who later helped him get there.
Kurdish villagers beside a well-used road in northern Iraq
Kurdish village, northern Iraq
Shepherd boy in spring
Spring religious ritual, near the Iraq-Iran border
Spring religious ritual, near the Iran-Iraq border
Sorting grain on a rooftop
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Much More on the Kurds Part 2
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
Morning in Kurdistan
Native Ibex from Kurdish area of eastern Iraq or western Iran
Conference between locals and peshmerga commanders
Burial of an executed “josh” (“donkey” or Iraqi government spy)
Kurdish graveyard
Peshmergas enjoying home hospitality in village north of Suleimaniya
Peshmerga platoon on the march
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Much More on the Kurds Part 1
northern Iraq 1965
photographs and text © William Carter
Because there’s been such a huge response to my Kurdish blogs (including a speaking request in California), I dug deeper and found more images from my trip to their mountain homeland in June 1965.
The figure at left is legendary leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of the current President of Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani.
(By the way, I received several requests that I call it simply “Kurdistan,” not “Iraqi Kurdistan.” Well, that request is thick with politics. Suffice it to say I am an American, and my country is a member of NATO, which includes Turkey, whose southeast corner has an overwhelmingly large Kurdish population. Yet in my heart I am thrilled that the U.S. military and the Kurdish peshmerga fighters are working shoulder to shoulder these days–in a part of the world where trust is always in short supply)
More than 50 years ago, the day I was saying goodbye to Mullah Mustafa, we shook hands, and he said, “Please help us in America.” Through the translator I replied, “America is a big ocean, and I only have a small cup.”
Everyone laughed.
A few days later, when I rode away on a donkey, east toward the Iranian border, my peshmerga hosts lined themselves along the brow of a hill, waving for a while, then just standing there and watching me go, for nearly an hour, until I dropped out of sight.
Not, though, out of mind.
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Seeds of Today’s Headlines
plus some heartwarming responses
by William Carter
Mullah Mustafa Barzani, 1965
Running in this space for several months, my Kurdish blogs attracted wide attention, not least from the Kurds themselves. Seeing unknown, 50-year-old photographs of their own legendary founding hero, Mullah Mustafa Barzani (left), was a heart-warming revelation.
One non-Kurd who responded was Chris Kutschera, who runs a photo archive in Paris dedicated to his and others’ photographs from Kurdistan, and to his several books and many articles on the Kurds. Chris has added a number of my 1965 photographs to his ongoing collection, which can be visited at www.chris-kutschera.com
These days I get up early to scour the headlines for the latest news of the Kurdish peshmergas’ valiant struggle against the ISIS marauders in Syria and Iraq, helped by U.S. airdrops of supplies. Those of you who see the New Yorker magazine can read Dexter Filkins’ recent report in depth and detail on these special people.
Over the years visiting journalists, including myself, have admired these proud and independent folks to the point of struggling to maintain professional objectivity on the ins and outs of their long-running struggle for “autonomy” within existing Iraq, Turkey, and Syria — or, one day perhaps, independence as a separate nation.
One Kurd who responded to my photographs of the ancient Mesopotamian stones was Kozad Ahmed. A Kurdish archeologist born in Baghdad in 1967 (two years after my visit), he contextualized those stones in his detailed 2012 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Leiden in Holland, titled “The Beginnings of Ancient Kurdistan” (c. 2500-1500): A Historical and Cultural Synthesis.” Evidently those stones were smuggled out of the village of Betwata the 1970s, auctioned in Geneva and are now in museums in Jerusalem and Baghdad.
![[kneeling in a line] With Kurdish pesh mergas, Iraq, 1965](https://bywilliamcarter.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/kurdsi002.jpg "[kneeling in a line] With Kurdish pesh mergas, Iraq, 1965")
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Reliable Friends; Tough Territory
1. Mullah Mustafa Barzani
In this resumption of my series on the Kurds of northern Iraq, we celebrate — in black and white — their famous 20th century political and military leader: Mullah Mustafa Barzani. Today, his descendants in Erbil and Baghdad carry on their people’s long push for autonomy.
It is hard for Americans to appreciate the depth and tenacity of this struggle. Following the centuries-long dissolution of the Ottoman empire, dozens of tribal and linguistic groups still struggle to survive the shifting sands of Middle Eastern politics. It remains a tough neighborhood. And Mullah Mustafa’s toughness is evident in these pictures.
Democratic ideals projected through a Western lens can go only so far in this region — something well worth admitting now, amid the shifting sands of power politics. Memories of Beirut in the 1970s remind us of the temporary nature of all alliances within and among a myriad of subgroups and special or outside interests. Deeply rooted habits of splintering, betrayal, and infighting survive every “boots on the ground” intervention.
The Kurds remain staunch friends of the U.S. They have major petroleum reserves. The Americans have been blocking the Kurds from selling their oil directly on the international market. However, instead of clinging to the unworkable fantasy of rebuilding a tripartite, failed state of Iraq, the Americans should encourage these proud mountain people to make whatever “declaration of independence” they feel they can handle — supported by oil sales.
In a time of softening frontiers, ethnic affinity between the Iraqi Kurds and those in Turkey and Syria raise questions — and opportunities. Last summer, a retired CIA Director whispered to me that certain of America’s close friends in the region would applaud a Kurdish diversification of the sourcing and supply of Middle Eastern petroleum on world markets.
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Iraqi Kurdistan 1965: photographs © William Carter
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“All That is Ours!”
IRAQ, 1965: Mullah Mustafa Barzani, historic leader of Kurdish pesh merga resistance fighters, gestures toward the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Forty-nine years later, has the Kurds’ historic longing for full independence finally become a reality?
By William Carter
In a top-secret mountain setting — he moved continuously because the Baghdad government had placed a huge bounty on his head — Mullah Mustafa Barzani had granted me an extraordinary interview because I was on assignment from the then-influential magazine, LIFE. Speaking Kurdish through a translator, he recited highlights of his proud people’s long history of partition and betrayal, and obliquely thanked the US for the diplomatic and tangible support the Americans were already supplying covertly via their then-ally, Iran. I myself had been smuggled in from the Shah’s kingdom, dressed as a Kurdish nomad and crossing the river frontier on a donkey after midnight.
After the interview and photographs I resumed my weeks-long journey by foot on donkey westward through the spectacular mountain landscape, dotted with spring wildflowers and hospitable tiny villages. My guide was one of Barzani’s commanders, Colonel Akrawi, who spoke excellent English and who, when he was not conducting raids on Iraqi police stations, was collecting plant specimens for a book he was writing on Kurdish botany. After a miserable night in a canyon village being shelled by the Iraqis, we arrived, one late afternoon, at a spectacular clearing and lookout point.
Below us, to the west, strings of lights outlining the Kirkuk oil fields were beginning to wink on; beyond lay the relatively large city of Kirkuk itself.
With a wide, proud sweep of his arm, the personable Colonel Akrawi said softly but very firmly, “All that is ours.”
This spring of 2014 my wife and I were invited to travel to the modern city of Erbil, Kurdistan as honored guests to meet Massoud Barzani, Mullah Mustafa’s son, who, with other Kurds, had, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, occupied high posts in the Baghdad regime. (I believe I photographed him as a child 49 years ago.) At 80, We declined the offer, partly because of kidnapping worries. Just as well we weren’t there last week when the ISIS Islamic fundamentalists came marauding through northwestern Iraq — although I would have had my camera ready!
Now may be a pivotal moment for the Kurds. With their extraordinary bravery, organization, newly won oil income and fierce in-group identity vis-a-vis Arab domination, they may emerge as the only winners amid the long-drawn-out failure of the artificially conceived, ethnically impossible, divide-and-rule “state” concocted by colonialists drawing ruler lines across maps in London and Paris a century ago.
The new threat — and old spirit — were summed up by the head of Kirkuk’s regional police force: as reported by Joe Parkinson in The Wall Street Journal on June 20, 2014: “I’m from Kirkuk and I’m ready to die to protect it.”
Kodachrome photographs June, 1965 © William Carter
Mullah Mustafa Barzani, 1965
Peshmergas in the cliffs above Kirkuk
Same guys with a little sponsorship from (then) U.S. friends in Iran
Modern weaponry in support of tribal traditions — what else is new?
Norther Iraq is not a desert, and the Kurds are not Arabs
Peshmergas at dusk: is the moon finally
rising over Kurdish independence?
Colonel Akrawi had been trained at Sandhurst, England. He was my guide and companion for 3 weeks. Years later I heard he had been wounded and eventually died in Switzerland. But what ever happened to the book Akrawi was writing on Kurdish botany, as our platoon
hiked through scenes like that below?
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Good Vibes
Roger Glenn presents “Beware the Vibes of March”
Just when you thought jazz had lofted entirely up into the rarified air of college courses and elegant concert halls, it’s nice to recross the tracks — back to the face-to-face interactions and inspirations where America’s music came from. My definition of a great place to hear jazz, of whatever era, is when an audience member takes a short break, and returns to his seat — only to find it occupied by one of the band members sitting out that tune. Which is what happened to me last month at one of the most venerable and funkiest jazz institutions near San Francisco — the Bach Dynamite and Dancing Society at Half Moon Bay, California.
The style and attitudes of the highly acclaimed presenters fit that bill. Leader Roger Glenn, who plays as many vibes and more woodwinds than I can count, grew up literally crawling around the feet of folks like Louis Armstrong because Roger’s father, Tyree, was a major trombonist of that era who often worked in Louis’ bands.
Equally renowned were many of the performers at the “Beware the Vibes of March” gig. Way back, the multi-talented Rex Allen cut his teeth with the Bob Crosby band, and for decades Rex has appeared in countless festivals and solo spots — often as a swing trombonist fronting his own Big Band.
This was a vibrant LATIN JAZZ afternoon. The others were too many, and too talented, to cite beyond this stellar lineup: Charlie Barreda on vibes, Michael Hatfield on vibes, Smith Dobson V on vibes, Leon Joyce Jr. on drums, David K. Mathews on piano, Robb Fisher on bass, and Rafael Ramirez on congas.
With the sun gradually slipping into the Pacific, and folks schlepping munchies and wine glasses to and from the breezy porch, and old Pete Douglas, idiosyncratic and timeless patriarch of the period structure, happily lolling at the swirling epicenter his home, his ankles crossed atop his ancient desk, there were more multigenerational smiles all round than one would care to count. These afternoons are as much private parties as concerts. Still going strong (since 1964) in this former private residence, Bach Dynamite is a non-profit 501c(3), and you can get all the data at their website here.
By the way, no sign says: No Photography. But how is this enforced? Example: the conga player’s i-Pad rang in his pocket in the middle of the first tune. That helped loosen up the audience, if further loosening were needed.
Photos: Roger Glenn (top) and friends, © William Carter, March 23, 2014
Nikon D-800, hand-held, no flash, processed on a Mac in Aperture.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Egypt Update 12/3/2013
Text: Another dispatch from our friend and correspondent, Virginia Papadopoulo, living and teaching in Egypt.
Photographs: © William Carter 1964: Amid profound changes, has Egypt’s inner spirit survived?
I wish I had good news for you from Cairo, but things just keep getting worse. The word is that the American School in Maadi, where I live, had a number of students leave [see below]. Most of the U.S. Embassy families had to leave and they are closing the U.S. Consulate in Alexandria. Our school out in Sheikh Zayed did not suffer much of a loss, because most of the families are very wealthy Egyptians. Out by our school life goes on as usual – shopping malls are popping up like mushrooms, and the restaurants are open and full. The reason I left the desert [see below] after my first year was because It was not Egypt. Could have been any wealthy neighborhood I have visited in the world.
What does worry me is the incidence of attacks on fellow teachers. One wonderful Dutch couple were mugged twice in the last several months. They are now looking to leave, and they love Cairo. Local Egyptian friends were stopped at check points during the curfew and harassed, threatened, and taken to jail. Two teachers went through very humiliating luggage searches coming from the airport. Small incidents, but they end up being the topic of conversation. There are more demonstrations in my town, but I don’t usually go out on Friday. The town of Mohandiseen where a lot of teachers live is becoming unbearable for many because of the constant demonstrations, and they are moving out near the school and not returning next year.
I am sitting here in my apartment and there are horns blaring, gun shots, and packs of dogs barking, but it could be from a wedding — it is hard to tell.
I am not out and about at night unless with friends, and even that is pretty local. I walk to and from my bus on the same route every day and I know my neighborhood. I greet and am greeted every day and feel perfectly safe – maybe being 70 has something to do with that. Or, maybe I just want to believe everything is ok, to give me another reason to keep doing what I love so much, and to stay here.
later:
Just spoke to a colleague whose husband works at the American Embassy. She was told not to come back in September, but her husband stayed in Egypt. She had to put her three children into schools in the US, but finally returned this week. Her children go to CAC. Her words to me were, “The school had approximately 1,400 students before the first revolution, and they are down to about 900 after the 2nd revolution.” So somewhere between 1-2 hundred have not returned this year. There are several other international schools that have shut down completely, but to be fair, people are returning. Who they are I don’t know. The important thing is that these returns do not significantly improve the tourist trade—it is dying a slow death. It is absolutely the perfect time to “See Egypt” —no crowds.
When I say the desert, I am talking about an area called Sheikh Zayed, and it is in the larger area of 6 October. It is southwest of the pyramids, (which we see twice a day, and still bring tears to my eyes) and probably 25 miles out. Initially the drive was through farmland—beautiful. There were compounds near the school, but mostly sand four years ago. The view from the front of my school was truly nothing but desert. There were no restaurants in our area and only one huge grocery store to shop in a few miles from where we lived, which you had to take a taxi to. That was four years ago, and the reason why I wanted to get out of the desert and move into the life of Cairo proper. Today the sand is gone and all you see for miles and miles are huge walled compounds and shopping malls. The beautiful farmland is vanishing, and it seem the reason is because there is no control on building. I should have invested in cement and construction equipment four years ago!
Above: Pharaoh-like statue of dictator General Gamal Nasser outside Supreme Military Headquarters, 1964: in six decades of change, does a need for strong-armed authority persist?
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Crossing Party Lines: a Follow-Up
Thanks to all those who responded positively to my last blog, “Crossing Party Lines — Creatively.” Several of you complimented us on our wedding pictures! Which made me realize, to my chagrin, that I had neglected to thank and credit our good photographer-friend, who graciously gave us those lovely prints 28+ years ago: Esme Gibson! The event was in San Marino, California, and was one photo opportunity I couldn’t handle myself.
I regret I have no such light to shed on the current Syrian tragedy. But you can see my earlier blogs on the reported damages to that nation’s ancient monuments and peoples: “Contested Stones Redux” and “Plight of Syria’s Kurds Breaks into the News.”
Plus, here are four more photographs, semi-related to current events in the Middle East.
The first, done on assignment from the US Information Agency, shows the Baghdad Museum, its ancient Mesopotamian treasures still intact, in 1965 — long before the destruction occasioned by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The second photograph is of unemployed men in Aleppo, Syria in 1993.
The third is from Gaza in 1993.
The fourth is in an orphanage in Jerusalem, 1993.
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
Carters in SF MOMA Show
Photograph by Chuck Frankel. Viewing Carter prints at SFMOMA: this museum was among the first in the world to collect photographs as a fine art.
From November 29, 2012 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is showing the following 4 William Carter prints. Part of Carter’s “Humanity” series, as represented in his book Causes and Spirits, these photographs are in SF MOMA’s permanent collection and can be seen in the rooms displaying the Museum’s ongoing series, “Picturing Modernity.”
San Francisco 1969
Central City, Colorado 1970
Geneseo, Illinois 1973
Fuengirola, Spain 1968
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Added Extras
Here are a couple of photos from my files that complement earlier blogs.
HOW THE WEST WAS WON place, date and photographer unknown, probably southern Arizona, early twentieth century
JAZZ/BLUES GREATS Bassist Wellman Braud; pianist/trumpeter/vocalist Kenny Whitson at Sugar Hill, San Francisco, 1961, photograph © William Carter
Copyright statement: William Carter papers, © Stanford University Libraries. Click here for a detailed usage guide.
By William Carter 