Stephen H Willard
Stephen Hallet Willard (1894-1966) photographed the deserts and mountains of the West for 58 years. His mastery of the black and white photograph, combined with his passion for the landscape, translates into a body of work documenting remote areas of the West few Americans had seen or visited, yet he remains largely unknown.
Born in Illinois, Willard was raised in Corona, California. In 1908 at the age of fourteen, he was given his first camera and began taking pictures regularly. He made several extended camping trips into nearby Angeles National Forest where he began developing his interest in landscape photography. By the time Willard graduated from Corona High School in 1912, he had developed the skills needed for a career in photography. During the next few years, he made several important photographic trips through the wilderness areas of the Sierra Nevada. In 1921, Willard married Beatrice Armstrong, and after a year of traveling and photographing the deserts of the Southwest, they settled permanently in Palm Springs and opened a studio and gallery. For the next twenty-five years he traveled throughout the Colorado and Mojave Deserts and developed a passion for photographing the desert. He wrote about his love of the Coachella Valley and what he fondly referred to as: "The Land of the Purple Shadow."
In Southern California, east and south from the Pass of San Gorgonio, in the great, purple shadow of Mt. San Jacinto, there lives a wonderland of desert and mountain, canyon and mesa. It is surpassed by no desert land for subtle charm and fascination. . . .
To escape the summer heat, he and his wife established a second gallery in Mammoth Lakes and seasonally worked in both locations photographing the mountains in the summer and the desert in the winter. Discouraged by the increasing development in the Coachella Valley and what Willard considered the loss of the pristine quality of his favorite sites, they moved to Owens Valley in 1947. Stephen H. Willard died there in 1966 at the age of 72.
Willard regarded photography as a fine art and himself as an artist. His choice of subjects, composition, and use of sharp contrasts combine to make his s not only valuable artistic masterpieces but also provide a historic record of the desert and mountain environments.
In 1999, Dr. Beatrice Willard donated her father's life's work to the Palm Springs Desert Museum. This generous gift of over 16,000 items includes original glass and film negatives; vintage photographs; hand-colored lantern slides; photo-paintings; postcards; stereographs; cameras, lenses and other photographic equipment; and personal papers and memorabilia including maps, traveling cases, correspondence, and publications. A concentrated effort is underway to preserve the valuable materials in the Stephen H. Willard Photography Collection & Archive with the goal to ensure the continued enjoyment and utilization of these materials for the future.
http://www.psmuseum.org/exhibitions/permanent_collection.php?id=11
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