Product Description

Quizzical Eye collects a lifetime of work by eighty-five-year-old photographer Rondal Patridge--son of the renowned photographer Imogen Cunningham, apprentice to Dorothea Lange, and protege of Ansel Adams. Intimately associated with the great photographers of his time, Partridge has absorbed all the techniques his famous teachers could give him, yet he wears this professional lineage lightly, dedicating himself to following the paths down which his own strange genius leads him.

Quizzical Eye: The Photography of Rondal Partridge is filled with breathtakingly intimate portraits, devastating environmental statements, compositional wonders, and telling moments from six decades of American history--the essential works of a man who has dedicated his long life to capturing single moments on film.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1319252 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
"His passion for photography is unique and incandescent." -- Daniel Dixon, son of Dorothea Lange

"I tip my hat to his extraordinary pictures!" -- Wayne Thiebaud, artist

About the Author
Elizabeth Partridge (daughter of Rondal Patridge) is the author of Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange and This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie.

Sally Stein teaches art history and visual studies at the University of California, Irvine, and writes about the history of photography in the United States.

Customer Reviews

A Master Put in Place
Quizzical Eye is a book we didn?t know we?d been waiting for until it showed up.

We?ve all seen Rondal Partridge?s pictures, but since he scorned publicity, little has been written about him. The noted photographic historian Sally Stein puts his story?and 100 terrific pictures--in their high rightful place.

Partridge, now in his 80s, grew up in the center of the California photography scene. His mother was the great photographer Imogene Cunningham, and he learned photography from Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

Over the last 60 plus years, Partridge photographed everything. He gives us hobos, W.W.II war protesters, New Delhi brickyard workers, undulating hills, bays filled with garbage, and a packed parking lot in Yosemite (with Half Dome towering behind). His fine portraits of Adams, Lange, and the folksinger Odetta are balanced by intimate nudes, and lovely studio work. We see, for example, photographer Judy Dater taking his portrait with her 8x10 view camera?its open lens leaving a shimmering white disk, a little sun, where her face would be.

Partridge is the kind of guy who will take a picture of himself with a chicken on his head and relish its place as the final photograph in the book. His family pictures are among the endearing ever taken. You want to go over to his house, pull up a chair in the kitchen, and hear him tell the stories of how these lovely pictures came to be. This will surely be one of the best photo books of the year.