Embracing The Cable Car, San Francisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 12/1/2023

Embracing The Cable Car Ride San Francisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 12/1/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

My sister had found her first place away from Tacoma in The Bay Area, far enough away to keep a respectable distance without seeming to reject out-of-hand childhood home and hearth.

She was there to take stock and wanted the peace of space to help her with it. I was happy to track her down, and together we spent an afternoon taking in the old usual city haunts, starting with Chinatown and a ride on the cable car up Nob Hill.

While we clung to the running boards on the crowded car a young couple found a spot just wide enough for one. First she jumped on, then he grabbed hold and wrapped his arms around her shoulder with a tight grip on the hand bar.

What we do for love.

Embracing The Cable Car, San Francisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 12/1/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

Sailors On Leave In Frisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/29/2023

Sailors On Leave In Frisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/29/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

We took a bus from the ocean to Nob Hill to catch the cable car on Powell, and fell in behind sailors on leave. They were barely younger than I at the time, straight-backed, capped, and seeing the sights for 24 hours before they had to get back to the ship.

Sailors On Leave In Frisco 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/29/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

Gary With The Sunflare Face 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/27/2023

Gary With The Sunflare Face 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/27/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

We often drove up to the hills around Mt Rainier, winter and summer. There’d be a hint from some friend about a great snow trek on a logging road. Sunday was the day, free from hours in the portrait studio and camera shop.

Gary With The Sunflare Face 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/27/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

My Sister's Hand 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/21/2023

My Sister's Hand 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/21/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

My sister left Tacoma for San Francisco after brother Bill died in early January. It devastated us; none more than Mary who was devoted to him.

I went back to the east coast to finish up my degree, and in September I went out to visit Mary in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of the city. We went here and there, glad to be together with that unfortunate business behind us.

The Outer Sunset is basically the city rolling out like a big legoland down the slopes of Twin Peaks and over the sand dunes toward the Pacific Ocean. That year the August fog hung on through September. It was cold and damp, like winter back home. Dad gave her the old 62 Impala to get around. The salt air took no time at all to reduce the car to rust-on-wheels.

The Chevy was our three-on-the-column date-car in high school. My young memory was still alive with the recent past, and I was sad to see it go like that. But what can you do?

Lot’s of good times yes sir, lot’s of good times.

My Sister's Hand 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/21/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

Downtown 11th And Pacific, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/14/2023

Downtown 11th And Pacific, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/14/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thank you for fifty years of professional photography fun and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am making a transition to publishing full time. You can expect to see my best works mined from the archive and even new works from my current adventures. Look for announcements in Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this, where I’ll begin by offering original fine prints in series of six pieces, limited-edition fine prints printed on request, handsome, high quality posters, and COOLPHOTO® books.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

Three Scenes, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/07/2023

Three Scenes: Downtown And Old Town, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/07/2023

Three Scenes: Union Station, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/07/2023

Three Scenes, Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/07/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

The Mopping Man, Union Station Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/05/2023

The Mopping Man, Union Station Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/05/2023

The panorama in the world of film photography was a difficult thing to pull off, unless you had a special camera built for it. For most, the panorama was a jury-rigged affair of multiple negative exposures made while one rotated the camera around the axis of the lens. The panorama thus was a collection of single exposures that the photographer would print, cut, and paste onto a board, matching the edge of one print to the edge of another.

I was enthralled by these long narrow compositions early on and I wandered around Tacoma collecting them on film. Though they were a pain to put together and though my exposure and developing skill was full of the flaws that enthusiasm and inexperience create I put considerable effort into it. Most were failed attempts that I never printed. I had some successes though. The most memorable was that of Union Station on the inside.

It was a beautiful building past its prime. The building was cracked from the big earthquake of 1949 and another in 1965, as well as 60 years of hard use. The cast plaster details were damaged from water leaking through the copper dome and parts had let go and fallen to the floor. Sections were roped off for safety. The station was abandoned and given over to the state for a courthouse in 1987, and it was completely rebuilt.

I made several attempts to get it right at the station. Turning the camera frame from horizontal to vertical was one variation. The one constant was my interest in putting people in the works. I wanted someone to be captured in each exposure. I knew that nothing interests people more than seeing people in a picture.

That gray January morning I went down to the station I had the good fortune to see several interesting characters working or waiting for the train. I had forgotten until today fifty years later that the custodian was busy mopping the terrazzo floor. He wielded that big rag mop in a great swishing arc, spreading water and making the floor gleam. I was pleased to get it on film. (Of course one of the benefits of shooting multiple exposures was getting the same person to appear in different parts of the finished photograph. You can see the mopping man way over there to the left…)

Today I couldn’t do it. At that time, making pictures of people in public was not seen as an intrusion or a threat, so this man was unconcerned when I asked him to be in my picture. There was no harm and no foul; pictures were just pictures, after all, and I was just some dumb kid. What could go wrong?

Union Station Interior Tacoma, January 4, 1973

The Mopping Man, Union Station Tacoma 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/05/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

Mother In The Kitchen 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/04/2023

Mother In The Kitchen 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/04/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

She sat alone at noon in the corner at the small table next to the breakfast nook. This was her spot, where she made up the grocery lists and managed the work flow, and where she settled in that day for a light lunch.

Above the sink to her right ran a wall of ceiling-high multi-paned windows which flooded light from the eastern sky into the kitchen. It would be about six months before the summer sun would again dazzle us in the morning at breakfast.

On the top shelf of the cupboard opposite was her Yuban coffee. We kept the Morton Salt on the shelf below. The counter held the Sunbeam mixer and the Hamilton Beach pop-up toaster. Next to the toaster a loaf of bread from Henry’s Bakery on Proctor lay wrapped in a plastic bag. We always kept the butter for toast uncovered on the bottom shelf of the cabinet. On the stove was a pie tin with the last of the holiday pecan pie.

Mom was dressed in her light sweater. She was quiet, and busied herself with the house. The light in the kitchen, bright even in January, barely penetrated the darkness we wandered through that winter. We knew, all of us, that we would lose Bill soon to cancer. He was barely holding on up at the Children’s Hospital. Mom and Dad had been there day and night for the last few months, but at this point, without giving up hope, we knew it would be his time, in no time at all.

Mother In The Kitchen 1973, Today's Coolphoto 11/04/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

A Woman At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 11/01/2023

A Woman At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 11/01/2023

“Time and tide wait for no man.“ - Geoffrey Chaucer

A Woman At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 11/01/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.

A Man At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 10/29/2023

A Man At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 10/29/2023

The Irish Imagination Catalog [Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number 72-075011]

There was a push to settle a debate in the Irish art establishment on the position of Irish artists in the modern pantheon of expressive painting. The fruit of the effort was a large exhibition mounted in Dublin at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in 1972. The show subsequently was sent off to the Untied States where I found it at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC in October. I was at the opening reception to make photographs for hire of the people attending. It was a gathering of the glitterati of Washington, all of whom I wouldn’t know and couldn’t recognize at that time in my life.

As I prowled among the drinks and elbows, I remember thinking that despite the gloss the show was less than what it was meant to be. The collection wasn’t the newest expression of the storied imagination of the Irish.

To me it was all so much like dressing the dustman, making it proper and tasteful, but false. Not that the works weren’t well executed or moving, for they were. Rather it’s that the collection dodged it’s promise of imagination. It put lace curtains on the old dark windows, covering over the roiling sensibilities of a country and a people who were tortured by violence and death, and weighed down by poverty and ignorance, but who could be in the midst of it as bright as a star in expressing it. Rather than celebrating the Irish imagination as I had come to know it, the collection abandoned Ireland itself to the art establishment’s neat canon of Modernism, all for the sake of cleaning up its raw image to generate tourism and to distract from the brutal war taking place in the North. It failed to celebrate the living vision of a hard-pressed people who over millennia have created searing works of sublime insight, wit, and irony in spite of it all.

This is evident from the reaction of American critics who saw a smaller version of the Irish Imagination show when it toured the United States in 1972. One Washington based writer, not convinced by O’Doherty’s attempts to explain Irish art within a local context lambasted the exhibition. It ‘is so full of American Abstractions and Francis Bacon’s English portraits that the pictures on the walls, most of them, scarcely appear to be Irish’. —The Irish Imagination 1971 – Stereotype or Strategy by Róisín Kennedy

It seemed to me then that the paintings on the walls, as good as they were, belonged elsewhere, painted by different painters in different cultures with different reasons to paint them. They appeared not to be the Irish I knew.

A Man At The Irish Imagination Reception, Corcoran Gallery 1972 Washington DC, Today's Coolphoto 10/29/2023
©2023 Christopher Petrich

Thanks to you my good friends for fifty years of professional photography and twenty five years of online success with Coolphoto.com! I am at the end of my retail sales career and am closing up shop by the end of this year. I will continue to post new work on Coolphoto, in the form of members-only galleries and Today’s Coolphoto blog posts such as this.

I am sending selected original photographs to the Christopher Petrich Collection at the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, and I am creating new bound volumes of selected pieces under my Coolphoto imprint. I have four titles in the pipeline to add to the three volumes already published: A Complete Guide To The Lighthouses on Puget Sound Including Admiralty Inlet (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775-0-8), Dreams (ISBN: 978-0-9744775-1-0) and The Beach At Fox Island (ISBN: 978‐0‐9744775‐2‐7). Each new title will be issued in very small editions of 100 or fewer copies.

For those with questions about my original works, or anything else for that matter, please send me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY, BEAUTIFUL AND ORIGINAL

Most Editions are small, 5 and under. I’ve been at this a very long time and I have hundreds of vintage silver collectibles. I’m always taking pictures in Tacoma, of Tacoma people. The best images, on the best paper, in small editions, from a Tacoma photographer, of Tacoma.

Vintage prints are made within a year of the photographs create date. My usual practice is to print within a few days or weeks of exposure. What you see is a scan of the actual print that is for sale. Price does not include shipping or taxes.

Please note that vintage prints are imperfect. They’re old, after all. If you’re worried about it, bring it up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Vintage - When I print the photograph within a year of the original exposure, that becomes a Vintage Print.
Archival Pigment - When I print in my studio using computer technology with pigmented inks on acid and lignin free paper, I call that an Archival Pigment Print.
Silver - When I print in my darkroom on gelatin silver paper, that is a Silver Print. These prints are double weight on a cotton fiber base.

For a private viewing of my current work, call 253 961 7147 to reserve your place on my calendar.