Golden Aspen Days: Part Two

Part One of “Golden Aspen Days” introduced the 1951 photo seminar (also thought of as a conference, workshop, and/or retreat), and included a discussion of Robert C. (Bob) Bishop’s iconic photograph of conferees taken in the Hotel Jerome lobby. Part Two delves further into images made during the conference by Bishop, Bill Belknap, and Christina Gardner, plus the program of panels and field trips [1].

Bill Belknap: Clockwise from top left, Ferenc Berko, Dorothea Lange, Laura Gilpin with Ansel Adams, Fritz Kaeser, Constance Steele. Compilation courtesy of James Baker; copyright Bill Belknap Collection, NAU.PH.96.4.324, Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives Dept.

As the conference’s unofficial “staff photographer,” Bob Bishop (1921–2017) documented panels and social events, and created the iconic photograph of conferees in the Hotel Jerome lobby (below and in Part One). When he arrived in Aspen he was living in California and had just completed courses in art, design, and architecture at Stanford University. After the retreat he took workshops with Ansel Adams and Minor White; he was living in Denver in the late fifties when he founded his very successful postcard business based in Grand Junction, CO.

His daughter Laura writes that he sold postcards in drug stores, bookstores, grocery stores, gas stations, visitor centers, hotel lobbies, sporting goods stores, small tourist shops etc; his images appeared on postcards, notecards, posters, brochures, slides, placematts, 8x10 photos, in calendars, magazines, books and Christmas cards. Today, Bishop’s postcards can easily be found in antique malls and in volumes of travel-related publications. A short film by Mark Johnstone and Jack Lucido about his life and career called “Wish You Were Here” was released in 2016. [2]

Bill Belknap: Aspen 1951. NAU.PH.96.4.324. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library.

Dorothea Lange’s assistant, Christina Gardner, describes photographer Bill Belknap (1920–86) as “a desert rat” with an “explorer’s mentality” who camped out in his station wagon during the conference. During WWII, Belknap had been assigned to the White House, where he photographed Presidents Roosevelt and then Truman. He operated a photo business in Boulder City, NV., and also photographed and wrote for National Geographic, Argosy, and Life magazines, among others. Working with a 2 1/4 camera, he took dozens of individual portraits both inside and out, and also some street scenes that show just how small and ramshackle Aspen was in 1951 (left).

Left: Photograph of Dorothea Lange by Christina Gardner. Lange was frail and recovering from a long illness at the time of the conference. Courtesy of James Baker; Right, photograph by Bill Belknap. NAU.PH.96.4.324. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library.

There are at least four variations of Bishop’s celebratory group portrait of conferees in the Jerome Hotel lobby. That image is without doubt the best, the most published, and 100% verifiable as a Bishop photograph. The Cline Library, Northern Arizona University, attributes the variant image published below to Belknap, but it is possible it was made by Bishop—the details are unclear.

Anne Wilkes Tucker interviewed eight of the attendees who appear in all versions of the photograph. In an Aperture essay published in 2008, she summarizes them as “mid-career impish, a few years yet away from the eminence most of them would achieve.” Assessing the image’s hold on her she wrote that, “It’s their palpable joy that brings me pleasure each time I view [Bishop’s] picture.” [3]

A study of all four lobby images suggests that Bishop and Belknap may have set up their cameras side by side, and that each photographer made two synchronous exposures, resulting in four almost identical group portraits.

Version One: Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Aspen conference, Jerome Hotel, Aspen, 1951. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. L-R: Front Row (lying down): Will Connell, Wayne Miller; Middle Row: Milly Kaeser, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walter Paepcke, Berenice Abbott, Frederick Sommer, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall; Back Row: Herbert Bayer, Eliot Porter, Joella Bayer, Aline Porter, Marion Frances Vanderbilt, Minor White, Constance Steele, John Morris, Ferenc Berko, Laura Gilpin, Fritz Kaeser, Paul Vanderbilt.

Version Two: Erroneously attributed to Ferenc Berko. (Unidentified source.) This image is almost identical to Version 1 but slight variations are evident. For instance, Dorothea Lange is now looking behind her instead of looking straight ahead.

Version 3: Photograph attributed to Bill Belknap. Aspen conference, Jerome Hotel, Aspen, 1951. NAU.PH.96.4.3572. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library. L-R: Front Row (lying down): Will Connell, Wayne Miller; Middle Row: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walter Paepcke, Berenice Abbott, Frederick Sommer, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall; Back Row: Herbert Bayer, Eliot Porter, Aline Porter, Joella Bayer, Marion Frances Vanderbilt, Minor White, Constance Steele, John Morris, Ferenc Berko, Laura Gilpin, Fritz Kaeser, Paul Vanderbilt.

Version 4: (Unidentified source.) Almost identical to Version 3 but taken at a slightly different angle. Note lack of flash reflected in the back window and slight change in position of Gilpin’s arm.

There are several marked differences between Versions 1 & 2 and Versions 3 & 4: Milly Kaeser is no longer seated next to Ansel Adams, although her jacket appears to have been left on the chair back; Aline Porter has moved next to her husband; Walter Paepcke has handed his dream catcher—a symbol, perhaps, of his playful induction into the photographers’ “tribe” in an image captured by Bishop (below) during a ceremony at his home—to Frederick Sommer; Berenice Abbott has her arm linked through Sommer’s; and the Newhalls have moved apart to the point that she almost leans into Sommer. All of this points to slight delays and a reshuffling of poses and positions between shots—some slight, others like Milly Kaeser’s disappearance, significant.

Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Beaumont Newhall inducting Walter Paepcke into the “tribe” of photographers at a cocktail party. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021.

Back at the conference, two of the more fractious panels were likely “Photography and Painting” chaired by Sommer with Adams, Berko, and White; and “The Evolution of A New Photographic Vision” led by White with Abbott, Adams, and Vanderbilt. Both talks raised the comparative merits of abstraction and experimental photography and may have been programmed in response to Abstraction in Photography, a show curated by Edward Steichen for MoMA that same year.

According to Sommer, Berenice Abbott denounced abstract photography as being an “imitation of painting” and “the final fling of Pictorialism.” Both Abbott and her fellow documentarian Dorothea Lange, Sommer felt, were “acting as if reality itself did not accommodate imagination.” Interestingly, however, an alternate version of the lobby photograph shows Abbott with her arm linked through Sommer’s, indicating that friendship prevailed despite their ideological differences.

Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Panel with Ansel Adams, Frederick Sommer, Ferenc Berko, and Minor White. Dorothea Lange in white hat, next to Fritz Kaeser. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. The panels were all recorded but the recordings are assumed to be lost.

Closing day, Saturday, October 6, was devoted to a general discussion and summary of the previous ten-days’ program. The October 11, 1951 Aspen Times reports that a “rousing” vote to return the following year was made. A three-point proposal was approved, i) for the establishment of picture sources; ii) to compile a bibliography of photo books; and iii) to establish a master file of transparencies from important negatives.

Despite the positivity, plans for a 1952 conference were shelved. The most tangible consequence of the retreat was undoubtedly the country’s first, and still most influential, contemporary fine art photography publication, Aperture magazine. Newhall writes that during the conference, “It was Ansel Adams who clarified our ideas, expressing the need for a professional society with a dignified publication. We discussed this informally quite a bit, feeling that what was greatly needed was a periodical in which we could talk about photography and learn from one another. The next year, nine of us met at Ansel and Virginia’s house in San Francisco and officially founded Aperture.”

Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Aspen conference, Jerome Hotel, Aspen, 1951. © Robert Bishop Photography LLC 2021. L-R: Herbert Bayer (facing camera), Aline Porter, Will Connell, Wayne Miller, Ferenc Berko, Joelle Bayer, Eliot Porter (taking photo), Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Minor White (back to camera).

James Baker interviewed Christina Gardner in 2003. These extracts from their conversation, taken from his notes, give a vivid impression of her experiences in Aspen: “Dorothea kept pestering me to go. [It] sounded terrible and maudlin. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you must go.’ My trip changed my life. I didn’t realize the significance of it at that time. My life, I was never able to utilize the photographic background I had. But the conference was so stimulating, I saw there was a big world out there beyond marriage. I came back destitute but to a better job. .... It was an obscure conference and no one paid much attention to it at the time.”

By 1955, Newhall had developed a somewhat mystical take on the cancellation: “The reason may be, in part, that the magic of the “Aspen Idea” happens only in Aspen and those that attended were so swept off their feet that they could not communicate the magic to others,” he wrote.

The Hotel Jerome lobby in 2020. Photo by Rupert Jenkins

Above: The Hotel Jerome lobby in 2020. Photo by Rupert Jenkins. Below: Assorted snapshots, unidentified photographers. Courtesy of James Baker, Laura Bishop.

Note: This post was updated April 24, 2024 with clarifications sent to the author by Laura Bishop. It was further edited January 30, 2025 to include the four lobby photo versions and related snapshots.

As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion and visit the #Colorado Photo History Instagram and Facebook pages. @coloradophotohistory.

[1] This account draws from transcripts of interviews conducted by Anderson Ranch director James Baker, who researched the Aspen event during his time there. My thanks go out to him for his generous help with my own research. Other quotes are from Beaumont Newhall’s account titled “The Aspen Photo Conference,” in Aperture 3, no. 3 (1955).
[2] “Wish You Were Here: The extraordinary postcards of the American West by Robert C. Bishop” © 2016 Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC.
[3] Anne Wilkes Tucker, “On the 1951 Aspen Conference Attendees,” Aperture 193, Winter 2008.
[4] University of Northern Arizona biography. https://library.nau.edu/speccoll/exhibits/belknap/bio1.html. Bill Belknap’s digital archive can be accessed at https://library.nau.edu/speccoll/exhibits/belknap/index.html.

Golden Aspen Days: Part One

Towards the end of September 1951, an extraordinary gathering of photographers, photo editors, historians, and hobbyists gathered in Aspen for ten days of workshops, panels, events, and socializing. Although its impact was limited, the gathering has the feel of a seminal event in Colorado’s photo history—perhaps the most important ever in terms of the stature of its participants.

The one tangible result it produced was Aperture , which was conceived of there and agreed to the following year in San Francisco, with Minor White being installed as the magazine’s first editor. Other outcomes are less clear, other than it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for many hobbyists to rub shoulders with photography’s elite.

Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Aspen conference, Jerome Hotel, Aspen, 1951. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. L-R: Front Row (lying down): Will Connell, Wayne Miller; Middle Row: Milly Kaeser, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Walter Paepcke, Berenice Abbott, Frederick Sommer, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall; Back Row: Herbert Bayer, Eliot Porter, Joella Bayer, Aline Porter, Marion Frances Vanderbilt, Minor White, Constance Steele, John Morris, Ferenc Berko, Laura Gilpin, Fritz Kaeser, Paul Vanderbilt.

I first heard about the event from Eric Paddock, the Denver Art Museum curator of photography, when he told me about a famous photograph of conferees made in the lobby of the Hotel Jerome by Robert C. Bishop. Eventually I found the image in a 2008 issue of Aperture magazine, with a fascinating commentary by Anne Wilkes Tucker who delights in the attendee’s obvious pleasure in each other’s company (aside from a “glowering” Berenice Abbott) and describes them all as “mid-career impish,” which seems about as good a description of anyone as possible. [1]

Original Aspen Golden Days flyer. Aspen Historical Society Collection

What I think of as a conference was actually billed as the Golden Aspen Days seminar—a reminder that the fall colors along Independence Pass and the Maroon Bells would have been a compelling incentive for scenic photographers to attend. Given today’s traffic-clogged streets it’s hard to imagine just how small and ramshackle Aspen was in 1951, but under the patronage of Aspen Institute founder Walter Paepcke it was regenerating at a rapid pace—as a ski resort in the winter, and as a cultural destination in the summer.

Photograph by Robert C. Bishop: Ansel Adams teaching workshop at the 1951 Aspen conference on photography. © Robert C. Bishop Photography LLC 2021. Eliot Porter standing behind Adams, Dorothea Lange in white beret and Nancy Newhall wearing scarf seen to his right. Laura Gilpin, back to camera with white hair. Lange and Adams would work together on a project titled Three Mormon Towns for Life magazine in 1953.

The event was programmed on short notice by Paepcke as a way of rounding out that summer’s program of film screenings, classical music concerts, and the inaugural design seminar. Getting word out quickly to a national public was difficult, so organizers did what they could to generate a local audience: fees were held to a minimal $2 a day ($15 for the entire conference), and townspeople were encouraged to volunteer or attend at a discount. For out-of-towners, rooms at the Hotel Jerome cost just $4 a night—about one-fifth the cost of a hamburger in the hotel bar today!

Photograph by Christina Gardner: Dorothea Lange at Maroon Bells during Aspen conference, 1951. Courtesy of James Baker.

Out-of-town presenters included photographers Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Wayne Miller, Frederick Sommer, and Minor White; and historians, writers, and photo editors who included Paul Vanderbilt, John Morris, Beaumont Newhall, and Beaumont’s wife, the curator, writer, and Weston Daybooks editor Nancy Newhall, who was notably not listed as an official participant. (The same applied to Laura Gilpin and Eliot Porter.) Locals included Herbert Bayer, Fritz Kaeser, and Ferenc (Franz) Berko, who worked for Paepcke alongside Bayer and was charged with organizing the event.

As no official records survive the total count of attendees is hard to confirm: estimates range from forty to 150, including the weekenders. Although there were undoubtedly many more, I’ve only been able to identify a few Colorado photographers who attended sessions: Charles E. Grover, described in the Aspen Times as a “Denver-based commercial photographer [who] visited with his family;” Robert C. Bishop, who functioned as staff photographer; and Winter Prather. (The Arizona-based scenic photographer Bill Belknap also attended and took many candids.)

Winter Prather self portrait, ca. 1950s. History Colorado collection.

If you saw the Winter Prather retrospective at Gallery Sink in 2005 you’ll know that he was a superb technician and a mentor to Walter Chappell, Arnold Gassan, and others in the mid-fifties. He was in Utah documenting underground explosions for an atomic research program when he heard about Golden Aspen Days. According to his friend Nile Root, “Winter would run up one day to the conference and come back the next day to tell us what Ansel said or what Minor did or all about Imogene [sic]. He was always on a first name basis with the giants.”[2]

One of Prather’s notes archived at History Colorado mentions that Beaumont Newhall lent him “some of his priceless personal collection—prints like Weston, Strand, etc. for a photographic Austellung [exhibition] I was to have seen in Denver!” Although there’s mention of an actual exhibition, the note indicates just how cavalier curatorial practice was in those days—any such loan would be unimaginable today.

Although panel discussions could be contentious (Frederick Sommer and Berenice Abbott locked horns, for instance), attendees were all united by their passion for photography, whatever the genre. Jim Baker researched the conference during his time as director of Anderson Ranch, and like Tucker he was able to interview several of the attendees; “I just think of them all being there together, debating, drinking together, having fun, disagreeing on certain things,” he told me. “I mean to me that’s what real education is about.”

Summing it all up in 1955, photo-historian Beaumont Newhall wrote that its value “seems to lie in the questions that it raised and the cross fertilization of ideas and experiences that it engendered in the participants. Both of these,” he noted, “are intangible, and next to impossible to communicate.”[3]

Below: Photographs by Bill Belknap. Minor White critique at the Aspen Conference, 1951. NAU.PH.96.4.324. Northern Arizona University. Cline Library.

Part Two will delve into the conference program and also take a closer look at Bishop’s iconic lobby photograph. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion and visit the #Colorado Photo History Instagram and Facebook pages. @coloradophotohistory.

[1] Anne Wilkes Tucker, Mind’s Eye, “On the 1951 Aspen Conference Attendees,” Aperture 193 (Summer 2008): 88.

[2] Root, 1987 letter to Jim. It’s interesting that Root refers to “Imogene”—presumably Imogen Cunningham—because there is no other mention of her attending.

[3] Newhall, “Aspen Photo Conference,” in Aperture 3, no. 3 (1955): 10.