Sandy Hume Interview/Obituary

2023 saw the passing of two notable contributors to Colorado’s history of photography. Drex Brooks (1952-2023) documented American massacre sites in a series titled Sweet Medicine, published by UNM Press in 1995. I will be posting an interview with him on the February 2023 blog. Sandy Hume was one of Colorado’s most important photography curators of the 1970s and 80s. Hume (born Richard Paul Hume in 1946) studied photography with Charlie Roitz and Gary Metz at CU Boulder (MFA 1975). His thesis project was a wry documentation of Denver’s National Western Stock Show that was published as Western Man in 1980.

Hume’s curatorial efforts are defined by landscape, scale, and ambition. In January 1977, he organized an exhibition of contemporary works at three Boulder venues that featured works by many landscape artists—Robert Adams, Tom Breeden, Richard van Pelt, Andrea Jennison, Ron Wohlauer, and others—who would reappear that September in The Great West.

An environmental project titled From This Land (organized with Barbara Houghton) followed in 1978. Four years later, in an effort to “bring American photography to the people of Colorado,” he curated American Photography Today, which integrated familiar regional names with nationally recognized photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, Judy Dater, Joe Deal, Jo Ann Callis, Betty Hahn, Joyce Neimanas, and Robert Heinecken. The exhibition was shown at CU Denver’s Emmanuel Gallery. His curatorial swan song, Arboretum: The Tree as Symbol, Form and Object in American Photography (1983), presented 600 photographs by ninety-two artists in three galleries—Emmanuel, University of Denver’s Shwayder (DU), and Boulder Center for Visual Arts.

Hume served as a Republican on the State General Assembly for many years before turning to real estate in Boulder. He passed away on June 20, 2023. An archive of his images and ephemera is stored at CU’s Nolin Library Special Collections. The following interview is editing down from a phone conversation I had with Sandy on June 8, 2017.

Opening reception for The Great West at CU Boulder, September 1977. L-R: Sandy Hume, Ellen Manchester, William Clift, Beaumont Newhall, Gary Metz. Photographer unidentified. Courtesy of Ellen Manchester.

Rupert Jenkins: Can we go back to the beginning of you studying at CU Boulder? How did your photo life take shape from there?

Sandy Hume: I’m a native of Boulder, born and raised and grew up with the university being a strong presence in my life, even though my parents did not work at the university and there was no degree holder in my family until me. … I just went to CU Boulder normally and then I was subjected to the draft and Vietnam. I volunteered for the U.S. Army Reserves and spent six years on reserve duty. When I got back from my reserve duty, I somewhat absent mindedly took a drawing class up at CU Boulder. … I was actually admitted to the MFA program at CU Boulder in drawing and painting, not in photography, but during the program I applied for the MFA program and inexplicably got in. I took my first photo class from Charlie Roitz and it was good, really solid. Charlie knew what he was doing; he handled the class well, and I just took off like a shot. Then Charlie hired Gary Metz.

I was just working and doing photography and trying to figure out whether going to graduate school for an MFA was what I really wanted to do, because I was really wanting to run for the State legislature. … I interned at the State legislature [in Denver] while I was going to graduate school. I would commute down there on the bus in the morning and take classes at night at the art department, never telling anybody on either side what I was doing. I essentially led a double life because I never ever told anybody in the art department what I was doing in politics. I would have been potentially ostracized, just run out of the gate because I was interested in politics … and because I was a Republican. When I was in Denver and commuting on the bus, I made my first visit to the National Western Stock show.

RJ: Which was the start of Western Man. How many years of work did that represent?

SH: Well, I started working at the stock show in 1971 or ‘72, maybe 1970, and then I pretty much started going to every stock show through the ‘70s and included work from the most recent stock show in the book and exhibition, that we did at Reed Estabrook’s school. Iowa State University, I think was where Reed was then. Reed was helpful with Western Man – because he agreed to do the exhibition and try to sell some of the books without getting much out of it himself, as I recall.

RJ: Your Western Man photography was kind of quirky – Garry Winogrand-ish. I don’t associate that style with your instructor, Gary Metz.

SH: Well, Gary Metz could handle anything that came his way. Not only was he accepting of anybody’s good work, but he found a way to let you know that there were 50 or 75 things that you might want to think about while you were doing it. There was Gary Metz and there was everybody else. It’s hard to describe how crucial he was to the lives of working artists, but he provided a framework for thinking and intellectual inquiry that was and remains unsurpassed in my life. Whether in art photography or in art in general or in politics. He was the best-read person I knew and the kindest person I could have asked for, the most generous person you could have found through telling you what he thought was going on in the world of photography, and pretty much anything else you wanted to ask about.

RJ: He was a graduate of Visual Studies Workshop, I think.

SH: Right, with Uncle Nate, god rest his soul. Nate came to Boulder a lot – he was at the conference for The Great West I mentioned, and he came out to this seminar thing I did with Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Linda Connor – I got tapes by the way from that – old cassette tapes – I interviewed everybody.

RJ: Why did you want to do The Great West?

SH: Well, it seemed like something that hadn’t been done, as far as I was aware of it.

RJ: Right after The Great West you and Barbara Houghton organized From This Land (1978), which tackled the environmental consequences of mining.

SH: From This Land was another project that I thought was worth doing. Barbara and I probably have different memories of that – on balance I think it was a huge mistake and a distraction for me. I was still leading my double life. I was in the General Assembly; my daughter was growing up and I wanted to spend time with her. The whole thing.

RJ: You regrouped, though, and curated two mammoth undertakings: American Photography Today (1982) and Arboretum (1983).  

SH: American Photography Today was my effort to bring American photography to the people of Colorado. There wasn’t much going on at DAM at the time – I just thought it would be good to bring in everything we could and see what was going on. Help students and faculty see what was happening. The first thing when I think about Arboretum is Jim Alinder’s photo of Ansel Adams that I used for the poster. We sent one out to all the photographers [and] Eliot Porter called me up and started ragging on me, totally getting up in my face about “how dare I besmirch the reputation of Ansel Adams” by including an out of focus photograph of Ansel Adams standing in front of a bush [laughs]. I didn’t think it was my place to tell him that not only was the photograph a wonderful photograph, but to me it was part of the insurgency of the photo itself. I mean it was a show about trees and there wasn’t a tree to be found in the photograph. But there was a symbol of a tree – Ansel Adams – and in the legend of photography there isn’t any more important element of semiology than the idea of Ansel Adams photographing trees and making the most of it, in the kind of decorative view of photography that he had. Now I didn’t say that to Eliot either because if I’d used the word ‘decorative’ he’d probably have sent out a hit squad on me.

RJ: Did you miss doing those big projects when you left photography?

SH: Oh god no. They were a horrible, horrible sacrifice. I hated every minute of it, but I felt compelled to do it out of respect for the medium.

RJ: Did you enjoy teaching?

SH: Oh god yeah, it was great.

RJ: You were teaching at UC Denver when you did From This Land. You taught at CU as well?

SH: One year. And in summer school I think. They used to have – they may still do for all I know – a rotating position that they would give to one of the graduating graduate students every year, so in 1973 or whenever I got my degree, I was the first photographer to be given that position for one year on the faculty. ... It was kind of unusual because the rest of the faculty didn’t think photography was art [laughs]. While I was on the faculty for that one year I was Andy Sweet’s graduate committee chair. Have the names Gary Sweet and Andy Monroe come up yet?

RJ: No, they haven’t.

SH: Well, you don’t want to say you know what’s going on in Colorado photography if you don’t include those two laddies. Andy’s dead but Gary’s alive and well in Florida. He was there with Gary Metz and is a very good photographer himself. Has quite a record.

RJ: Did you work with Alex Sweetman at CU?

SH: I met Alex at an SPE conference in Minneapolis. Gary and I and I think two other people drove to Minneapolis – I think Dave Freund was with us. Gary Metz was so Gary Metz on that road trip. He and I drove a lot of places together. I have another anecdote – if you publish anything about Gary Metz, which you really should – I think he’s at the center of everything. That’s not an overstatement in the slightest. He emanated such good will, such force of will, and such an unbounded capacity to generate intellectual form, that anybody who says he isn’t still alive here in Colorado is out of their mind. He influenced everything and it’s still going on.

RJ: When you say GM was GM driving to Minneapolis, was he philosophizing all the way?

SH: Of course, that and having to stop at every Howard Johnson’s on the way to eat fried clams.

Revisiting the Minor White Group

Almost two years ago, I wrote about a 2005 show at Denver’s Gallery Sink titled Early Colorado Contemporary Photography—a remembrance and revival of Winter Prather, Jim Milmoe, Walter Chappell, Arnold Gassan, Syl Labrot, and Nile Root. According to a statement by Root, the six men were all linked in one way or another to the influential photographer/Aperture magazine editor Minor White during the 1950s.

To date, I have only written profiles about two of the so-called Minor White Group: Syl Labrot and Jim Milmoe; belatedly, this post begins the process of revisiting the other four photographers, beginning with an example of images made by each of them early in their careers. The images come from prints loaned to me from the collection of Jim Milmoe, who passed away late last year leaving a house teeming with artwork, personal and professional prints, and memorabilia.

My long-term intention is to present some of Jim’s vintage midcentury prints in the Outside Influence exhibition at the University of Denver in 2025, and in the book, which is currently being peer reviewed by a university press (news of that to come soon, I hope). As this is more a sample than an in-depth profile I have limited the text to a caption and a few notes; in the months to come I will address each person’s life and career in more detail - I promise!!

Winter Prather: Bentley Hood – New York City, 1958, from Portfolio 1, gsp. 10 x 10 in., mounted on 17 x 14 in. board (signed on front, notated on back). Milmoe Family archive.

Winter Prather (1926–2005) was arguably Colorado’s most influential and technically gifted mid-century photographer. He was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and dates the start of his professional career to 1948, when he was a student at the University of Denver and exploring the back roads of Colorado to document pueblos, ghost towns, cemeteries, and industrial relics.

Solarization, reverse printing (positive as negative), collage, and double exposures quickly became typical of his trademark techniques. Bentley Hood is one example of his ability to transform industrial design into sharply defined abstractions that reflect his adoption of the constructivist “New Vision” approach. The image above is one of two versions I’ve seen - the other was included in the George Eastman House’s ten-year anniversary Photography at Mid-Century exhibition and catalog, presented in 1959.

Walter Chappell, Image Series III, 1957. gsp. 9.5 x 7.75 matted to 17 x 14. Signed and inscribed to Jim Milmoe on back. Milmoe Family archive.

Walter Chappell (1925–2000) was born in Portland, Oregon. His Image Series was photographed just before he left Denver in 1957 to work with Minor White in Rochester. Presumably at White’s urging, Newhall hired him to take over White’s curatorial duties at the Eastman House; one of his early projects was to help organize Photography at Mid-Century, which included his own work as well as pieces by his Denver friends Winter Prather, Nile Root, and Syl Labrot.

Although Chappell was a relative novice as a photographer, he was the creative force within the Minor White Group. His friend Arnold Gassan recalled that before Chappell left Colorado, he spent days “whipping out quantities of bad prints to take to New York.” But after just a month or two under White’s tutelage, he wrote, “the ugly prints disappeared, to be replaced by luminous, dark brilliant prints bursting with inner light. The transformation from painter to photographer,” he wrote, “was complete.”

Nile Root: Canyon Near Denver #29, 1964. gsp, 6.75 x 9.5 ins. matted on 14 x 17 in. board, initialed on front. Milmoe Family archive.

Although he is closely associated with the retail side of photography, Nile Root (1926–2004) was a dedicated photographer from the age of twelve. He started work as a fourteen-year-old delivery boy at Ossen’s Photo Supply in Denver, and in 1952, he opened the Photography Workshop photo store on East Colfax Avenue, which became a meeting place for the Minor White Group.

Root enjoyed some minor creative successes, such as an image in the 1959 Mid-Century exhibition at the Eastman House, but he chose not to pursue a career as fine artist. Instead, he says, he took to heart Ansel Adams’s advice “to stay in a field where you have equipment, where you have access, where you have darkroom facilities … and be your own patron.”

Root continued to run his store until 1960, when he built a new career in medical photography at Rose and Children’s Hospitals in Denver. In 1970, he relocated to Rochester to teach biocommunications at the RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences.

Arnold Gassan (1930–2001) spent much of his adolescence in Denver. He met Walter Chappell in New Orleans in 1948; Chappell introduced him to Minor White in 1951, and the two were reunited in Denver in 1954. About that time, he introduced Chappell to Winter Prather, and the three began their immersion in creative photography.

By 1960, Gassan owned his own studio practice specializing in architectural, advertising, and fashion photography. In 1962, the destruction of the city’s architectural heritage motivated Gassan to produce his first fully realized creative project, Denver Gone: A Document of Larimer Street (images above). Made from the back of a flat bed truck one sunny Sunday morning, the pawn shops, retail stores, bars, peeling signs, and late-Victorian facades he documented provide an invaluable document of a district cited for demolition as part of the city’s urban renewal.

Gassan’s life was fascinating in its range and complexity. Before he left Colorado in 1965, he hosted three workshops by Minor White in Denver (1962, ‘63, and ‘64). In 1967, he earned an MA from Van Deren Coke’s photography program at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque. He subsequently headed the photography program at the University of Ohio, Athens for twenty years before transitioning to a career in clinical psychology.

Over the next few months we’ll look at these photographers in more detail. Arnold Gassan images above court4esy of the Center for Creative Photography Arnold Gassan archive.

Thanks as always for your comments and emails.