Morley Baer
Encyclopedia
Morley Baer an American photographer and teacher, was born in Toledo, Ohio. His parents, Clarence Theodore Baer and Blanche Evelyn Schwetzer Baer brought up Morley with a tradition of old world customs and mid-West values. Baer learned basic commercial photography in Chicago but subsequently honed his skills as a WWII Navy combat photographer. Returning to civilian life an accomplished professional, over the next few years he developed into “… one of the foremost architectural photographers in the world…“, receiving important commissions from some of the premier architects in post-war Central California. In the early 1970s, very much influenced by a strong friendship with Edward Weston
, Baer began to concentrate on his personal landscape art photography. During the last decades of the 20th century, Baer also became a sought-after instructor in various colleges and workshops teaching the art of landscape photography.
Note: It may seem strange not to include examples of a photographer's work in an article about him. In this case, there was an irresolvable conflict between Wikipedia's requirements for captioning a photograph and those of the Morley Baer Photography Trust. However, some of Baer's photographs may soon be seen online in some version of 'morleybaer.com'.
. Rapidly discovering that to be a less than exciting career path, he soon apprenticed as a low-paid menial assistant, at a greatly reduced salary, to a Michigan Avenue commercial photography company. He shortly was photographing in the field, developing and printing photographs.
Having mastered the techniques of commercial photography to his employer’s satisfaction, Baer along with two associates was sent on assignment to Colorado in 1939. Previously on a lunch break in Chicago he had seen an exhibition of Edward Weston’s photographs at the Katherine Kuh Galleries in January, 1939. At once he became enamored at the sparse elegance of those black-and-white prints. He resolved to meet Weston and extended his Colorado trip to California to meet him in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
. Unfortunately, Weston had left town a few days earlier on his second photographic trip through the West and Morley just missed him. Although disappointed, Baer made the most of the trip by discovering, as he would later recount to his photography students, “the golden hills of California and the magnificent Pacific coast” from the captivating tales told him in his youth by his grandfather. In particular, he managed to visit San Francisco, the Monterey Peninsula, and to discover the small village of Carmel – a place where he was to spend most of his life.
With the Navy’s urgent need for professional photographers, Baer received a commission, first as an ensign and later a lieutenant. As a combat photographer he saw service in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He had varied duties including “… public relations, aircraft recon, editorial assignments, teaching, and combat photography from aircraft and carriers.” Accompanied by a writer, Baer covered military operations in North Africa, Southern France, Brazil, and in the Caribbean. In 1945 he was assigned to the operational Naval Aviation Photographic Unit
commanded by the eminent photographer Edward Steichen
. Working under a variety of terrain, sea, and weather conditions, varying light, and new environments in physically demanding activities, and making dozens of photographs a day, Baer quickly perfected his technical and compositional photographic skills. When discharged from the Navy in 1946 he was a complete and confident professional photographer.
Despite his association with Steichen, at that time one of the better known American photographers, Baer had little in common with his style of photography. That this should not be a surprise may be concluded from Ansel Adams
published views on Steichen. Baer again met up with Steichen in 1950 when he and Frances made a trip to New York. Although Steichen carefully examined the photographic portfolio Baer showed him he was less than enthralled by its subject matter – their photographic sensitivities were vastly different. They do not appear to have met again.
From the beginning of their relationship, both as husband and wife and as business partners, Morley and Frances worked as a team. Their separate but personal photographic seeing and techniques centered around careful composition of the subject matter, complete familiarity with their equipment and materials, and dedication to the art and profession of photography. As an illustration the Baers had an early interest in what they termed form. 'Form is shape that evokes a response to a photograph by the viewer', Morley would subsequently explain to his workshop students. Both Morley and Frances believed that only the view camera – Morley with an 8x10, Frances with a 5x7 - would allow them to express their feelings about a photographic subject—see Sect. 8. Note: Operation and theory of the view camera are discussed in detail by Ansel Adams in his book 'The Camera'.
Although devoted partners, the Baers were intense mutual competitors. Frances recounts an arrangement they finally made as to which of them had ‘artistic rights’ to a potential photograph discovered while driving the countryside – it belonged to the person on whose side of the car the subject lay. Such competition served only to cement their relationship, as earlier they had told Jacobs. Each felt that the occasional friction over esthetic or technical points was healthy and provocative. "Out of our disagreements as well as from the times we see eye to eye there come real challenges and a closer relationship," said Morley. "We think enough alike to prevent any separation of ideas from going very deeply." Morley continued to express his admiration for Frances and the degree to which he relied on her. In his acknowledgements in 'The Wilder Shore' he refers to her as “… one whose help never fails ….”
Baer had no difficulty discovering opportunities aplenty in the booming post-war building trades. In dire need of competent photographers to illustrate their projects, builders and architects vied to hire the Baer team . As his reputation grew he had as much work as he could handle. His published architectural photographs from that time, testify to his active professional career along with the quality of his clients among the more noted Bay Area architectural firms.
Although Baer had briefly fulfilled his long-held dream of meeting Edward Weston, they had met only briefly. But through a Weston friend sometime in 1947, Baer learned of an Ansco view camera for sale. He had previously used an Ansco in Chicago and was very familiar with its capabilities. Able to buy it for the then princely sum of $90 it became the camera he most used for the rest of his life. Although he had others for some assignments, the Ansco was the instrument with which he made his most memorable photographs. It became almost an extension of his photographic seeing and visualization in his later Fine Art landscape work.
While Baer held Weston in considerable awe he and Frances became frequent visitors to the Weston home/studio in Carmel’s Wildcat Hill and had a close friendship until Weston’s death in 1958. In an early meeting with Weston, Baer, very much taken with his style of photography and wanting to learn from it, volunteered to be his photographic assistant. Weston demurred, telling Morley in his characteristic quiet voice, the equivalent of "Thanks but no thanks, you’re the wrong gender." Subsequently, both Morley and Frances were very helpful to Weston in producing his monumental photographic Portfolios I and II. Morley worked closely with Edward’s son Brett Weston
in making the prints, while Frances, as the person who did print spotting
, finished Weston’s prints. Besides being helpful to Weston this association greatly benefited Baer’s career in the world of Fine-art photography. Through Weston, a long-standing resident of California and the Bay Area, he met most of the prominent West Coast photographers. The more noted among them earlier had formed Group f/64
in San Francisco; its members included Weston, Adams, Imogen Cunningham
, Willard Van Dyke
, Henry Swift
, among others. However, by the time Baer came along, they had largely disbanded but their style influenced his photographic seeing
.
for its owner who sold it in 1951 to William Wurster
, who, in turn, sold it in 1953 to “... his colleague, architectural photographer Morley Baer.” Both men knew each other well from ongoing architectural photography assignments to Baer from Wurster. Later, Wurster was to design the Baers’ house at Garrapata Beach (see Section 7). Note: The Greenwood Common house was considered such an architectural gem that it received a complete chapter in Lowell’s book.
Baer also was re-introduced to the world of academia when Ansel Adams
recruited him as an instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute
then under the direction of Minor White
. When White left for the East Coast in 1953, Baer became Head of the Institute's Photography Department remaining in that capacity for about nine years.
While at Greenwood Common Morley became very active in neighborhood affairs, serving on the architecture committee and helping resolve community problems when called on. Baer also had photographed projects for the architect Henry Hill, and they soon hired him to design improvements for their newly acquired house. Wurster was so appreciative of Hill’s work on the Baer house that he expressed it in a letter to Buckminster Fuller
. Further evidence that Baer was already a successful architectural photographer in the early 50s can be seen from Hill’s modifications where he added a business office and darkroom to Baer’s newly acquired house. Showing their lifetime appreciation for landscape, including man-made, the Baers hired the well-known Berkeley landscape architect and designer Lawrence Halprin
to design their outdoor areas. Though restricted from any overt commercial enterprise in the Common, it served as their home base until 1958 when he and Frances left Berkeley for Europe (see below). On completion of that assignment they returned to Greenwood Common.
During those early years around San Francisco Baer rapidly became a sought-after architectural photographer for the region’s more eminent architects. He and Frances worked as a team, he for photography, she as interior decorator for his photographic subjects. Besides Wurster and Halprin Baer’s client list included the noted architects Craig Edwards, Charles Willard Moore
, and William Turnbull, Jr.
. From the beginning Baer had fondness and respect for Wurster and, in fact, dedicated his 1972 work on Monterey adobes to him. Baer’s photographs of buildings by Bernard Maybeck
, Greene and Greene
, Frank Lloyd Wright
, and Julia Morgan
today are considered important in understanding the first half of the 20th Century era of American architecture and design.
In recalling assignments for the Bay Area architects, Baer explained what motivated him as an architectural photographer. In a February 1992 letter to Lian Hurst Mann, then Editor of ‘Architecture California’, he wrote, “I came to realize that an occasional job for an architect was no answer; what was needed was a lengthy relationship, a necessity of becoming the architect’s photographer, a constant submission of my character to that of the designer’s, bringing my understanding into the service of his. … I could translate another man’s work. I could project the major elements which distinguished one piece of architecture from another”.
(SOM) and to the personal attention of one of the principals, Nathaniel A. Owings
(Nat). As one of the country’s better known architecture firms, they had far-flung projects throughout the United States and Europe. Through the influence of Nat Owings, SOM hired Baer to photograph US consulate buildings being constructed throughout Western Europe. Morley and Frances, with their young son Joshua, moved to Spain in 1957 for this assignment and remained there about two years.
Throughout his early career Baer managed to juggle the demands of making a living by his architectural photography with the need to photograph for himself as a creative landscape photographer. So, taking advantage of free time while on this European assignment, he finally was able to photograph unconstrained by clients’ needs and demands. When not busy with SOM assignments, he managed to produce personal work by photographing out-of-the-way locations in Andalucia. The Baer family traveled the country in a VW bus in which they camped as necessary, freeing them to go where they pleased. These photographs led to Baer’s first one-man exhibition (1959) at San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
and his first published portfolio.
, Dorothea Lange
, and Beaumont Newhall
among others. As the poet of Big Sur Jeffers was to exert a strong influence on Baer’s thinking and, indeed, photographic seeing and artistic sensitivities.
The earlier sojourn in Spain had whetted Baer's appetite to return. In 1960, still at Greenwood Common, he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship
to photograph there again. His purpose, as he stated, “…. is to photograph the enduring beauty of Andalucia, without pre-conception or arrangement, but by reacting spontaneously to the fresh excitement of the visual experience.” From his previous stay, he had definite locations in mind “… withdrawn and overlooked regions beyond the casual probing of the tourist” as he stated in his Grant application. He also noted that he planned on working out of three main bases: Arcos de la Frontera, Medina Sidonia, and Ronda. Declaring in the application that he expected to publish those photographs of Spain in a book, “The Spanish Corner” (never published) he projected an air of confidence in his abilities. He would prepare himself to better understand Andalucia by studying the archives in the British Library in Gibraltar. Unfortunately, he was not successful in his Guggenheim Fellowship application. Around this time, knowing they would not be going to Spain, at least for a while, Morley and Frances bought a house on Carmelo Avenue in Carmel from the architect Olaf Dahlstrand - whose work Baer subsequently photographed - that they used as a vacation home while living in Greenwood Common.
Among his references for the Guggenheim application were some of the premier architects and photographers of the day. Their readiness to support him indicates the high regard in which he was held by the parallel Bay Area worlds of architecture and professional photography. Some of his signatories were Ansel Adams, James S. Ackerman
, Douglas Haskell
, Nat Owings, Dorothea Lange
, Beaumont Newhall
, William Wurster and his Berkeley colleague Jesse Reichek.
In a project to document the area’s heritage, the San Francisco Junior League in 1968 published a comprehensive book of photographs and essays dealing with Bay Area classical Victorian houses, titled ‘Here Today’. Although some buildings and locales were illustrated by archival material, the contemporary photographs were by Morley Baer. Showing their appreciation for his efforts, and with considerable insight into his character, his League fellow collaborators included a short biography of Baer describing how his photographs “… attempt not only to document the physical reality of the area but also to probe the heart and spirit of the people who created the Bay Area’s unique urban feeling”. Indeed, this approach came to exemplify Baer’s attitude toward most of his photographic projects.
The success of ‘Here Today’ led to other assignments culminating in Baer's selection as the only photographer for the book ‘Painted Ladies’, a collection of color photographs of the more stately San Francisco Victorian houses. Known until then as a practitioner of classical Black-and-white
photography, as far as is known this was Baer’s first major project where he produced color photographs. As he describes in the notes in the book, he performed extensive testing and preparation before embarking on the project. Recognizing Baer’s abilities his writer colleagues recount that they had chosen him as the architectural photographer “… because we thought his skill, talent, and experience as one of America’s foremost architectural photographers made him the best … to do this job”.
Although he continued his successful architectural photography career in the Bay Area, operating out of Greenwood Common, Baer increasingly became restive to follow his developing interest in personal fine art landscape photography. As a result he began to scour the more remote regions of central California in search of landscape subjects. That he was successful is shown by the list of plates in his signature book, ‘Light Years’ where most of the photographs date from the early 1960s.
coast built by the Baers as a second home and studio. After selling the second home in Carmel in 1963, Baer engaged his old Berkeley friend and colleague, William Wurster, as the architect for the Garrapata house. Wurster designed a two-story house with river-stone exterior that commanded a striking view of Garrapata Beach and Soberanes Point with the long stretch of beach in between - an organic building blending with the rocks and cliffs of Garrapata, sometimes referred to as 'The Stone House'. Morley moved into it upon its completion in 1965 while still retaining the Berkeley Greenwood Common house where Frances remained because of her career teaching painting around Oakland. Frances never felt comfortable in Garrapata, feeling it cold, damp, and isolated and continued to live in the Bay Area while Morley used the Garrapata residence as his combination home and studio - it became a place that increasingly 'meant the world to him'. Its remote coastal location brought Baer into intimate contact with the primal natural elements of wind, water, light, and rock right alongside the beach. From there, he was to make many of his more memorable photographs. About this time, with his recognition by the American Institute of Architects through their Architectural Photography Award, his professional reputation as a premier architectural photographer became more widely known.
With Garrapata as his base, Morley Baer photographed throughout the West but most notably in Central California. He exhibited his landscape portfolios of classical black-and-white photographs, wrote or contributed to several books of photography, and began to instruct in photography workshops. In the early 70s, along with others from Ansel Adams’ Photography Workshop staff, Baer joined Ansel and other prominent central California Fine Art photographers to found the Friends of Photography in Carmel. That group organized yearly photographic student workshops, notably at the Friends’ headquarters in Carmel’s Sunset Center and at the Asilomar Conference Grounds
. It’s worth noting that the Grounds were another project of the 1920s California architect, Julia Morgan
- the architect of Hearst Castle
further south along the California Coast. Those workshops inspired development of what became known as the West Coast style of landscape photography through the last decades of the 20th Century. By the 1950s this style had matured into a distinctive way of expressing a monochromatic photograph having evolved from the direct style of the earlier f/64 Group in San Francisco.
Along with his increasing success as a fine art landscape photographer Baer, by now working completely from the Garrapata home/studio, continued to take assignments as a commercial architectural photographer, primarily throughout the Monterey Peninsula. Among his many architect clients in this period were: Burde & Shaw, Hugh Comstock, Gordon Drake, and Tom Elston. He was the photographer for the brochure of the exhibition, ‘California Design 1910’ in late 1974 at the Pasadena Conference Center
; indeed one of his landscape photographs graces the cover. Many of his photographs appear in the book, 'Houses of Gold' where Baer photographed period houses in California’s Mother Lode country that previously had been photographed by the author/architect Campbell.
During the years after 1965 when Morley moved to Garrapata, he and Frances continued to maintain the Gatewood Common house. However, becoming somewhat estranged, they went their separate ways and sold the house in 1972 after which Frances moved to an Oakland apartment then in 1975 to Point Richmond. Morley continued living at the Garrapata studio/residence for a few more years but in agreement with Frances sold it in 1979. Afterwards, Morley bought a house in Carmel while Frances remained as an art teacher in the Bay Area. Shortly after moving to Carmel Morley was awarded a Fellowship in 1980 at the American Academy in Rome
having received the Rome Prize
in Design for that year. In that capacity, he concentrated on photographing the fountains of Rome. Although only a few of those photographs have been published (there are three in ‘Light Years’), Baer had an exhibition of them, titled “The Fountains of Rome”, during May 1981 at the Bonnafont Gallery in San Francisco. Returning to his Carmel home/studio after a year's stay in Rome and reunited with Frances, together they bought a house/studio on Carmel Valley Road in 1985 where they were to remain the rest of their lives.
While continuing to teach in other photographic workshops, notably at the University of California, Santa Cruz
(UCSC), the Ansel Adams Workshops, and later with John Sexton’s workshops, Morley had his own UCSC photographic workshops to organize. Fond memories of workshop attendees in Carmel Valley were his barbecued English bangers that he personally served with gusto to his students.
Precise in his lens selection and use, Baer used a wide range of lens focal lengths from a 120 mm wide angle to a 19” (480 mm), what he called his ‘long lens’. As his favorite lens he claimed that “It sees how I see the material.” Having a lens for almost every occasion was important since Baer did mostly contact prints of his 8x10 negatives where, besides being esthetically displeasing to him, cropping was not an option. Although owning a Navy surplus Saltzman 8x10 enlarger, he rarely used it since contact prints were his preferred medium of expression – it’s now a prized possession of one of his last assistants. He standardized his procedures to the extent possible, based on thorough testing for film exposure and development characteristics, changing them only when necessary.
In developing his 8x10 negatives, he did so by inspection during the development process. While the development was well underway, Baer briefly checked his highlight densities with a dim green safelight and continued development until he obtained his desired densities. He developed early Isopan and later Super XX Black & White film in his variation of ABC Pyro. For some color work, Baer used Ektachrome film developed in a commercial developer but exposed at values he worked out in extensive testing. Although reluctant to use filters, Baer did so when necessary to make his photograph most effectively express the subject—as he describes in technical entries in his several books.
He seldom changed from his favorite print developer Amidol modifying it as necessary as printing papers evolved. Early in their respective careers Morley favored two contact papers, Convira and Apex, while Frances preferred Cykora. Both Baers felt that the glossy surfaces of those papers best expressed tonal relationships they saw in their subjects. For commercial work Morley used Varigam enlarging paper. (Note: Long discontinued, Convira and Cykora were made by Ansco; Apex and Varigam by duPont. Each was a chlorobromide photographic paper
but with differing tonalities and Film speed
).
With his varied Navy photography experience, his many years of study, and intimate knowledge of his equipment, materials and darkroom techniques, Baer was well qualified to take on any photographic assignment that came along. That confidence also allowed him to concentrate on the photographic task at hand, “… to interpret and thus to fully realize the potential for maximum expression… “ in his photographs. In evaluating a potential photographic subject, Baer thought both in esthetic and organizational terms but also in the technical challenges he would face in actually making the photograph. An incident is recounted by his assistant when he stared at a subject tree muttering, 'I am looking at the Pyro in the tree trunks [for the negative] and the Amidol [for the print] in the leaves'. He already was thinking of the technical problems he would have to solve in exposing the negative to get the tones he wanted in the final print.
Aside from having a rare talent for photography that enabled him to make a good living, Baer was imbued with the need to express his subject matter for himself, not necessarily for the approval of someone else. In the preamble to his 1980 NEA Grant application, he attempted to summarize his impetus to photograph landscapes. He noted that photography had the ability to record “… more essential wild and natural parts [of the landscape] rapidly being encroached upon by developers, visitors, and promoters of organized recreation”. Then he homes in on the transformative aspects of fine art photography, “As mental and spiritual attitudes bear on those physical parts of the world which occupy one’s attention, images can assume a wondrous connotation of their own. In their transformation through photography, images can often speak of emotional attainments and directions far beyond the subjects from which they derive. It is through the exhilaration of making a fine photograph that I wish to speak of a land about which I have come, through living here for many years, to feel very deeply”.
His overall approach to making a photograph was centered on uniting technical capabilities of his camera and lens with emotional feelings at the moment of making the photograph. Baer always would apply his strongest seeing, to borrow a phrase from Edward Weston, to bring out what he saw as the dominant element in a scene. His photographs were always finely set up, some would say “tightly”. Although he eschewed use of the term ‘composition’, he applied an admonition from Weston that “composition is just the strongest way of seeing”. Indeed along with that uncompromising admonishment, Morley held to an amplifying Weston dictum that "Photography as a creative expression … must be seeing plus."
Typical subjects of these workshops, showing Baer’s breath of interest and competency in the art of photography, include :
Baer contributed photographs for “Nature and Photography: Images of the Santa Lucia Preserve,” Nov 1995 at Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art.
After Baer’s death, his photographic archive was divided between personal work and architectural work. Negatives that Baer felt represented his most significant work were given to the Special Collections of the University of California, Santa Cruz. His architectural archive was given to the Architecture School at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.
2. Publication: ‘Architectural Forum’:
3. Publication: ‘L’Architecture D’Aujord’hui’:
4. Publication: ‘House Beautiful’:
5. Publication: ‘House and Garden’:
1. Expression and Organization of a Photograph:
2. Photographic Seeing:
3. Composition vs Seeing
Edward Weston
Edward Henry Weston was a 20th century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his forty-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of...
, Baer began to concentrate on his personal landscape art photography. During the last decades of the 20th century, Baer also became a sought-after instructor in various colleges and workshops teaching the art of landscape photography.
Note: It may seem strange not to include examples of a photographer's work in an article about him. In this case, there was an irresolvable conflict between Wikipedia's requirements for captioning a photograph and those of the Morley Baer Photography Trust. However, some of Baer's photographs may soon be seen online in some version of 'morleybaer.com'.
Early life and education
As he recounts in the Notes section of his book, 'The Wilder Shore', Morley Baer led an active outdoor life growing up in the Mid-West of the 1920s. He attended the University of Toledo (1934), later transferring to the University of Michigan from where he graduated in 1937 with a BA in English. He continued there in Graduate School leaving in 1938 with an MA in Theater Arts. With only a vague idea of becoming “a teacher …somewhere” and needing to make a living in the throes of the Great Depression Baer soon found a well-paying job in the advertising office of the Chicago department store, Marshall Field'sMarshall Field's
Marshall Field & Company was a department store in Chicago, Illinois that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy's Inc...
. Rapidly discovering that to be a less than exciting career path, he soon apprenticed as a low-paid menial assistant, at a greatly reduced salary, to a Michigan Avenue commercial photography company. He shortly was photographing in the field, developing and printing photographs.
Having mastered the techniques of commercial photography to his employer’s satisfaction, Baer along with two associates was sent on assignment to Colorado in 1939. Previously on a lunch break in Chicago he had seen an exhibition of Edward Weston’s photographs at the Katherine Kuh Galleries in January, 1939. At once he became enamored at the sparse elegance of those black-and-white prints. He resolved to meet Weston and extended his Colorado trip to California to meet him in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California
Carmel-by-the-Sea, often called simply Carmel, is a small city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated in 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, the town is known for its natural scenery and rich artistic history...
. Unfortunately, Weston had left town a few days earlier on his second photographic trip through the West and Morley just missed him. Although disappointed, Baer made the most of the trip by discovering, as he would later recount to his photography students, “the golden hills of California and the magnificent Pacific coast” from the captivating tales told him in his youth by his grandfather. In particular, he managed to visit San Francisco, the Monterey Peninsula, and to discover the small village of Carmel – a place where he was to spend most of his life.
The war years (1942–45)
Although he returned to Chicago, he already had applied for entrance into Art Center School while in San Francisco, but his plans were derailed by the onset of WWII. In 1941 he enlisted in the Navy almost immediately after Pearl Harbor volunteering his photographic talents in the War effort. Although he went through the Navy photo school at Pensacola, where he hated the stereotyped approach to making a photograph, he graduated and was transferred to Norfolk to do a series of stories on the Atlantic Theater of operations. While there he met Frances Manney who, on the recommendation of a friend, had hired him as a photography tutor in his spare time. But a new Navy posting forced him to leave that arrangement; he and Frances were not to meet again until he was demobilized in San Francisco after the War.With the Navy’s urgent need for professional photographers, Baer received a commission, first as an ensign and later a lieutenant. As a combat photographer he saw service in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He had varied duties including “… public relations, aircraft recon, editorial assignments, teaching, and combat photography from aircraft and carriers.” Accompanied by a writer, Baer covered military operations in North Africa, Southern France, Brazil, and in the Caribbean. In 1945 he was assigned to the operational Naval Aviation Photographic Unit
Naval Aviation Photographic Unit
The Naval Aviation Photographic Unit was a group of military photographers in the United States Navy during the Second World War, under the command of Edward Steichen.-History:...
commanded by the eminent photographer Edward Steichen
Edward Steichen
Edward J. Steichen was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He was the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz' groundbreaking magazine Camera Work during its run from 1903 to 1917. Steichen also contributed the logo design and a custom typeface...
. Working under a variety of terrain, sea, and weather conditions, varying light, and new environments in physically demanding activities, and making dozens of photographs a day, Baer quickly perfected his technical and compositional photographic skills. When discharged from the Navy in 1946 he was a complete and confident professional photographer.
Despite his association with Steichen, at that time one of the better known American photographers, Baer had little in common with his style of photography. That this should not be a surprise may be concluded from Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
published views on Steichen. Baer again met up with Steichen in 1950 when he and Frances made a trip to New York. Although Steichen carefully examined the photographic portfolio Baer showed him he was less than enthralled by its subject matter – their photographic sensitivities were vastly different. They do not appear to have met again.
The immediate post-war years (1945-53)
In 1945 Baer was discharged from the Navy in San Francisco. There he met up again with Frances Manney who was living in Palo Alto while awaiting entrance to Stanford University. Sharing an abiding interest in photography as both a means of earning a living and as an art form, Morley and Frances had much in common. In 1946 they married and began a life as collaborative partners. Recalling his earlier visit to Carmel, Morley and his new wife moved there right away. Splurging their remaining funds, the Baers set up a commercial photography business in a small store-front studio. With their services in demand around Carmel they prospered, Morley as photographer, Frances the darkroom assistant. Willing to take any assignment that came their way, the Baers slowly established a reputation for both talent and reliability. Nonetheless, Morley soon decided that he had to look farther afield from Carmel for photographic commissions.From the beginning of their relationship, both as husband and wife and as business partners, Morley and Frances worked as a team. Their separate but personal photographic seeing and techniques centered around careful composition of the subject matter, complete familiarity with their equipment and materials, and dedication to the art and profession of photography. As an illustration the Baers had an early interest in what they termed form. 'Form is shape that evokes a response to a photograph by the viewer', Morley would subsequently explain to his workshop students. Both Morley and Frances believed that only the view camera – Morley with an 8x10, Frances with a 5x7 - would allow them to express their feelings about a photographic subject—see Sect. 8. Note: Operation and theory of the view camera are discussed in detail by Ansel Adams in his book 'The Camera'.
Although devoted partners, the Baers were intense mutual competitors. Frances recounts an arrangement they finally made as to which of them had ‘artistic rights’ to a potential photograph discovered while driving the countryside – it belonged to the person on whose side of the car the subject lay. Such competition served only to cement their relationship, as earlier they had told Jacobs. Each felt that the occasional friction over esthetic or technical points was healthy and provocative. "Out of our disagreements as well as from the times we see eye to eye there come real challenges and a closer relationship," said Morley. "We think enough alike to prevent any separation of ideas from going very deeply." Morley continued to express his admiration for Frances and the degree to which he relied on her. In his acknowledgements in 'The Wilder Shore' he refers to her as “… one whose help never fails ….”
Baer had no difficulty discovering opportunities aplenty in the booming post-war building trades. In dire need of competent photographers to illustrate their projects, builders and architects vied to hire the Baer team . As his reputation grew he had as much work as he could handle. His published architectural photographs from that time, testify to his active professional career along with the quality of his clients among the more noted Bay Area architectural firms.
Although Baer had briefly fulfilled his long-held dream of meeting Edward Weston, they had met only briefly. But through a Weston friend sometime in 1947, Baer learned of an Ansco view camera for sale. He had previously used an Ansco in Chicago and was very familiar with its capabilities. Able to buy it for the then princely sum of $90 it became the camera he most used for the rest of his life. Although he had others for some assignments, the Ansco was the instrument with which he made his most memorable photographs. It became almost an extension of his photographic seeing and visualization in his later Fine Art landscape work.
While Baer held Weston in considerable awe he and Frances became frequent visitors to the Weston home/studio in Carmel’s Wildcat Hill and had a close friendship until Weston’s death in 1958. In an early meeting with Weston, Baer, very much taken with his style of photography and wanting to learn from it, volunteered to be his photographic assistant. Weston demurred, telling Morley in his characteristic quiet voice, the equivalent of "Thanks but no thanks, you’re the wrong gender." Subsequently, both Morley and Frances were very helpful to Weston in producing his monumental photographic Portfolios I and II. Morley worked closely with Edward’s son Brett Weston
Brett Weston
Brett Weston was an American photographer and grew up in LA. He was the second son of photographer Edward Weston. Van Deren Coke, former curator of the San Francisco Museum of Art referred to Brett Weston as the "child genius of American photography." Brett began taking photographs in 1925 and...
in making the prints, while Frances, as the person who did print spotting
Spotting
Spotting may refer to:Pastimes:* Aircraft spotting* Bus spotting* Car spotting* Train spotting* Spots , a method of smoking cannabisPhysical activities:* Spotting...
, finished Weston’s prints. Besides being helpful to Weston this association greatly benefited Baer’s career in the world of Fine-art photography. Through Weston, a long-standing resident of California and the Bay Area, he met most of the prominent West Coast photographers. The more noted among them earlier had formed Group f/64
Group f/64
Group f/64 was a group of seven 20th century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp-focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western viewpoint...
in San Francisco; its members included Weston, Adams, Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham
Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer known for her photography of botanicals, nudes and industry.-Life and career:...
, Willard Van Dyke
Willard Van Dyke
Willard Van Dyke was an American filmmaker and photographer who believed that photography could have a major influence on the world....
, Henry Swift
Henry Swift
Henry Swift may refer to:* Henry Adoniram Swift , United States politician and Governor of Minnesota* Henry Swift , American photographer and member of the famous Group f/64...
, among others. However, by the time Baer came along, they had largely disbanded but their style influenced his photographic seeing
Photographic seeing
Edward Weston Seeing Photographically in book "The photography reader pg 104-108 Photographic seeing is a term encountered in modern critical writing about documentary and fine art photographers and photography....
.
Bay Area Residents (1953–57)
Finding more work opportunities in the Bay area in the early fifties, the Baers sold their house on Carmelo Avenue in Carmel and re-located their photographic work to Berkeley. Shortly Baer began to make a name for himself as a leading architectural photographer. He performed “… portfolio work for architects and interior designers while freelancing for housing design magazines… .” In 1953 the Baers moved into a 1920’s era house in Greenwood Common that previously had been renovated by architect Rudolph SchindlerRudolph Schindler
Rudolph Schindler may refer to:* Rudolph Schindler * Rudolph Schindler...
for its owner who sold it in 1951 to William Wurster
William Wurster
William Wilson Wurster was an American architect and architectural teacher at the University of California, Berkeley and at MIT, best known for his residential designs in California. - Biography :...
, who, in turn, sold it in 1953 to “... his colleague, architectural photographer Morley Baer.” Both men knew each other well from ongoing architectural photography assignments to Baer from Wurster. Later, Wurster was to design the Baers’ house at Garrapata Beach (see Section 7). Note: The Greenwood Common house was considered such an architectural gem that it received a complete chapter in Lowell’s book.
Baer also was re-introduced to the world of academia when Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
recruited him as an instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
then under the direction of Minor White
Minor White
Minor Martin White was an American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.White earned a degree in botany with a minor in English from the University of Minnesota in 1933. His first creative efforts were in poetry, as he took five years thereafter to complete a sequence of 100 sonnets while...
. When White left for the East Coast in 1953, Baer became Head of the Institute's Photography Department remaining in that capacity for about nine years.
While at Greenwood Common Morley became very active in neighborhood affairs, serving on the architecture committee and helping resolve community problems when called on. Baer also had photographed projects for the architect Henry Hill, and they soon hired him to design improvements for their newly acquired house. Wurster was so appreciative of Hill’s work on the Baer house that he expressed it in a letter to Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
. Further evidence that Baer was already a successful architectural photographer in the early 50s can be seen from Hill’s modifications where he added a business office and darkroom to Baer’s newly acquired house. Showing their lifetime appreciation for landscape, including man-made, the Baers hired the well-known Berkeley landscape architect and designer Lawrence Halprin
Lawrence Halprin
Lawrence Halprin was an influential American landscape architect, designer and teacher.Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist architects on relatively modest projects. These figures included William...
to design their outdoor areas. Though restricted from any overt commercial enterprise in the Common, it served as their home base until 1958 when he and Frances left Berkeley for Europe (see below). On completion of that assignment they returned to Greenwood Common.
During those early years around San Francisco Baer rapidly became a sought-after architectural photographer for the region’s more eminent architects. He and Frances worked as a team, he for photography, she as interior decorator for his photographic subjects. Besides Wurster and Halprin Baer’s client list included the noted architects Craig Edwards, Charles Willard Moore
Charles Willard Moore
Charles Willard Moore was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.-Life and career:...
, and William Turnbull, Jr.
William Turnbull, Jr.
William Turnbull, Jr., FAIA was an American architect whose unique building designs challenged the more traditional architecture of California's West Coast...
. From the beginning Baer had fondness and respect for Wurster and, in fact, dedicated his 1972 work on Monterey adobes to him. Baer’s photographs of buildings by Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was a architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley...
, Greene and Greene
Greene and Greene
Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene , influential early 20th Century American architects...
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
, and Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan was an American architect. The architect of over 700 buildings in California, she is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California...
today are considered important in understanding the first half of the 20th Century era of American architecture and design.
In recalling assignments for the Bay Area architects, Baer explained what motivated him as an architectural photographer. In a February 1992 letter to Lian Hurst Mann, then Editor of ‘Architecture California’, he wrote, “I came to realize that an occasional job for an architect was no answer; what was needed was a lengthy relationship, a necessity of becoming the architect’s photographer, a constant submission of my character to that of the designer’s, bringing my understanding into the service of his. … I could translate another man’s work. I could project the major elements which distinguished one piece of architecture from another”.
Traveling Europe (1957–58)
It was also during those early years in Berkeley that Baer’s architectural photography came to the attention of the noted architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and MerrillSkidmore, Owings and Merrill
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...
(SOM) and to the personal attention of one of the principals, Nathaniel A. Owings
Nathaniel A. Owings
Nathaniel Alexander Owings was an American architect, a founding partner of Skidmore Owings and Merrill , which became one of the largest architectural firms in the United States and the world. Owings viewed skyscrapers as his firm's specialty...
(Nat). As one of the country’s better known architecture firms, they had far-flung projects throughout the United States and Europe. Through the influence of Nat Owings, SOM hired Baer to photograph US consulate buildings being constructed throughout Western Europe. Morley and Frances, with their young son Joshua, moved to Spain in 1957 for this assignment and remained there about two years.
Throughout his early career Baer managed to juggle the demands of making a living by his architectural photography with the need to photograph for himself as a creative landscape photographer. So, taking advantage of free time while on this European assignment, he finally was able to photograph unconstrained by clients’ needs and demands. When not busy with SOM assignments, he managed to produce personal work by photographing out-of-the-way locations in Andalucia. The Baer family traveled the country in a VW bus in which they camped as necessary, freeing them to go where they pleased. These photographs led to Baer’s first one-man exhibition (1959) at San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, commonly called simply the de Young Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H...
and his first published portfolio.
The Bay Area again (1958-65)
Returning to the Bay Area and reinstalled in Greenwood Common, Baer was assigned by SOM for a photographic survey of San Francisco that lasted through the mid-60s. The company wanted images for use as layovers in planning architectural projects to reveal how they would appear in the landscape. During this time Baer also was the architectural photographer for the pioneering Sea Ranch, California in Gualala. Many of its principals already were Baer’s architectural clients from the Bay Area. In addition to this work, Baer also found time for his personal landscape photography and, along with other noted photographers of the time, to contribute photographs for the 1965 Sierra Club publication ‘Not Man Apart’ – which also included entries from Robinson JeffersRobinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...
, Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
, and Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall was an influential curator, art historian, writer, and photographer. His The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photo history textbook...
among others. As the poet of Big Sur Jeffers was to exert a strong influence on Baer’s thinking and, indeed, photographic seeing and artistic sensitivities.
The earlier sojourn in Spain had whetted Baer's appetite to return. In 1960, still at Greenwood Common, he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
to photograph there again. His purpose, as he stated, “…. is to photograph the enduring beauty of Andalucia, without pre-conception or arrangement, but by reacting spontaneously to the fresh excitement of the visual experience.” From his previous stay, he had definite locations in mind “… withdrawn and overlooked regions beyond the casual probing of the tourist” as he stated in his Grant application. He also noted that he planned on working out of three main bases: Arcos de la Frontera, Medina Sidonia, and Ronda. Declaring in the application that he expected to publish those photographs of Spain in a book, “The Spanish Corner” (never published) he projected an air of confidence in his abilities. He would prepare himself to better understand Andalucia by studying the archives in the British Library in Gibraltar. Unfortunately, he was not successful in his Guggenheim Fellowship application. Around this time, knowing they would not be going to Spain, at least for a while, Morley and Frances bought a house on Carmelo Avenue in Carmel from the architect Olaf Dahlstrand - whose work Baer subsequently photographed - that they used as a vacation home while living in Greenwood Common.
Among his references for the Guggenheim application were some of the premier architects and photographers of the day. Their readiness to support him indicates the high regard in which he was held by the parallel Bay Area worlds of architecture and professional photography. Some of his signatories were Ansel Adams, James S. Ackerman
James S. Ackerman
James Sloss Ackerman is a prominent American architectural historian, a major scholar of Michelangelo's architecture, of Palladio and of Italian Renaissance architectural theory.-Biography:...
, Douglas Haskell
Douglas Haskell
Douglas Putnam Haskell was an American writer, architecture critic and magazine editor. Today he is widely known for his 1952 coinage of the term Googie architecture in a 1952 article in House and Home magazine....
, Nat Owings, Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
, Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall
Beaumont Newhall was an influential curator, art historian, writer, and photographer. His The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photo history textbook...
, William Wurster and his Berkeley colleague Jesse Reichek.
In a project to document the area’s heritage, the San Francisco Junior League in 1968 published a comprehensive book of photographs and essays dealing with Bay Area classical Victorian houses, titled ‘Here Today’. Although some buildings and locales were illustrated by archival material, the contemporary photographs were by Morley Baer. Showing their appreciation for his efforts, and with considerable insight into his character, his League fellow collaborators included a short biography of Baer describing how his photographs “… attempt not only to document the physical reality of the area but also to probe the heart and spirit of the people who created the Bay Area’s unique urban feeling”. Indeed, this approach came to exemplify Baer’s attitude toward most of his photographic projects.
The success of ‘Here Today’ led to other assignments culminating in Baer's selection as the only photographer for the book ‘Painted Ladies’, a collection of color photographs of the more stately San Francisco Victorian houses. Known until then as a practitioner of classical Black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
photography, as far as is known this was Baer’s first major project where he produced color photographs. As he describes in the notes in the book, he performed extensive testing and preparation before embarking on the project. Recognizing Baer’s abilities his writer colleagues recount that they had chosen him as the architectural photographer “… because we thought his skill, talent, and experience as one of America’s foremost architectural photographers made him the best … to do this job”.
Although he continued his successful architectural photography career in the Bay Area, operating out of Greenwood Common, Baer increasingly became restive to follow his developing interest in personal fine art landscape photography. As a result he began to scour the more remote regions of central California in search of landscape subjects. That he was successful is shown by the list of plates in his signature book, ‘Light Years’ where most of the photographs date from the early 1960s.
The Carmel and Garrapata years (1965-95)
In a succinct chronology of his career included in his 1980 NEA grant application, Baer states that in 1965 his “home base moved to the Monterey Coast”. He then took up “… a renewed emphasis on the land, the natural scene, and historic architecture; long book projects, occasional editorial assignments, and photography student workshops.” This home base was a unique house on the cliffs above Garrapata Beach, between the coast highway and the sea, south of Carmel close to the Big SurBig Sur
Big Sur is a sparsely populated region of the Central Coast of California where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The name "Big Sur" is derived from the original Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big...
coast built by the Baers as a second home and studio. After selling the second home in Carmel in 1963, Baer engaged his old Berkeley friend and colleague, William Wurster, as the architect for the Garrapata house. Wurster designed a two-story house with river-stone exterior that commanded a striking view of Garrapata Beach and Soberanes Point with the long stretch of beach in between - an organic building blending with the rocks and cliffs of Garrapata, sometimes referred to as 'The Stone House'. Morley moved into it upon its completion in 1965 while still retaining the Berkeley Greenwood Common house where Frances remained because of her career teaching painting around Oakland. Frances never felt comfortable in Garrapata, feeling it cold, damp, and isolated and continued to live in the Bay Area while Morley used the Garrapata residence as his combination home and studio - it became a place that increasingly 'meant the world to him'. Its remote coastal location brought Baer into intimate contact with the primal natural elements of wind, water, light, and rock right alongside the beach. From there, he was to make many of his more memorable photographs. About this time, with his recognition by the American Institute of Architects through their Architectural Photography Award, his professional reputation as a premier architectural photographer became more widely known.
With Garrapata as his base, Morley Baer photographed throughout the West but most notably in Central California. He exhibited his landscape portfolios of classical black-and-white photographs, wrote or contributed to several books of photography, and began to instruct in photography workshops. In the early 70s, along with others from Ansel Adams’ Photography Workshop staff, Baer joined Ansel and other prominent central California Fine Art photographers to found the Friends of Photography in Carmel. That group organized yearly photographic student workshops, notably at the Friends’ headquarters in Carmel’s Sunset Center and at the Asilomar Conference Grounds
Asilomar Conference Grounds
Asilomar Conference Grounds is a conference center built for the YWCA in 1913 at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove, California. Julia Morgan designed and built 16 of the buildings on the property, of which 11 are still standing. It became part of Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in...
. It’s worth noting that the Grounds were another project of the 1920s California architect, Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan was an American architect. The architect of over 700 buildings in California, she is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California...
- the architect of Hearst Castle
Hearst Castle
Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan between 1919 and 1947 for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951. In 1957, the Hearst Corporation donated the property to...
further south along the California Coast. Those workshops inspired development of what became known as the West Coast style of landscape photography through the last decades of the 20th Century. By the 1950s this style had matured into a distinctive way of expressing a monochromatic photograph having evolved from the direct style of the earlier f/64 Group in San Francisco.
Along with his increasing success as a fine art landscape photographer Baer, by now working completely from the Garrapata home/studio, continued to take assignments as a commercial architectural photographer, primarily throughout the Monterey Peninsula. Among his many architect clients in this period were: Burde & Shaw, Hugh Comstock, Gordon Drake, and Tom Elston. He was the photographer for the brochure of the exhibition, ‘California Design 1910’ in late 1974 at the Pasadena Conference Center
Pasadena Conference Center
The Pasadena Conference Center is a convention center in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles, owned by the City of Pasadena. It consists of three buildings.-Pasadena Civic Auditorium:...
; indeed one of his landscape photographs graces the cover. Many of his photographs appear in the book, 'Houses of Gold' where Baer photographed period houses in California’s Mother Lode country that previously had been photographed by the author/architect Campbell.
During the years after 1965 when Morley moved to Garrapata, he and Frances continued to maintain the Gatewood Common house. However, becoming somewhat estranged, they went their separate ways and sold the house in 1972 after which Frances moved to an Oakland apartment then in 1975 to Point Richmond. Morley continued living at the Garrapata studio/residence for a few more years but in agreement with Frances sold it in 1979. Afterwards, Morley bought a house in Carmel while Frances remained as an art teacher in the Bay Area. Shortly after moving to Carmel Morley was awarded a Fellowship in 1980 at the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
having received the Rome Prize
Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists and to 15 scholars The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists...
in Design for that year. In that capacity, he concentrated on photographing the fountains of Rome. Although only a few of those photographs have been published (there are three in ‘Light Years’), Baer had an exhibition of them, titled “The Fountains of Rome”, during May 1981 at the Bonnafont Gallery in San Francisco. Returning to his Carmel home/studio after a year's stay in Rome and reunited with Frances, together they bought a house/studio on Carmel Valley Road in 1985 where they were to remain the rest of their lives.
While continuing to teach in other photographic workshops, notably at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
(UCSC), the Ansel Adams Workshops, and later with John Sexton’s workshops, Morley had his own UCSC photographic workshops to organize. Fond memories of workshop attendees in Carmel Valley were his barbecued English bangers that he personally served with gusto to his students.
Photographic techniques and philosophy
Motivated by a strong sense of simplicity in equipment and technique learned from Edward Weston, and reinforced by his readings of Robinson Jeffers' sparse poetry for which he had sincere admiration, Baer reduced his photographic equipment to a compact minimum. With time and experience, he acquired the equipment and techniques that completely suited his photographic style. Once he had settled on a particular technique he rarely changed it. Baer used the same Ansco 8x10S view camera on an apparently flimsy but really very sturdy wood tripod for virtually all his serious photography. After fifty years of usage the Ansco had become almost an extension of his mind and eye; he could adjust its settings by feel alone while under his darkcloth and concentrating on his subject in the ground glass viewer. Baer designed a special metal carrying case, with a sturdy leather-strap handle, constructed for him by a Monterey metal worker. He replaced it only once during his career. The case held his camera, several lenses, film holders and other paraphernalia he needed in the field. With his camera on one shoulder, and the carrying case in the opposite hand, he was perfectly laterally balanced as he strode towards the subject of his photographic interest.Precise in his lens selection and use, Baer used a wide range of lens focal lengths from a 120 mm wide angle to a 19” (480 mm), what he called his ‘long lens’. As his favorite lens he claimed that “It sees how I see the material.” Having a lens for almost every occasion was important since Baer did mostly contact prints of his 8x10 negatives where, besides being esthetically displeasing to him, cropping was not an option. Although owning a Navy surplus Saltzman 8x10 enlarger, he rarely used it since contact prints were his preferred medium of expression – it’s now a prized possession of one of his last assistants. He standardized his procedures to the extent possible, based on thorough testing for film exposure and development characteristics, changing them only when necessary.
In developing his 8x10 negatives, he did so by inspection during the development process. While the development was well underway, Baer briefly checked his highlight densities with a dim green safelight and continued development until he obtained his desired densities. He developed early Isopan and later Super XX Black & White film in his variation of ABC Pyro. For some color work, Baer used Ektachrome film developed in a commercial developer but exposed at values he worked out in extensive testing. Although reluctant to use filters, Baer did so when necessary to make his photograph most effectively express the subject—as he describes in technical entries in his several books.
He seldom changed from his favorite print developer Amidol modifying it as necessary as printing papers evolved. Early in their respective careers Morley favored two contact papers, Convira and Apex, while Frances preferred Cykora. Both Baers felt that the glossy surfaces of those papers best expressed tonal relationships they saw in their subjects. For commercial work Morley used Varigam enlarging paper. (Note: Long discontinued, Convira and Cykora were made by Ansco; Apex and Varigam by duPont. Each was a chlorobromide photographic paper
Photographic paper
Photographic paper is paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals, used for making photographic prints.Photographic paper is exposed to light in a controlled manner, either by placing a negative in contact with the paper directly to produce a contact print, by using an enlarger in order to create a...
but with differing tonalities and Film speed
Film speed
Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system....
).
With his varied Navy photography experience, his many years of study, and intimate knowledge of his equipment, materials and darkroom techniques, Baer was well qualified to take on any photographic assignment that came along. That confidence also allowed him to concentrate on the photographic task at hand, “… to interpret and thus to fully realize the potential for maximum expression… “ in his photographs. In evaluating a potential photographic subject, Baer thought both in esthetic and organizational terms but also in the technical challenges he would face in actually making the photograph. An incident is recounted by his assistant when he stared at a subject tree muttering, 'I am looking at the Pyro in the tree trunks [for the negative] and the Amidol [for the print] in the leaves'. He already was thinking of the technical problems he would have to solve in exposing the negative to get the tones he wanted in the final print.
Aside from having a rare talent for photography that enabled him to make a good living, Baer was imbued with the need to express his subject matter for himself, not necessarily for the approval of someone else. In the preamble to his 1980 NEA Grant application, he attempted to summarize his impetus to photograph landscapes. He noted that photography had the ability to record “… more essential wild and natural parts [of the landscape] rapidly being encroached upon by developers, visitors, and promoters of organized recreation”. Then he homes in on the transformative aspects of fine art photography, “As mental and spiritual attitudes bear on those physical parts of the world which occupy one’s attention, images can assume a wondrous connotation of their own. In their transformation through photography, images can often speak of emotional attainments and directions far beyond the subjects from which they derive. It is through the exhilaration of making a fine photograph that I wish to speak of a land about which I have come, through living here for many years, to feel very deeply”.
His overall approach to making a photograph was centered on uniting technical capabilities of his camera and lens with emotional feelings at the moment of making the photograph. Baer always would apply his strongest seeing, to borrow a phrase from Edward Weston, to bring out what he saw as the dominant element in a scene. His photographs were always finely set up, some would say “tightly”. Although he eschewed use of the term ‘composition’, he applied an admonition from Weston that “composition is just the strongest way of seeing”. Indeed along with that uncompromising admonishment, Morley held to an amplifying Weston dictum that "Photography as a creative expression … must be seeing plus."
Photography Teacher
Always impelled to pass on his photographic knowledge to others, Morley Baer began teaching in the early 1960s when he was enticed into the Photography department of the San Francisco Art institute. In those and subsequent years he taught photography at:- Ansel Adams Workshops – Yosemite and Carmel
- Friends of Photography in Carmel
- John Sexton Photo Workshops
- UCSC Programs (e.g. California Heritage)
- Morley Baer California Masters Workshops (UCSC archives)
- Al Weber Photographic Workshops in Victor, Colorado
Typical subjects of these workshops, showing Baer’s breath of interest and competency in the art of photography, include :
- Seminars in Architectural Photography
- Magic of the View Camera
- Photography as a Business
- California Heritage
Major Exhibitions
- ‘Two Buildings’, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1956
- ‘Andalucia’, De Young Museum, San Francisco, 1959
- ‘Here Today’, De Young and other West Coast Museums 1968 (Ref 10.3-4)
- ‘Photographs by Morley Baer’, Friends of Photography Gallery, Carmel, 1973.
- ‘The Fountains of Rome’, Philippe Bonnafont Gallery, San Francisco, 4/29-5/30, 1981
- Untitled Exhibition, The Photographers’ Gallery of Palo Alto, July 1 – Aug 20, 1983
- ‘Thirty Years Retrospective’, Photography West Gallery, April 3 – May 27, 1983
- ‘The Wilder Shore’, Oakland Museum, 11/3/84 – 1/20/85
- ‘Sea Ranch Condo 1’, Alinder Gallery, Gualala, 9/1–11/ 12, 1990
- Untitled Exhibition, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, early 1990s
Baer contributed photographs for “Nature and Photography: Images of the Santa Lucia Preserve,” Nov 1995 at Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art.
Collections
In addition to his formal photography exhibitions Morley Baer’s work is in the photographic collections of many major museums in the United States: Oakland Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Huntington Museum, San Marino; Monterey County Museum; DeYoung Museum, San Francisco; San Diego Photographic Museum; Chicago Art Institute; Chrysler Museum Newport, Virginia; Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth; J.P. Getty Museum; and many others.Photography Portfolios
In 1973 Baer published two portfolios of original prints:- Portfolio I: Andalucia
- Portfolio II: Garrapata Rock
After Baer’s death, his photographic archive was divided between personal work and architectural work. Negatives that Baer felt represented his most significant work were given to the Special Collections of the University of California, Santa Cruz. His architectural archive was given to the Architecture School at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.
Honors and Awards
- 1966 Architectural Photography Award, American Institute of Architects
- 1980 Rome Prize in Design, American Academy in Rome
Principal Magazine Publications
1. Publication: ‘Architectural Record’:- Oct, 1952: The Individual in Architecture
- April 1955: The Navy’s Postgraduate Engineering School
- April 1960: The Crown Zellerbach Building
2. Publication: ‘Architectural Forum’:
- January, 1955: A Humane Campus for the Study of Man
- April 1960: San Francisco’s Newest Tower
3. Publication: ‘L’Architecture D’Aujord’hui’:
- Oct 1956, Architecture in California (illustrations of 6 different buildings and houses designed by prominent bay area architects: Halprin, Mayhew, Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, SOM, Victor Gruen, and Campbell & Wong).
4. Publication: ‘House Beautiful’:
- June 1960: 'Should a house compete with a view?'
5. Publication: ‘House and Garden’:
- August, 1960: What imagination can do for a house
Notable Morley Baer Quotes
(Notes from Baer's photographic workshops and extracts from the UCSC archives)1. Expression and Organization of a Photograph:
- What the viewer brings to a print comes out of his or her emotional state
- From a discussion of shape vs form & universality of form:
- Baer relied more on universality of forms than did most other photographers.
- Form is shape that evokes a response in the viewer
- As an exemplar of form, Morley like the Notan principles of Dorr BothwellDorr BothwellDorr Hodgson Bothwell was an American artist, designer, educator, and world-traveller. She was born in San Francisco, California. She began her art career at the California School of Fine Arts in 1921, under the tutelage of Gottardo Piazzoni and Rudolf Schaeffer.- Travels :Bothwell's travels...
defining black and white: ‘negative space’, ‘positive space’, effects of different forms. - Morley looked for ‘negative space’ in his subject matter.
- Camera and darkroom: means by which you express your feelings about something
- You must feel strongly about what you photograph or you had better not photograph at all
- The tones, way you frame the scene, what subject you select, general mood of a photo create feelings in the viewer. These are elements which you, the observer may not appreciate, but which the photographer put there.
- Ansel Adam's photos - always celebrated life.
- Edward Weston made a prosaic and ordinary subject into a much more monumental presentation
- Photographic technique is not half as important as what you have to say.
- Get to the level where you just do it; you're not conscious of doing it. Photograph where the sub-conscious takes much more effect.
2. Photographic Seeing:
- Seeing is everything. Seeing beyond the mere appearance is what we all must try to do
3. Composition vs Seeing
- Although he referred to it at times, Baer did not like the idea of "composition". He called it "the organizing of subject matter" in a print.
- West Coast photographers are not overly constrained by composition
- Painters use composition to a much greater extent.
- By Baer's own admission, it took him nearly 15 years to make a photo as he wanted it. Then another 15 years to be able to acceptable print it (in the 70's).
- On his photography: "My personal expression of what life and the world around me really means"
- Nobody's born a photographer. You have to practice to get an eye.
- The more you have to think of the means the less you can say about a subject.
- California is not a state; it's a state of mind.