Box 1

Scope and Contents These images were Traube's first attempt using text or extended captions as a storytelling element. While Traube did not think either work was successful, they pointed the way to Letters to My Father, done in early 1976.

Scope and Contents During 1976-1977 Traube was experimenting and producing new bodies of work at a rapid clip. Notebook Pages involved photographing a white legal tablet, making prints and then hand coloring the blue and red lines and adding text onto the pages. The texts consist of faux grocery lists, letters, diagrams, etc. that were part of Traube's life, maybe everybody’s lives. One piece is a long, handwritten quote from one of Henry Miller’s novels.

Scope and Contents In this series, Traube uses short captions to accompany portraits. The stories were entirely his inventions, and Voices attributes them to the people portrayed. Hence, the “voices” were all fictional for the sitters but, in fact, were autobiographical for Traube. In this series, Traube made a concerted effort to discipline and refine his writing.

Scope and Contents In the mid-1970s, Traube was in Houston, where he had friends and gallery representation and where he'd had a show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in 1977. On his first visit to the Rothko Chapel on the campus of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, he was struck by the shadows of trees on the sidewalk as he walked. He took his Rollei out and made a couple dozen photographs. This was the first, but not the last, of “gift” images that became series from encounters on walks or hikes.