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Paul Kuiper Photograph Collection

 Collection
Identifier: PICT-2013-013

Scope and Content

This collection contains 29 glass slides of the murals by José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), a Mexican Social Realist Muralist, in the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara and in Mexico City in the summer of 1964. There are also images of cubist paintings by Jose Maria de Servin (1917-1983), a Mexican muralist, and 1 CD containing the digital images of all of the glass plates.

Transparencies and contact prints are of Navajo weaver, Bessie Lee, and a Corn & Buffalo Dance. Bessie Lee lived on the Navajo Indian Reservation north of St. Johns, Arizona. The younger woman in the photos did not give her name. These photographs of Bessie Lee holding a Hopi pot, herding sheep, and frying bread were taken in 1964.

The transparencies of the Corn & Buffalo dances were taken in the summer of 1971. The event took place in the courtyard of one of the Museum of New Mexico facilities in downtown Santa Fe.

Dates

  • 1964, 1971

Access Restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Access to glass slides only allowed with permission by the Pictorial Archivist. Please use CD of digital images to view.

Copy Restrictions

Copyright of the Paul Kuiper Photograph Collection has been transferred to UNM. For more information see the Photographs and Images Research Guide and contact the Pictorial Archivist.

Biography

Paul Kuiper began his photographic career in the late 1950’s developing prints of the Moon’s surface under the direction of astronomer Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper (his father). Dr. Kuiper was preparing a Photographic Lunar Atlas for use in the first manned lunar landing. Paul also worked in the Chilean Andes in 1960 and 1961 as the photographer on the site-testing expedition for Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.

In 1965, one of the first Ansel Adams Workshops held at Yosemite National Park included Paul Kuiper among the small group of students. After studying Adams’ methods, Paul benefited from a series of technical consultations with him in Adams’ home darkroom. In addition, Paul was part of a small group of apprentice photographers who assisted Minor White in three photographic workshops in Boston. He also took a workshop with Paul Caponigro in New Mexico. So, after a decade of high-level training, Paul had mastered the fine art of black and white photography and darkroom printing by 1970. He has now taught photography for 40 years.

Paul’s education also includes languages and literature at the University of Arizona, Art History and Spanish in Guadalajara and Santiago, and Art History, Photography, and Film Making at U.C.L.A. He helped design the original art curriculum in 1969 at Pima College, Tucson, around the concept of developing perception as it applies to all creative media. He taught Perception and Photography at Pima College as well as at the Tucson Art Center, where one of his students became the president of the University of Arizona and founded the Center for Creative Photography. The Center now owns a complete collection of Ansel Adams’ B&W prints as well as a group of Paul Kuiper’s B&W prints.

In 1971 Paul became A-V producer and documentary photographer for the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, where his love of the Southwest was rewarded by privileged access to its ancient cultures as well as its Spanish heritage. But soon, in pursuit of a Masters degree in photography he moved to Minnesota where he became Master Photographer at the Minnesota Museum of Art. There he trained apprentices, documented museum collections, and showed his own work. His Master Prints are now part of the Museum’s permanent collection as well as that of the IDS Corp., Providence Memorial Hospital, and Columbia River Bank Corp. Paul has shown in galleries in Santa Fe, Toronto, Los Angeles, Tucson, Minneapolis, Portland and Hood River, Oregon.

Paul has taken his 4x5 view camera all across the U.S. and down the length of Egypt. His meeting with his wife, Diana, led to a keen interest in documenting ancient cultures, and they, as a team, recorded 5000 years of art and architecture throughout Egypt. He carried his 35mm camera too, continuing to apply the discipline of large format work as well as cinematography to his extensive color work. He has also photographed in Mexico, Canada, Holland, Rome, and Turkey.

As pioneers of the slide-tape program format in the 1960’s, Kuipers have used the genre to develop travel, historic and cultural documentaries that have been funded by the Arizona and Minnesota Historical Societies, Museum of New Mexico, the International Folk Art Foundation, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Oregon Committee for the Humanities. Their own programs have been shown in seven states and in Holland, Rome, Istanbul and at the American University in Cairo before foreign ambassadors.

Paul’s B&W work has been published in the NASA/JPL Lunar Atlas, in the Minnesota Earth Journal, in textbooks and in the cultural section of major metropolitan newspapers. His color work has appeared in Newsweek, in textbooks and various educational media including the Learning Company. His recent work on Turkey is in the Corbis Archive. His photographic prints are widely distributed since he has owned, operated and supplied his own gallery in Hood River, Oregon, in the scenic Columbia River Gorge.

Biography provided by Paul Kuiper.

Extent

73 items (1 box, 1 folder) : 29 glass slides, 27 35mm color transparencies, 8 safety negatives, 8 contact prints, CD of glass slides

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

CD and Glass slides of the murals by José Clemente Orozco in the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara, and cubist murals by Jose Maria de Servin. Transparencies and contact prints of Navajo weaver, Bessie Lee and a Corn & Buffalo Dance.

Physical Location

B2. Glass slides shelved by Pictorial Number. All other items shelved in Small Collections box 10, filed by Pictorial Number.
Title
Finding Aid of the Paul Kuiper Photograph Collection, 1964, 1971
Status
Edited Full Draft
Date
© 2013
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
Finding aid is in English

Revision Statements

  • Monday, 20210524: Attribute normal is missing or blank.

Repository Details

Part of the UNM Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections Repository

Contact:
University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections
University Libraries, MSC05 3020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque NM 87131
505-277-6451