Dody Weston Thompson

Dody—a childhood nickname that she adopted on her own—was born Dora Harrison on April 11, 1923, in New Orleans. Both her parents were early influences on her later career. Abraham Harrison's profession as a filmmaker offered Dody her first introduction to the sights, sounds and smells of film processing. Known as Harry Harrison, he was first a minor league ball player, then a newspaper photographer and finally a producer of the famous Fox Movietone News, the short news and sports newsreels that played from 1928 until 1963 in theaters before the feature films.

Hilda Rosenfield Harrison, a professional woman, was an artist at heart and surrounded herself with creative friends from the famous French Quarter of New Orleans. After Hilda's divorce from Harry, Dody always viewed her mother as a strong role model—independent, appreciating the arts, and working hard to earn a living.

While a teen in New Orleans, Dody was exposed to Pictorialism. Among her mother's circle of associates was the experimental and avant-garde photographer Clarence John Laughlin. His art displayed a strong Impressionistic style. Fourteen-year-old Dody was frequently pressed into service as a model as well as an assistant to carry his props and camera equipment. Laughlin's photos were considered unique because they were often posed in New Orleans graveyards—beautiful but macabre. One of his most famous works depicts the surreal face of Dody hidden behind a half-mask above a cemetery.[2][3]

Dody's early passions were acting, English literature and poetry. Her acting career began at the age of three when Hilda recognized her daughter's talents, enrolling her in a children's theater group that toured public schools for the next 10 years. At the beginning of World War II when Dody was a teenager, she appeared in many stage plays in New Orleans and was always the standout in theater reviews. She had found an early creative niche.

Dody was an eye-catching beauty—the quintessential starlet—tall, willowy, strikingly large blue eyes, with a graceful manner and movement. All who knew her as a young woman predicted she'd be a shining Broadway star. The many outstanding reviews of her acting led to a summer scholarship for Dody with the New London Theatre in New Hampshire. To round out her East Coast experience, she also trained in radio at a station in Springfield, Connecticut, voice work to complement her extensive acting background.

Dody's gift for seeing the simple beauties of nature traces back to those summer theater months in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Raw, untamed vistas left a permanent impression on the young woman and on her future career as a photographer. Dody went on to develop her other artistic skills as a drama and poetry major at Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University in New Orleans in 1940.

At her mother's urging, Dody transferred to the innovative Black Mountain art college in rural, majestic North Carolina, where she was a student from 1941 to 1943. She took advantage of this unique artistic opportunity and enjoyed the freedom of creativity that underscored the Black Mountain experience.

Many of the school's faculty members were men and women who founded the revolutionary Bauhaus Movement in Berlin. Bauhaus was characterized by classical, unadulterated, pure structure. Colors stressed were black, white, gray and beige. Simplicity and functionality were the by-words. And, in the breathtaking hills of North Carolina, she was once again immersed in pure nature. Dody plunged herself into new ways of seeing simplicity through the various art mediums to which she was exposed.

Dody decided to marry her Tulane love Bill Diffenderfer in 1944. The couple left New Orleans and headed to San Francisco where he was stationed during World War II. Dody's goal at this point was to find a way to earn a living in an unfamiliar environment.

Characterizing herself as “an escaped Southerner,” she landed—with an introduction by her mother—a position in San Francisco as a researcher-writer for the West Coast Office of War Information. Dody credits this job for her ability to synthesize tremendous amounts of dry data into striking and fluid artistic words. This skill became characteristic of her later writing.

She also worked as a freighter riveter at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California across the Bay from San Francisco. Fortuitously, photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange were hired by Fortune Magazine in 1944 to photo-document a 24-hour sequence of the workers at the shipyards. While leaving her shift one afternoon, she noticed a man “capering under a black camera cloth and a big camera on a tripod.” Years later, while working for Ansel, she saw his photograph of a throng of women descending the steps of the shipyard and recognized her own face among the crowd.

In 1946, Dody's war-time marriage unraveled and she divorced. She married a second time, also in 1946, to artist Philip Warren. Unfortunately, Warren became deeply committed to a San Francisco religious movement. She had to decide to either embrace this group or leave the marriage. The couple separated and Dody found a place of her own in San Francisco and began to explore her next step in life.

Naturally drawn to the arts, Dody attended an Edward Weston retrospective organized by Beaumont and Nancy Newhall for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in early 1946. She became absolutely transfixed with the imaginative, naturalistic style of the nascent West Coast photographic trend. Dody subsequently discovered Edward's book California and the West (1940). She determined to learn the craft to which she had been exposed as a young girl.

She then sought out Edward Weston in 1947 at the age of 24. While on summer vacation, she drove from San Francisco to the beach near his studio home in Carmel, contemplating how she would possibly summon the nerve to contact him. In her own words in a private journal, she wrote, “I had been given courage. Before it could ebb, I found a public phone and dialed”—and she reached Edward himself.[4] Intrigued by their common interest in photography, Edward asked Dody to meet with him in an hour.

After she arrived at his surprisingly modest bluff-side studio, he showed her, according to Dody's memoirs, print after print of his platinum-developed photographs. Years later she would write privately, “I had never seen anything like these photographs. A wonderful quality of light emanated from them. Some glowed like pearls, some glittered diamond-sharp. Aside from their subject matter, they could be enjoyed solely for this.” Dody described this meeting as “my first stunning lesson in photography.”[5]

Weston mentioned he had just that morning written a letter to Ansel Adams, looking for someone seeking to learn photography in exchange for carrying his bulky large-format camera and to provide a much needed automobile. Edward was developing Parkinson's disease and the physical demands of the profession were difficult for him. This was the era of heavy, wooden large format view cameras with their accompanying tripods, lenses, cut film, film holders, filters and cleansers—all toted around in the field. Dody had a thirst for photography, she had the strong body to carry equipment, and she had driven to Carmel in her own car. There was a swift meeting of creative minds. For the remainder of 1947 through the beginning of 1948, Dody commuted from San Francisco on weekends to learn from Weston the basics of photography.

Edward encouraged Dody to become a portrait photographer to generate revenue for herself, which he himself had done in his early career. She opened a small studio in San Francisco and her solid portraiture work launched her reputation as a photographer.

In early 1948, she moved into “Bodie House,” the guest cottage named after its wood stove at Edward's Wildcat Hill compound, as his full-time assistant.[6][7] Dody helped Edward in the darkroom and she learned the essential skill of spotting his prints — a process to remove imperfections from photographs, rendering them flawless. On Edward's advice, she acquired her own camera—a wooden Agfa Ansco large format 5”X7” view camera—and began to photograph the panoramic Carmel coast and its subtle intricacies.

In 1949, her reputation caught the attention of Ansel Adams. She assisted the famed photographer for a year during a photographic expedition in Yosemite National Park and then at his studio in San Francisco. Dody learned his celebrated Zone System—his systematic method for precisely defining the relationship between the way the photographer visualizes the photographic subject (determining film exposure) and the final product (development of the film). She also observed how Ansel greatly improved the standards of print reproduction.

After Dody's experience in Ansel's studios, she returned to Wildcat Hill. Many famous and cutting-edge photographers, artists and poets gathered there around Edward Weston's lively dinner table.[8]

Later, Dody created a photographic collection complementing the verse of Emily Dickinson, her favorite poet. Though unpublished, this body of work serves as an homage to Dody's love of poetry and showcases her ability to marry photography with text.

Nineteen forty-nine was a professionally pivotal year for Dody. She was invited to artistically participate with the remaining members of the prestigious organization Group f/64. The group was an association of San Francisco Modernist artists who spearheaded straight photography. Founded in 1932 by William Van Dyke and Ansel Adams, Ansel suggested the group's moniker because f/64 is the lens setting that allows every feature in an image to be sharply focused.

Dody's early camera work then began to be exhibited, purchased and represented in a number of museums and private collections, including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1949) and the Chicago Institute of Design (1950).

Dody was the last of Edward Weston's photographic assistants and remained very close to him during the final 11 years of his life as he struggled with his Parkinson's. The final photographs Edward Weston ever took were of a close-up of beach stones, teasingly subtitled "Dody Rocks", and of a portrait of Dody against boulders, at Point Lobos, California (1948).[9][10]

Weston recognized Dody's considerable writing talent and entrusted her to craft the preface to My Camera on Point Lobos in 1949, launching her prolific writing career.[11] He also asked her to edit for this publication portions of his famous Day Books—his intimate journals detailing his evolving photography and comments on his close personal relationships (1950).

Dody was as well a co-founder of the famous journal Aperture, a high-quality magazine for the professional photographer, showcasing the finest images and profiling the field's most acclaimed artists.[12] After two years of preparation, the first issue debuted in Spring, 1952 with Dody as a contributing writer.

The periodical was named for the size of the opening in a camera lens that determines how much light reaches the film. Numerical settings printed on the barrel of the lens, when selected, change the size of the lens opening; this is known as aperture. The higher the number, the more the scene is in focus. Depth of field is thus controlled and enables manipulation of how the scene is captured.

Dody continued to write extensively on the topics of photography and fine arts (see bibliography). Famous photographer Paula Chamlee admires Dody's gifted writing style and notes that Dody's published works “have added to the history of photography in a very meaningful and significant way.” [13]

Theodore Brett Weston (1911–1993) developed a more abstract polish to his photographic craft. He served in the Signal Corps in New York during World War II and returned afterward to Carmel to live, first at Wildcat Hill and later in 1948 at Garrapata Canyon (10 miles south of Wildcat Hill), to work in his father's darkroom and to pursue his own photography. He and Dody grew to know each other as they worked on photographic projects and enjoyed family meals together. Understanding how fond Edward was of Dody, Brett kept at first a respectful distance, but by March 1950 Dody and he were dating and Dody moved to Brett's home at Garrapata Canyon.

In 1951, Ansel asked Dody and Brett to work with the Polaroid Corporation's Artist Support Program to test its latest self-developing camera, the Polaroid 95 Land Camera and Type 40 film. This first instant camera produced sepia-tone prints that developed in one minute. The couple embarked on a photographic safari from California to New York. Their resulting work was the basis of advertisements for the camera, appearing in many contemporary popular magazines.

Having the experience of working well together, the road trips continued to great success. They both took some of their best photos in the White Sands of New Mexico in 1952. Dody photographed Brett in the Dunes during that trip. They also shot in Carmel Valley that year. The couple collaborated on several projects and complemented each other—his photographs and her well-penned commentary.

Edward Weston was steadily declining in health due to Parkinson's disease and was unable to gather 100 of his best prints for his 50th Anniversary Portfolio in 1952. Dody helped produce 8,250 prints from Edward's prime 825 negatives for this collection.[14] On the front endpaper of Dody's copy of the 50th Anniversary Portfolio, Edward affectionately wrote, "To Dody-who printed & sweated & spotted, so that this Portfolio becomes her Portfolio-Love always-Edward."

Dody and Brett eventually married at Point Lobos in Carmel, California on December 6, 1952.[15] Even though Dody became known professionally as Dody Weston after marrying Brett, she chose to sign her work simply “Dody”. Dody later described how difficult it was for she and Brett to survive as creative artists, "We never knew where the next pot of beans was coming from, but it always appeared."

Dody's photographic career ignited in 1952 when she was one of the two photographic winners of the prestigious Albert M. Bender Award (known informally in the West as the “Little Guggenheim”), which financed a year's work in photography.[16] She was the second photographer to win the award other than Ansel Adams, who received the honor in 1946. Dody chose as her focus to photo-document Edward's creative environment in Carmel as well as the unique home and surroundings of close friend and edgy West Coast painter Morris Graves.

In 1954–55, she and photographer Nata Piaskowski were curators for the ground-breaking exhibit titled Perceptions—a gallery exposition organized by a San Francisco Bay area photographer's collective. The show was sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Art. Famed architect and photographer Donald Ross designed this artistic project. Perceptions went on to display at the Smithsonian Institution and abroad.

Unfortunately, Dody's marriage to Brett became unsatisfying by 1955 and she moved to Los Angeles. After an attempt at reconciliation in early 1956, their divorce was final by 1957. Dody's move to Southern California became permanent and she searched for a creative project. She found employment as a documentary consultant, researcher, writer and crew member with Hollywood producer Lou Stoumen from 1956 to 1960.

Her screen credits include a Motion Picture Academy Award-nominated documentary The Naked Eye (1956), highlighting Edward's work.[17] She also gained recognition for Stouman's Documentary Short Subject Oscar-winner The True Story of the Civil War (1957), which extensively used still photographs by famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady.

In 1958, she signed on for an exciting opportunity aboard the actor Sterling Hayden's schooner Wanderer as a filmmaker's assistant. Hayden, in the middle of a very nasty public divorce, made headlines by taking two of his four children on the voyage, contrary to court orders. The crew sailed from San Francisco Bay to Tahiti, where Hayden had planned to film a movie.

Now in her mid-thirties, she took with her to Tahiti a smaller light-weight, hand-held camera (likely her Yashica Copal Yashicaflex TLR), which she used with less frequency until 1977, and added color film to her photographic repertoire. Her South Seas folio is replete with fascinating photographs of the Wanderer, on-deck photos of life aboard the ship, colorful prints of Tahitian women and children, and of unique artifacts on shore.

The film did not materialize, however, and according to Dody's notes U.S. Camera printed her photographs of paradise in 1961. Dody continued to shoot black and white photography through 1966. She was also tapped to write a chapter on famous novelist Pearl Buck for American Winners of the Nobel Literary Prize, published in 1968.[18]

Dody's career in color photography was of necessity. “My body decreed: carry no weight. It was going to be a 35mm camera or nothing. I had to change my standards, or give up photography. I even chose a camera among the many brands whose ground lens most nearly approximated the look of those in larger cameras.”

She eventually selected the Olympus 35mm, which became her constant companion throughout her later years. The hand-held camera was “designed for action. But I held to the way that I took joy in seeing... and it was not until I arrived in Venice – vulnerable, rotting, splendid Venice — that I finally succumbed to the seductions of color... color bold; color subtle, nuanced; a veritable paint pot of color.”

Some of the most splendid of her color photographs are of the famous gondolas on the Grand Canal in Venice. In a personal note in her journal she kept while in Italy (1977), she wrote, “I specially fell for the gondolas, not as a craft, but as objects d'art ...pieces of sculpture”... and she captured them exquisitely.[19]

Her travels to Hawaii, Italy, France, Mexico and Japan allowed her to produce some of her most famous color photographs.

Early in 1958, before Dody left for the South Pacific, she met Daniel Michel Thompson, an aerospace company executive, sculptor and painter, and environmental writer. Mutual friends had invited them to a dinner party in Los Angeles and they discovered their personalities and interests were compatible. It was difficult for her to decide to depart for Tahiti and be separated from Dan. They dated for two years and then married in November, 1960. A great partnership ensued and Dan helped research and edit her writings over the next 40 years.

During this phase of her career, her photography was known under the professional name of Dody Weston Thomson. Dody contributed to a 1965 article in Aperture Monograph edited by Nancy Newhall: Edward Weston, Photographer.[20] Her major written work was her personal recollection of Edward Weston entitled “Edward Weston: A Memoir” published in the Canadian journal, Malahat Review, in 1970 and in 1972.[21][22]

As the couple's circle of friends and family grew, Dody developed a reputation for her red-hot Louisiana gourmet cooking skills, rooted in her Southern childhood. She and Dan hosted many memorable dinners at their Los Angeles home.

As Dody matured, the physical rigors of active photographic expeditions were too difficult to undertake and her professional career shifted to writing, exhibiting and lecturing. Dody spent her last active decades exhibiting her photographs, working on documentary projects, writing about photography and about the legacy of Edward Weston, and lecturing at numerous colleges, art museums and fine arts institutions.

Dody took her final black-and-white photograph in 1966 and her last color photograph of wet kelp on a tide pool rock at Point Lobos in 1997. Her final exhibit and public speaking engagement was at Los Angeles Valley College in 2006 as part of the retrospective Perceptions, Bay Area Photography, 1945-1960 curated by Dennis Reed. Dody gave the opening lecture and her image White Dune No. 1 was displayed as part of the show. Reed reports that Dody was instrumental in helping him develop the installation. Thus, Dody's career extended 59 years (1947-2006).

The most significant article she wrote during this time period was “West Coast ‘50s” about the West Coast Photographic Movement, which was published in Exposure Magazine in 1981.[23] Her final article reflecting on the lasting contribution of Edward Weston appeared in Weston: Life Work (2003).

Of all the many symposiums in which she participated, the most significant was the May, 1998 panel in San Francisco, "Through Another Lens: A Historical and Critical Look at California Arts Photography in the 1930s & 1940s". This stellar forum included Dody, Charis, Cole (Edward Weston's youngest son) Rondal Partridge (son of photographer Imogen Cunningham) and Seema Weatherwax (former assistant to Ansel Adams).

In 2006 she received a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Legislative Assembly for her contribution to the fine arts, to the history of photography and as a founder of Aperture magazine.