Harvey Caplin

Harvey Harold Caplin was born on July 21, 1915, in Rochester, New York[2] to Yetta and David Chaplin. His father was an immigrant from Germany. He had a brother Albert and a sister Inez.[3] Caplin was raised in Rochester, New York.[4] He graduated with an applied arts degree from Rochester Institute of Technology.[4]

Caplin married Grace Morton of Elmira, New York on May 30, 1940, and lived in Rochester after their marriage.[5] They had a daughter and son, Abbie and Lee.[4]

During World War II, he served the United States Army Air Forces[4] and was stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Kirtland Air Force Base.[6] He was a damage photographer.[7] Caplin settled in Albuquerque in 1945.[4] He died on November 14, 1984, in Albuquerque.[1]

In 1940, Caplin worked at the Rochester Lithographic Company.[2] Caplin began taking pictures of the Southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico, in the 1940s. His interests included landscapes of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.[1] In 1944, he was hired by the New Mexico Tourist Bureau to capture color images of scenic and historical significance for promotional and tourist materials.[8][9] The Saturday Evening Post hired him to capture a series of landscape photos. The "River of Aspens" came out of that effort.[1] A United States Commemorative Postage Stamp depicts Caplin's photograph of Shiprock to memorialize the 50th year of New Mexico's statehood. He taught photography.[4]

Many of his images were taken at Bell Ranch, sometimes on horseback and alongside working cowboys. He photographed Puebloan people — like Maria Martinez, a notable potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo — and Navajo and Zuni Native Americans. He was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to preserve information about their ways of life, such as their ceremonial practices.[1]

Caplin had a studio in Old Town Albuquerque.[1] His works have been published in Life, Time, New Mexico Magazine, Field & Stream, and other magazines.[4] Caplin was a founding member of a professional photographers' organization in 1948.[10] He cataloged 55,000 photographs that he made up to the year of his death.[1]

• Caplin, Harvey (1973). Enchanted Land, New Mexico. Bank Securities, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-910750-28-8.
• Fitzpatrick, George; Caplin, Harvey (1976), Albuquerque: 100 years in pictures, 1875-1975 (2nd ed.), Albuquerque, N.M: Modern Press, ISBN 091075036X

Posthumous books

• Caplin, Harvey; Caplin, Abbie (2010). Harvey Caplin's Real Cowboys & the Old West. Schiffer Pub. ISBN 978-0-7643-3434-4.
• Johns, Douglas C. (2019). Harvey Caplin's Photographic Archive of the Southwest: An Archive of 50,000 Graphic Documents Illustrating the Dynamic Growth and Transformation of a Region in the Four Decades Following World War II. Douglas Johns.