Monday, July 22, 2013

Farewell My Friend






Untitled. 1970 By Stephen T. Rose

I found out a friend of mine passed away yesterday. Rare books and photography dealer Stephen T. Rose of Indianapolis, Indiana, had been selling artwork since 1974. When he started out, he ran a photography gallery in Boston Massachusetts, one of the earliest in the USA. Photographers like Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, and Duane Michaels would give talks in his gallery. Many of the top collectors and dealers in the World today, visited his gallery. Stephen was a founding member of AIPAD, The Association of International Photography Art Dealers. He also helped start the photography departments at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, as well at The J. Paul Getty Museum. Later when he moved to Indiana, he sold privately and produced a sales catalog of fine books and photography.

I met him much later, in the late 1990's, at a photography symposium in Rochester NY. After looking thru his catalog, I quickly added him to my antiques picking trail route.

My visits with him, was a big part of my midwest tour, buying, selling and trading photography. We would spend a good portion of the day looking at and talking about images and the business, until it was time for him to return to being a family man.

Around a year and a half ago, Steve bought the major portion of Walt Burton's tree collection, a mutual friend and long time Ohio photography dealer. I in turn bought most of the collection, which I partially helped build, and now forms a large portion of my tree collection. Many of which will be posted here.

I was hoping to spend more time visiting Steve, when I moved back to Michigan. He will be very much missed. He was one of the reasons why I've stayed in this business this long.

My Return To The Forest

My last post was supposed to have been illustrating the entire book "Reachmont" The Glen, by Herbert Greer French, a self published 1924 book showing the grounds of French's estate in Cincinnati, Ohio. Reachmont is now known as French Park, and is maintained by the Cincinnati Parks Foundation. French used a particular paper stock, a muted grayish green hued paper that I wanted to accurately represent, as it set the mood for the photographs.

Not being savvy with Photoshop, it had taken me a week and a half to color correct all the pictures. But before the post could be made, I lost all the pictures with a catastrophic hard drive crash. I thought it had all been properly backed up, but that was not the case. The idea of trying to color correct everything again has filled me with dread for over a year. And basically I've been paralyzed in regards to this blog ever since. At some point I will post Reachmont, but it's time to finally move on. I hope to at least post monthly, and maybe weekly.

The following is an albumen photograph by James Valentine showing a very mature tree, that has grown within a the ruins of an abbey.

Easby Abby, or the The Abbey of St Agatha, was founded in 1152. It still stands today, and is located in Richmond, in the Richmondshire District of North Yorkshire. I believe the arch still stands, but the tree does not.
Norman Arch. Easby Abbey. York, S. 3268. J.V.