M I D - C A R E E R M A R K

70

The tall figure in the dark suit walkedto the podium to introduce the greatphotographer Sebastião Salgado. Hewas a fine photographer himself, as

his books and exhibitions proved. He hadworked intimately with major players in thehistory of photography. Salgado’s presencewas proof of the remarkable success of thecollege photography program he designedfrom scratch. At 50, he could have beenforgiven for playing the role of the grave wiseman. And the audience probably would havebought it. Except for those bright red sneakers.

David Scheinbaum’s odyssey of roles,relationships, influences and projects definesa life at the center of American photography. It’sa story made better for its humanizing touches,like his closet of crazily colored Converses.

To understand his journey you have to knowa few things about Santa Fe. At 7,000 feetand 75 miles from the Albuquerque airport,Santa Fe retains a small-town feel. Its popu-lation hovers around 70,000, making it the205th largest city in the country. New YorkCity is 115 times bigger, Los Angeles some50 times. Yet Santa Fe is the third largestfine art photography market in the country.

Ansel Adams called New Mexico “themost beautiful place I have ever seen.” Bigskies, pueblos, canyons, and deserts areeasy pickings for any tourist with a camera.Serious photographers haul view cameras toCanyon de Chelly, Chaco Canyon, or theadobe church at Rancho de Taos. Their per-sistent problem—to find pictures that don’t imi-tate masterpieces by Edward Weston, PaulStrand, or Laura Gilpin.

The arts permeate Santa Fe as jazz flavorsNew Orleans. There are huge markets forpaintings, sculpture, and Native American

P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S :

A T A G E 5 5 , A N D A F T E R T H R E E D E C A D E S O F M A K I N G H I S M A R K I N T H E W O R L D O F F I N E

A R T P H O T O G R A P H Y , D A V I D S C H E I N B A U M C A N B E S A I D T O H A V E R E A C H E D T H E H A L F W A Y

P O I N T O F H I S C A R E E R . W E A S K E D M I C H A E L M O R E T O C H R O N I C L E S C H E I N B A U M ’ S

I M P R E S S I V E A C C O M P L I S H M E N T S A S P H O T O G R A P H E R A N D T E A C H E R , A S W E L L A S H I S

T R U L Y S I G N I F I C A N T C O N T R I B U T I O N T O T H E S A N T A F E P H O T O G R A P H Y S C E N E .

D A V I D S C H E I N B A U M B Y J A N E T R U S S E K — 2 0 0 6

SCHEINBAUM’S SHOES

71

B I S T I , N E W M E X I C O — 1 9 8 4

E A G L E S N E S T , B I S T I , N E W M E X I C O — 1 9 8 5

74

pottery and weaving. Local museums arededicated to Georgia O’Keeffe, Native Ameri-can art, folk art, and Spanish-American art.

On the recent July weekend, more than 40exhibitions opened in Santa Fe, includingthe sixth biennial at Site Santa Fe, the city’smost notable arts event. Conspicuous too wasa lovely show at the Monroe Gallery: 50-plusblack and white prints celebrating the deanof Life photographers, Alfred Eisenstaedt.Photography exhibitions are always running atAndrew Smith, Photo-Eye, Verve, Monroeand other galleries. Big names come to openthem: you might bump into Jerry Uelsmann,Paul Caponigro or Lee Friedlander on the street.There’s always a photography talk comingup; admission is usually free. The Photo-EyeBookstore stocks new titles from around theworld. Photo-Arts Santa Fe is a biennial fair withworkshops, exhibits and lectures. ReviewSanta Fe is an annual three-day conferencefor 100 photographers who want their workcritiqued by curators, editors, and art directors.The Santa Fe Photography Workshops drawshundreds of students. The New Mexico Coun-cil on Photography dispenses grants to promis-ing photographers.

B E G I N N I N G S

Now 55, David Scheinbaum hasbeen in the thick of the Santa Fescene since 1978. Born in Brook-lyn,Scheinbaum finished high school

in 1969 and snagged a job in Manhattanshooting slides for advertising presentations.“I discovered that shooting a flawless photo-graph of a Maxwell House coffee can is nota simple thing,” he recalls. “But type B Ekta-chrome film was $3 a roll. I could shoot 100slides for under 10 bucks. Through trial, error,and luck, I’d eventually get the shot. This hap-hazard method didn’t bother me at first.Remember, this was 1969. I was working onMadison Avenue. I thought I was rolling indough. What more could a Brooklyn boy want?But it started to bother me that while I alwaysgot the picture, I never knew why.”

To find out why, he quit the slide shop andenrolled in master photographer GeorgeTice’s photography class at the New School.Tice’s elegant black and white prints wereunlike most prints Scheinbaum had seen—ona higher level in every way. He enrolled inBrooklyn College and raced through in threeyears. A month after graduating in 1972, he was teaching photography at Pace Universityin Manhattan. Over the next six years hewas instrumental in bringing photography intoNew York schools and colleges. He alsobegan to photograph the impoverished elderlyin the Jewish community in Miami Beach.

T H E A P P R E N T I C E

In 1978, Scheinbaum put New York Cityin the rear view mirror and began the firstof more than a dozen roles, if not lives.He headed for Santa Fe where Beaumont

Newhall, the most influential curator sinceAlfred Stieglitz, was then still living. Newhall(1908–1993) had been the founding direc-tor of the photography department at theMuseum of Modern Art (MOMA), and later thehead of George Eastman House in Rochester.His gracefully written1937 classic The History ofPhotography remains indispensable. He was a superb photographer himself, but refrainedfrom showing his work, believing it might

B I S T I B A D L A N D S , N E W M E X I C O , I C H I N G , H E X A G R A M # 1 — 1 9 8 4

P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A R T E R M U S E U M ,

75

D E A T H V A L L E Y , D U N E S I V , C A L I F O R N I A ,I C H I N G , H E X A G R A M # 4 2 — 1 9 9 9

R I O G R A N D E G O R G E , N E W M E X I C O ,I C H I N G , H E X A G R A M # 4 3 — 1 9 9 7

72

compromise the neutrality required for a curator.Scheinbaum recalls waiting for hours on

the steps of New York’s Metropolitan Museumof Art to hear a Newhall talk in the early1970s. What he heard then and read laterled him to seek out this obviously great mind.After Scheinbaum arrived in Santa Fe, he spentweeks working up the courage to call New-hall and show him his Miami Beach pictures.When he started to explain why he wascalling, Newhall cut him off and invited himover that afternoon. The two clicked, andScheinbaum became his assistant and printeruntil Newhall’s death.

“Beaumont was the man I most wantedto be like,” Scheinbaum says. “He was notjust a historian, photographer, and critic. Hewas a gentleman in the genteel Ivy Leaguetradition, with great tact and impeccablejudgment. But he was a regular guy, too, un-pretentious, generous, kind.”

T H E P A R T N E R

Clichés about strong marriages tend tocelebrate loving if not subordinateendurance: the “you were the windbeneath my wings” sort of thing that

makes many weep, others hurl. But there isnothing sentimental about the complemen-tary careers of Scheinbaum and his wife, JanetRussek, who followed him to Santa Fe in1980. She became his partner in their gallery,a collaborator on many projects, a superbblack and white photographer on her own,and mother of their three children.

P O R T E R ’ S P R I N T E R

Newhall was not the only masternearby. Eliot Porter had been livingin Tesuque, a few miles away,since1946. As noted in B&W, Issue

45, Porter (1901–1990) was the most influ-ential color photographer who ever lived. Usingthe technically demanding dye-transfer pro-cess, he created color prints that displayed adegree of control associated only with blackand white prints created by darkroom masterssuch as Ansel Adams. In 1962, his book, In Wildness is the Preservation of the World,placed 72 of his view camera studies ofskunk cabbages, water lilies, and trilliums nextto quotations from Henry David Thoreau. Itcost $32.50 (some $200 today) and waswildly successful, selling nearly 60,000 copies.Many insist that two others, his autobigraphi-cal Eliot Porter (1987) and Intimate Landscapes(1979), set standards never equaled for thedeep responses they evoke in their viewers.

In 1980, Porter, then 79, heard aboutScheinbaum from Newhall and asked him to

P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S :

R Y O A N - J I T E M P L E , K Y O T O , J A P A N , I C H I N G , H E X A G R A M # 5 7 — 2 0 0 0

73

T H U N D E R H O L E , A C A D I A N A T I O N A L P A R K , M A I N E , I C H I N G H E X A G R A M # 1 6 — 1 9 7 2

76

assist him as well. Scheinbaum was too busy,but Newhall recommended Russek. She begancataloging Porter’s work, mounting prints, andhelping to curate his books and exhibitions.Porter worked long hours every day, includingweekends and most holidays, and Russekoften had to remind him gently “tomorrow isSaturday” and she had blocked out the timefor her family. She discovered much unpub-lished black and white work, and Scheinbaumsoon collaborated on its publication, printingphotographs to Porter’s requirements. Theresult is seen in Eliot Porter’s Southwest (1985).Russek worked for Porter until his death.

“Unlike Adams,” Scheinbaum notes, “Eliotwasn’t looking for grand vistas or the bigwhite glowing object, a cloud, an aspen, ora waterfall. He was moved by the delicacyof the smallest flowers or the way bare branchesformed lattices in the air. His ground glasswas scored with a grid pattern and he toldhow he examined each square to verify itscontribution to the overall frame.

“I learned more about the black and whiteprocess than I ever could have imagined.He tore up an awful lot of prints I thought weremade to his specifications. He taught me a new darkroom language. That black andwhite prints could be subtly colored to degreesof coolness and warmth was a revelation. Eliotproduced a new developer for each newprint. They are his prints, not mine. I was amechanic really, following his instructions.

“Someone asked me the other day whathe might have thought of digital technology,”Scheinbaum adds. “Eliot the scientist wouldhave been fascinated. But I don’t think hewould have considered it for his own work. Thepeople I know who best understand howmuch a fine print can express tend to be waryof digital, much in the way that the keenestaudiophiles often prefer vinyl records over CDs.Such people may see and hear deeper thanthe rest of us. No one made better color printsthan Eliot’s own dye transfers. I can’t see howany technology could have improved them.”

T H E S A N T A F E D E A L E R

Relationships with Newhall and Porterled quickly to Santa Fe representation.In 1980, Scheinbaum & Russek, Ltd.was formed. Twenty-six years later, the

business flourishes. They continue to repre-sent the Newhall and Porter estates. But theyalso offer fine prints from 30 or so greatphotographers, from Berenice Abbott andAnsel Adams to Edward Weston and MinorWhite. This is most clearly elaborated attheir website: www.photographydealers.com.The gallery is located in a building neartheir home just outside of town.

T H E T E A C H E R

Just as the gallery was getting established,Scheinbaum got a call. Did he want toteach two courses at the College of SantaFe? He did. Did he understand that work-

ing with15 students in the field and in the dark-room would take most of his waking hours?He understood. Would he work for $2,400a year? No problem.

Thus began a 25-year teaching career atthe College of Santa Fe. Without a word ofcomplaint, Russek took over full-time manage-ment of the gallery as well as the children.Over the years Scheinbaum has lectured to,demonstrated for, and otherwise guided hun-

P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A R T E R M U S E

J O E S T E R N , M I A M I B E A C H , F L O R I D A — 1 9 7 5

77

M I A M I B E A C H , F L O R I D A — 1 9 7 5

S U N B A T H E R , M I A M I B E A C H , F L O R I D A — 1 9 7 4

dreds of students through the basics. His stu-dents loved him, and not just for the shoes.He always took the time to make sure theyunderstood.

T H E G R A N D P L A N N E R

During the formation of the photographydepartment at MOMA in 1940,Ansel Adams and Beaumont Newhalldiscussed a new idea: a practical

college program where students could learnthe basic requirements for a life in photo-graphy. It would include not just picture mak-ing, but the history of photography as well,along with lessons in practical skills—mount-ing prints, staging exhibitions, bookkeep-ing, and so on. The idea was the subject offurther discussion in the 1960s. However,nothing came of it.

But Scheinbaum never forgot. In 1992,he proposed such a program for the Collegeof Santa Fe. It would require a new state-of-the-art building with classrooms, studios, andpollution-free darkrooms. Not to mentionstaff and administrative support.

The proposal was accepted. The buildingwas funded by art patrons Anne and JohnMarion, and the Marion Center was a con-spicuous success overnight. Housed in a rav-ishing cluster of buildings designed by inter-nationally renowned architect Ricardo Legor-reta, it remains one of the best such pro-grams in the world.

S A L G A D O ’ S P A R T N E R

Scheinbaum’s most conspicuous contri-bution to the College of Santa Fedeveloped from his long friendshipwith Sebastião Salgado, the most

influential photojournalist alive. Salgado andhis wife Lélia have worked together since1991 to restore a small section of the Brazilianrain forest where their Instituto Terra, anenvironmental educational center, has plantedmore than half a million trees.

Scheinbaum proposed a documentarystudies program (now directed by photo-grapher Tony O’Brien) in which 15 students ayear visit Brazil. Each designs a documen-tary photography project. Given Salgado’sstatus and participation, the program wouldbe a crown jewel at the most exclusive cam-pus. Scheinbaum notes with pleasure that30 students have now come through this pro-gram, and emerged “prepared to championcauses and drive meaningful change.” Partlyin recognition of his contribution to InstitutoTerra, Scheinbaum was named last year toan endowed chair, the Anne and JohnMarion Professorship.

T H E C O U N C I L M A N

In 1985 Gil Hitchcock, a Santa Fe busi-nessman, approached Scheinbaum andRussek with an idea to support photogra-phy in New Mexico. Within a year the

New Mexico Council on Photography wasformed. Porter and photographers WillardVan Dyke, William Clift, and Joan Myers werefounding members. Twenty-one years laterthe nonprofit organization has made dozensof awards. The council now offers grantsnamed for Porter, Van Dyke, Newhall, and

78P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A R T E R M U S

G A N G S T A R R , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R , A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 1

N A S , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R , A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 3

79

D E L T H E F U N K Y H O M O S A P I E N , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R , A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 2

Z - M A N , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R , A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 5

the late photo historian Van Deren Coke,whose wife Joan remains a principal boardmember.

T H E H O O D O O M A N

A“hoodoo” is a geological forma-tion found in the badlands of north-ern New Mexico. It’s a rock for-mation that rests on its narrow base,

much as a loaf of bread might balance ona bottle. Hoodoos appear throughout theblack and white photographs in Scheinbaum’s1987 book, Bisti. That’s the Navajo wordfor the section of the badlands now preservedfrom coal mining. They emphasize the starkand breathtaking weirdness of a place wherealmost nothing remains alive. The lucid essaysby a paleontologist, an anthropologist, andothers depict an equally stark picture—theextent to which strip mining can wipe out in daysthe work of wind and water over millennia,and how sly and conniving the people canbe who control how land is managed.

T H E G R A N D S O N

Scheinbaum’s grandfather, HymanFeerman, spent the last four or soyears of his life in a section of MiamiBeach populated almost exclusively

by elderly Jews. By the time Feerman died in1977, Scheinbaum had made many visits.Miami Beach: Photographs of an AmericanDream (1990) was the result. The bookmight seem easy to dismiss: Who needsmore photographs of old people playing shuf-fle-board? But as one looks carefully thepages come alive. We are startled to realizethat every person we’re looking at thoughtabout the Holocaust every day of their life.We realize too, that one by one, they’ve alldied since. Yet Scheinbaum’s energizedportraits bring them back to life for as longas we care to look at them. There is richhumor here, too, like the fat grinning man inthe skimpy bathing trunks who sits all day atthe entrance to the ladies room, exchanginggreetings as the women come and go.

G H O S T R A N C H

On the 25,000 acres of Ghost Ranch, 60miles northwest of Santa Fe, there is a hugeflat-topped mesa called the Pedernal. “It’s myprivate mountain, it belongs to me,” GeorgiaO’Keeffe famously joked. “God told me if Ipainted it enough, I could have it." It appearsover and over in her paintings, just as it doesin Scheinbaum and Russek’s Ghost Ranch:Land of Light (1997). Scheinbaum’s landscapessuggest great scale, while Russek’s more inti-

80P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A R T E R M U S E

E R Y K A H B A D U , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R , A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 3

P U B L I C E N E M Y , P R O F E S S O R G R I F F , S U N S H I N E T H E A T E R ,A L B U Q U E R Q U E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 2

81

C E E L O , S H O R T L I S T , L O S A N G E L E S , C A L I F O R N I A — 2 0 0 2

M F D O O M , T H E P A R A M O U N T , S A N T A F E , N E W M E X I C O — 2 0 0 4

mate photographs usually house a strong centralform. “This is not an O’Keeffe book,” Schein-baum notes. “We were not permitted to photo-graph the buildings. But at times we stoodwhere she stood when she painted. We real-ized the ingenuity of her interpretations. Itbecame a game to get the mesa into the scene.”

B E F O R E T H E O R A C L E

Amazon.com lists 701 entries for theI Ching, the ancient Chinese ora-cle introduced to the West by thefamous German psychiatrist Carl

Jung. Jung believed the book could deliversound guidance to a sincere inquirer whowanted to clarify a question. Tossing sticks orcoins six times would result in a hexagram,six solid or broken lines stacked in patterns thatsynchronized with the invisible forces thataffected the outcome. Images in the Heavens,Patterns on the Earth, the edition preparedlast year by Russek and Scheinbaum, may bethe only edition that is not designed to helpthe reader forecast. Each black and whitephotograph is based on one of the 64 hexa-grams and is intended for contemplation.Russek drew upon dozens of renditions tosynthesize her own poetic translations.

W I T N E S S T O S T O N E

Scheinbaum’s next book is scheduled tobe published in October of this year.The 120 photographs that appear inStone: A Substantial Witness required

more than a decade of traveling the world. Ashe visited Stonehenge or Kyoto or the GreatWall of China or the Brooklyn Bridge, Schein-baum carried two point-and-shoot Contaxcameras. They were set on a panoramic modethat masked much of the 35mm Tri-X negative,creating, in effect, half-frame exposures.

There is a simplicity and beauty here thatsignal a breakthrough in Scheinbaum’s percep-tion, tempered by a sense of enduring calm.If the publication lives up to its pre-press promise,it should be a serene, engaging book.

E M B R A C I N G H I P H O P

Six years ago, Scheinbaum agreed tochaperone his13-year-old son Zac toa hip-hop concert. Nothing had pre-pared him for the intensity of the music

and the collective good will that seemed tounite the crowd, as the groups on stage ham-mered home the message: “Stay off drugs.”“Stay in school.” “Vote.”

He drove his son and his friends to moreconcerts. He got hooked. He took picturesfrom the stage. And he traveled to places like

82P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A R T E R M

R A N O R A R A K U , E A S T E R I S L A N D ( R A P A N U I ) — 2 0 0 3

83

K A N C H I P U R A M , I N D I A — 2 0 0 0

P S Y C H E R E V I V E D B Y C U P I D ’ S K I S S , T H EL O U V R E , P A R I S , F R A N C E — 1 9 9 7

Oakland to visit with musicians. “The imageof Gangster Rappers, with the negative over-tones of sex, racism, drugs, murder and guns,is the image that most people have of the HipHop culture,” Scheinbaum has written. “It isthis image that I hope to be able to changethrough these photographs.”

An exhibition of his hip-hop photographsis scheduled to appear at the National PortraitGallery at the Smithsonian in Washington,D.C., in 2007.

S C H E I N B A U M ’ S S H O E S

Scheinbaum’s shoes of many colors aredesigned to break down any reserva-tions a student or a stranger mighthave when meeting him. But they also

suggest the diversity of the roles he contin-ues to play in Santa Fe. His love of the f/64still-life and landscape tradition endures. Asthe hip hop work shows, his values are alignedwith those of socially concerned photogra-phers who formed the New York Photo Leaguemore than 60 years ago. Any given daywill find him selling prints from the gallery,advising colleagues across the world or oncampus, working on a new book or portfo-lio, or standing next to Russek in the darkroomsloshing prints around in the tray.

In his introduction to the Miami Beachbook, Beaumont Newhall wrote that “all toooften the photographer brings to his vision apriori judgments of what aspects of the peopleand their environment to record—so that wesee with his mind rather than through his eyes.”Scheinbaum, he wrote, was “a compassion-ate yet observant and knowledgeable guide”who saw “through his eyes.”

Scheinbaum has been influenced, but henever imitated. He has influenced others,especially students, but insists they finally calltheir own shots.

The Santa Fe photography community isa good place for a man of so many talents.Craft and content matter more than art mar-ket pressures. Photography students at the Col-lege of Santa Fe are exposed to the sameideas as those attending, say, the Rhode IslandSchool of Design. But the commerce-driventyrannies of style and fashion do not commandthe same unspoken influence that they do inthe big cities.The devil may wear Prada in NewYork or Los Angeles, but Scheinbaum plans towear Converse for a good long time.

n Before moving to Santa Fe in 2000, MichaelMore was director of International Public Rela-tions for Eastman Kodak Company. He has sincepublished more than 50 articles on photogra-phy, literature,and art.He is president of the NewMexico Council on Photography.

84P H O T O G R A P H S : C O P Y R I G H T S A N D P E R M I S S I O N S : A M O N C A

L A C O C K A B B E Y , E N G L A N D — 1 9 9 7

85

B R O O K L Y N B R I D G E , N E W Y O R K C I T Y , N E W Y O R K — 1 9 9 8

S T O N E H E N G E , E N G L A N D — 1 9 9 7

P O M P E I I , I T A L Y — 1 9 9 6