for which the group became infamous. Kathleen
Cleaver, commenting on the series 35 years after
its first public appearance, wrote:
The photographs Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones
took amidst such tumultuous events show the sensitive
humanity that animated the young revolutionaries in the
Black Panther Party. Although we typically were por-
trayed in the mass media as thugs, menacing criminals,
or subversives, their work radically contrasted the pro-
paganda of the time.
(Cleaver 2002)
A Photographic Essay on the Black Panthers
became a politically controversial and widely
exhibited series of photographs, drawing 100,000
visitors to its inaugural venue at the de Young
Museum in San Francisco, and appearing asThe
Vanguard: A Photographic Essay on the Black
Pantherswhen the images with accompanying text
were published by Beacon Press in 1970.
One year after embarking on the Panthers series,
Jones was drawn to a California houseboat commu-
nity known for its artistic and free-spirited residents.
InGate 5, Sausalito, Jones connects to the essential
humanity of those alternative lifestyle seekers, cele-
brating their iconoclastic natures through captured
moments of personal observation. Jones’s work
since the mid 1970s displays a Weston-like penchant
for finding order among the seemingly chaotic. In
Jones’sFlea Marketphotos, symmetry is present
amongst disorder, beauty amongst the bric-a-brac.
TheRock, Salt MarshandMount Tamalpaisseries
signal Jones’s return to more nature-oriented and
landscape-dominated imagery. Finding a middle
path between verisimilitude and abstraction, the nat-
ural environments pictured by Jones issue from his
introspective creative process and promote similar
contemplative moments in viewers.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art held the first
retrospective of Jones’s work in 2001.Pirkle Jones:
Sixty Years in Photographyshowcased 120 of his
photographs. In 2003, six years after the passing of
Ruth-Marion Baruch, Jones donated 160 vintage
prints from the original exhibitions of A Photo
Essay on the Black Panthers(1968) and Walnut
Grove: Portrait of a Town(1961) to U.C. Santa
Cruz. The photographs, along with Jones’s and
Baruch’s complete archive, will be housed in the
Special Collections of the university library.
CarlaRoseShapiroSeealso:Adams, Ansel; Documentary Photography;
Lange, Dorothea; Weston, Edward; White, Minor
Biography
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, 2 January 1914. From 1936 to
1940, participated in pictorial photography salons orga-
nized by the Camera Pictorialists. Served in the U.S. Army
in 1941, stationed in the South Pacific. After World War
II, he was accepted into the first photography class offered
at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco
(now the San Francisco Art Institute [SFAI]), where he
studied with Ansel Adams. Married poet and photogra-
pher Ruth-Marion Baruch in 1949. Professional assistant
to Ansel Adams in San Francisco from 1949–1953.
Instructor at the California School of Fine Arts from
1952–1958. Formed, with several other artists, the Bay
Area Photographers in 1955. In 1960,Aperturepublished
Death of a Valley, a collaboration between Jones and
Dorothea Lange which documented the Berryessa Valley
in California. With Ansel Adams, completed the project,
The Story of a Wineryin 1963. Collaborated with Ruth-
Marion Baruch in 1968 onA Photographic Essay on the
Black Panthers.ReturnedtoteachingattheSFAIin1970
until his retirement in 2001. In 1997, established the Pirkle
Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch Endowment in support of
their Photography Archives Endowment at Special Col-
lections, University Library, U.C. Santa Cruz. Currently
lives and works in Mill Valley, California. Other awards:
Photographic excellence award, National Urban League,
New York, 1961; Fellowship Grant in Photography by the
National Endowment for the Arts, 1977; Award of Honor
at the San Francisco Arts Festival, 1983.Individual Exhibitions
1952 Ansel Adams Studio, San Francisco, California
1956 Building and Oil Refinery, San Francisco Academy of
Sciences, San Francisco, California
1960 California Roadside Council Exhibition, Sacramento
1960 (with Dorothea Lange)Death of a Valley, San Fran-
cisco Museum of Modern Art; Oakland Museum, Cali-
fornia; The Art Institute of Chicago; Napa Public
Library, California
1963 (with Ansel Adams),The Story of a Winery, Smithso-
nian Institute, Washington, D.C.; traveled throughout
the U.S. from 1963 to 1966
1964 (with Ruth-Marion Baruch),Walnut Grove: Portrait
of a Town, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San
Francisco, California
1968 (with Ruth-Marion Baruch),A Photographic Essay on
the Black Panthers, de Young Museum of Art, San
Francisco; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Hop-
kins Centre, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hamp-
shire; U.C. Santa Cruz, California
1968 Portfolio Two, California Redwood Gallery, San Fran-
cisco, California
1969 Photographs by Pirkle Jones, Underground Gallery,
New York City, New York
1970 Gate 5, Sausalito, Focus Gallery, San Francisco, Cali-
fornia
1971 Pirkle Jones Portfolio, San Francisco Museum of Mo-
dern Art, SanFrancisco, California
1977 Photographs of Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Charles
Sheeler, and Edward Weston, San Francisco Art Institute
Library, San Francisco, CaliforniaJONES, PIRKLE