Coast of Many Faces (origins and creators)

[radiantfracture]

Coast of Many Faces (1979) seems to have a startlingly modest origin story.

This is the remarkable collection of photographs and brief interviews / oral histories I quite randomly took down from the shelf one sleepy afternoon in the library of Royal Roads University, which campus resides in the northern part of lək̓ʷəŋən territory, currently known as Colwood.

I have two copies now, a paperback purchased from Russell Books, and a hardcover just arrived from a seller in California.

The paperback was inscribed at Christmas, 1986, in loose but elegant cursive, "For Ken". There's a whole paragraph of enthusiasm that concludes, "I hope you enjoy the stories and truly magnificent photographs." It's signed "Love Marilyn and Ken" (presumably a different Ken).¹

The hardcover wears a tattered silver dust jacket (eyes the "good to very good" list condition beadily), for which I am very grateful, because the flap copy has some valuable context I'd been hunting. This copy appears to have sojurned in the Library of Congress. It does not smell of tobacco, like the first copy I found, but like Old Damp Book. On the frontispiece of a misty stand of leggy second-growth pines, someone has squiggled a sort of black sharpie ghost.

Photographer: Ulli Steltzer

Before I opened this book to a black and white photograph of octogenarians flirting in the tiny ferry terminal at Alert Bay, I had never heard of Ulli Steltzer, yet she worked all over the world for forty years as a photographer-activist. Not quite a journalist -- a photo documentarian, maybe? Is that a thing?

The jacket copy tells me that Steltzer's "powerful photographs have been commented on by reviewers around the world for their 'remarkable quality of direct engagement' and 'poignant discernment,'" which I think also reflects my own response.

The jacket also notes that Steltzer "perceptively photographed ... Adlai Stevenson, Robert Oppenheimer and Martin Buber" (!).²

Steltzer died only in 2018. She has a brief Wikipedia page, just longer than a stub. From this and some useful sources like the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative at Concordia, I have begun to get a rough sense of her life.


Born in Germany in 1923, Steltzer emigrated to the United States in 1953, then in 1972 moved to Vancouver, BC. The only description I've found of her experiences in Germany comes from her son, in a Vancouver Sun obituary:

Ulli Steltzer spent the Second World War hiding from the Nazis in Germany because her father was Jewish. "She went and worked for the church in an old people's home in Potsdam," relates her son Michael. "The authorities did not know where she was." The experience gave her a strong affinity for the oppressed.

A Princeton University obituary notes that

Steltzer photographed and interviewed African American families in the South, as well as Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples in New Mexico and Arizona ... [she] photographed migrant workers and urban poverty in New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois; immigrants in Los Angeles and San Diego; African American communities and civil rights activists, including the March on Washington (1963) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1968).

Her first collection of photos, Indian Artists at Work (sic) (1976) seems to have been widely praised, and was the catalyst for Coast of Many Faces, which received a Canada Council grant (Kerr).

I don't know yet how I should contextualize Steltzer, whose primary subjects are Black and Indigenous, but she seems to have been beloved and respected in all of the communities where she was known. Perhaps most concretely, she was adopted into the family of Haida artist Robert Davidson / G̲uud San Glans, in the traditional manner, with a potlatch, around 1985 (Atlantic).³

Co-Interviewer: Catherine Kerr

It is more difficult to find information on Kerr, and the most I've learned about her so far comes from her eulogy for Steltzer. Kerr recalls meeting Steltzer:

My friendship with Ulli started in 1975 when I was a fledgling editor with Douglas & McIntyre and she a distinguished photographer whose project, Indian Artists at Work, the company was understandably excited to publish. While the book designer was crafting the graphic layout, my happy assignment was to review the text with a copy editor’s eye.

So at that point in their collaboration, Stelzer was the sole interviewer (unless she worked with someone else on the first book).

The arrival of my hardcover cleared up Kerr's role on Coast: she was a co-interviewer and editor, who "selected from the transcript a vital mixture of narrative, explanation and personal commentary."

I wonder if there are extant transcripts or recordings of the longer interviews in an archive somewhere. That would be amazing.

There's not much more in the book that frames its purpose; the introduction talks about their process but not the thinking behind it. Steltzer and Kerr must have taken for granted that the reader/viewer would recognize the value of these images and words on first encounter -- and also that they would share the collaborators' own readings. A book like this, created now, would do a lot of work situating the project and its intentions. I feel a little adrift without that context.

There's an odd justification for the interviews:

[E]ach of her portraits capture circumstance as well as expression, each landscape speak[s] eloquently of its people. But since people must sometimes speak of history, of fact, and of the future to explain what can be seen in a photograph, the words of today's coast people have been recorded in this book.

-- which makes the voices sound supplemental and almost unwished-for. Perhaps it is my bias towards language, but it seems to me that the voices are what elevate this book beyond a beautiful collection of photographs to -- well, to an oral and visual history, though I'd like a grander word.

Let's finish with an image, though.

Here is my very bad copy of Stelzer's photograph of oolichans at Fishery Bay (p.10):



-- what I notice is the way Steltzer has noticed that the diagonal lines of the oolichan heap and the tarp on top echo the forms of the mountains; to me, it also looks like a cutaway geological illustration, so that the oolichans become both the landscape and its underlying strata, the foundations of the world.

{rf}

Notes

1. In full, the inscription reads as follows: "for Ken – I know you appreciate the rugged coast of BC and are fascinated by the many different people who each lend their own special charm to each magical place. I hope you enjoy the stories and truly magnificent photographs. Love, Marilyn & Ken".

2. A rabbit hole opened up under my feet concerning the Oppenheimer photography: you can follow it here at this post from 2012 on Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog if you wish.

3. Steltzer also created a book about this experience, A Haida Potlatch (1985), which earned a brief review in the Atlantic. It also sounds like an extraordinary record.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulli_Steltzer

https://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=5651

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1985/05/a-haida-potlatch/667235/

https://celebratingullisteltzer.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/catherine-kerr/

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/obituary-ulli-steltzer-photographer-with-a-social-conscience

https://blogs.princeton.edu/manuscripts/2018/08/03/ulli-steltzer-1923-2018-photographer/

Steltzer, Ulli, and Catherine Kerr. Coast of Many Faces. U of Washington P, 1979.

Comments

[sovay]

to me, it also looks like a cutaway geological illustration, so that the oolichans become both the landscape and its underlying strata, the foundations of the world.

Thank you for this.

(I am not very much present, but I appreciate this post. Also the explanation of the interviews does not read grudgingly to me, but as an acknowledgement that a photograph, by virtue of being a single moment, cannot tell a full story. Also I had no idea Steltzer had taken those photographs of Oppenheimer with which I am familiar.)

[radiantfracture]

he explanation of the interviews does not read grudgingly to me, but as an acknowledgement that a photograph, by virtue of being a single moment, cannot tell a full story

On re-reading, I see your point -- I have been reading that "but" as an interruption, when it it is more likely a reminder.

[sartorias]

Wow, rabbit hole indeed, but so fascinating!

[radiantfracture]

Cheers! It's fun doing just exactly as much research as I want.

[elusis]

I am really appreciating your research into this book.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you. I am enjoying the process. I think this is the third one of whatever-these-are that I've done and I might make them a Thing.

[oracne]

Now I am off to read some of the links you provided. Thank you for this.

[radiantfracture]

Oh cool! Most of the site contain fairly small amounts of information that I'm piecing together -- the memorial site for Steltzer might be the most satisfying:

https://celebratingullisteltzer.wordpress.com

[egret]

I learned a lot from this post. Thank you. That photograph of the fish IS amazing. <3