PALMQUIST, Peter E. 1936-2003

PERSONAL: Born 1936, in Oakland, CA; died after being struck by a car January 11, 2003.

CAREER: Photographer, historian, and writer. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Europe, member of staff; Humboldt State University, staff photographer, 1960-89. Military service: U.S. Army, served as photographer.

MEMBER: National Stereoscopic Association.

WRITINGS:

With Nature's Children: Emma B. Freeman, 1880-1928—Camera and Brush, Interface California Corporation (Eureka, CA), 1977.

Lawrence & Houseworth/Thomas Houseworth & Co, a Unique View of the West 1860-1886, National Stereoscopic Association (Columbus, OH), 1980.

Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, University of New Mexico Press/Amon Carter Museum (Albuquerque, NM), 1983.

(With Lincoln Kilian), The Photographers of the Humboldt Bay Region 1870-1875, Eureka Printing Company (Eureka, CA), 1986.

A Bibliography of Writings by and about Women in Photography 1850-1950, Peter E. Palmquist (Arcata, CA), 1990.

Shadowcatchers: A Directory of Women in California Photography before 1901, Peter E. Palmquist (Arcata, CA), 1990.

(Editor) Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research, Carl Mautz Publishing (Nevada City, CA), 2000.

(With Thomas R. Kailbourn) Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, Stanford University Press (Palo Alto, CA), 2000.

(Photographer) Peter Johnstone, editor, Giants in the Earth: The California Redwoods, Heyday Books (Berkeley, CA), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850 to the Present, edited by Drew Heath Johnson Oakland Museum of California/W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2001. Founding editor of Daguerreian Annual.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter E. Palmquist was a self-taught scholar and prolific historian of photography, especially western photography. Born in Oakland, California, in 1936, Palmquist lived the majority of his life in rural Humboldt County, California. "His childhood education included a one-room school house with eight students; without electricity or running water," wrote a biographer at the Women Artists of the American West Web site. "His high school graduating class totaled twenty-seven students." Palmquist taught himself photography at age twelve, served five years as a photographer in the U.S. Army, and worked for twenty-eight years as a photographer for Humboldt State University before retiring in 1989. He was an independent historian of photography from 1971, until his death in 2003.

"Much about Palmquist is unorthodox—from his academic credentials (he has none) to his collection of more than 100,000 photographs, the bulk of which would be deemed of little value by many collectors," wrote Myriam Weisang Misrach at the Women Artists of the American West Web site. "Still, the soft-spoken . . . man [was] . . . considered a leading photography expert by prominent auction houses and museums and . . . served as advisor on a plethora of books and exhibits. He . . . curated important shows" in addition to writing more than twenty books.

Among Palmquist's books are With Nature's Children: Emma B. Freeman, 1880-1928—Camera and Brush, "Despite the condescending title, this is a gem of a book about a remarkable woman," wrote Mary Mallory in Library Journal. Freeman, a free-spirited and flamboyant artist and photographer, was known for her romanticized portraits of local Klamath and Hupa Indians—images that were often highly artistic but culturally inaccurate. "Though her Indian portraits were finely crafted and sold well, Palmquist warns that they will not provide anthropologists with 'new and significant insights,'" wrote Ann Marie Cunningham in Ms. "Emma viewed her subjects through a lens clouded by mysticism and romance—a distorted perspective which she shared with most of her contemporaries."

Palmquist's 1980 book, Lawrence & Houseworth/Thomas Houseworth & Co, a Unique View of the West 1860-1886, provides a history and catalogue of the Houseworth company, a California dealer in optics that also sold stereoscopes and stereoscopic viewers, along with stereoscopic photographs of subjects in California and the American West. Palmquist provides "painstaking research into the history of the House-worth firm," wrote a reviewer in American West. A reviewer in AP Bookman's Weekly noted that "Palmquist's work sheds light on the firm's business activities, on the steroscopic branch of photography, and on life in the west." In Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, Palmquist provides "a good comprehensive biography of one of the foremost photographers of the American West," remarked a reviewer in Choice. "Palmquist's thorough scholarship, expansive bibliography, chronology, and listing of collections" make Carleton E. Watkins a "very significant addition" to collections focused on photography or history, wrote Ann Copeland in Library Journal. Jessica Reichman, writing in Journal of the West, called Palmquist's Photographers of the Humboldt Bay Region 1870-1875, "an entertaining, well-written volume that is packed with information." In addition, "The Era of ingenious nineteenth-century photographers is vividly portrayed in this volume," Reichman commented.

Among Palmquist's more ambitious projects is Shadowcatchers: A Directory of Women in California Photography before 1901. The book provides "a comprehensive list of women active in photography in California in the nineteenth century," wrote Judy Dykl in American Reference Books Annual. "Palmquist has collected an unpretentious alphabetical listing of over seven hundred women who were involved in photography and its related occupations," wrote Angela Howard Zogby in Journal of American History. Although Zogby remarked that "the organization of the material obstructs quick scanning of all the entries for readily listed demographic data," she also said that "the wealth of detail in Palmquist's entries will be useful to historians as well as photographers interested in the region and the era." Dykl concluded that "Since most histories of women photographers deal only with the major figures, the comprehensiveness of this narrowly focused directory will prove useful to anyone doing research in this area."

Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research, edited by Palmquist, provides "a framework and good advice for novices and experienced researchers alike," wrote L. L. Scarth in Choice. The "highly informa tive" book includes instructional essays "on the theory and techniques of regional research," along with a bibliography of directories of photographers, compiled by Richard Radisill, wrote Ron Polito in AB Bookman's Weekly. "Archivists who fail to appreciate this volume apparently have no one but themselves to blame," remarked a reviewer in American Archivist.

Pioneer Photographers of the Far West "exhibits many of the virtues and some of the faults to be expected from a lifelong obsession, which, according to the preface, it appears to have been," wrote Benjamin Markovits in the Times Literary Supplement. "Browsing through the dictionary itself feels slightly like walking through a military cemetery: disparate people have been bunched together according to a common cause that may have meant much or little to each," Markovits observed. "The entries themselves resemble a kind of elaborate headstone, rich in dates and places, marriages and births, but occasionally short on the lives between. Still," Markovits wrote, "the book has the fascination of a graveyard, as indeed to the photographic portraits interspersed." Jonathan Kirsch, writing in Los Angeles Times, noted that "like every well-written and well-produced dictionary, it's possible to open the book at random and find something fascinating, illuminating, or funny, and sometimes all of them at once."

In his work with photography, Palmquist's intent was "to interpret each photograph in order to understand the times in which it was taken, the person who shot it, the people who appear in it," Misrach wrote. "He [was] . . . interested in weaving a vast tapestry of California's past through the lens of as many photographers as possible." To Palmquist, who studied advanced amateur photographers as intently as wellknown professionals, "a print worth twenty-five cents can thus be as valuable as one that may cost a thousand dollars," Misrach observed. "Anything that allow[ed] . . . him to 'perceive the fingerprints of the artist' is of importance, be it a landscape or family portrait."

On January 11, 2003, Palmquist was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking his dog.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

AB Bookman's Weekly, January 24, 1983, review of Lawrence & Houseworth/Thomas Houseworth & Co., a Unique View of the West 1860-1886, pp. 513-514; March 16, 1992, Ron Polito, review of Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research, p. 1028.

American Archivist, summer, 1992, review of Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research, p. 510.

American Reference Books Annual, 1992, Judy Dykl, review of A Bibliography of Writings by and about Women in Photography 1850-1950 and Shadow-catchers: A Directory of Women in California Photography before 1901, pp. 387-388.

American West, January-February, 1978, review of With Nature's Children: Emma B. Freeman, 1880-1928—Camera and Brush, p. 56; January-February, 1982, review of Lawrence & Houseworth/Thomas Houseworth & Co., a Unique View of the West 1860-1886, p. 64; June, 1990, review of Photography in the West, p. 32P.

Choice, September, 1983, review of Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, p. 80; February, 2001, L. L. Scarth, review of Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research, p. 1058; September, 2001, P. D. Thomas, review of Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, p. 86; September, 2001, W. A. McIntyre, review of Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850 to the Present, p. 106.

Journal of American History, March, 1992, Angela Howard Zogby, review of Shadowcatchers: A Directory of Women in California Photography before 1901, p. 1551.

Journal of the West, April, 1988, Jessica Reichman, review of The Photographers of the Humboldt Bay Region 1870-1875, p. 91.

Library Journal, June 15, 1977, Mary Mallory, review of With Nature's Children: Emma B. Freeman, 1880-1928—Camera and Brush, p. 1369; July, 1983, Ann Copeland, review of Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer of the American West, p. 1357.

Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2001, Jonathan Kirsch, "Turning Curious Eyes on a Rough-Edged Frontier," pp. E1, E3.

Ms., June, 1977, review of With Nature's Children, p. 86.

Times Literary Supplement, February 8, 2002, Benjamin Markovits, "How the West Was Shot," p. 7.

Washington Post Book World, May 22, 1983, Michael Dirda, review of Carleton E. Watkins: Photographer of the American West, p. 13.

online

Women Artists of the American West Web site,http://www.sla.purdue.edu/WAAW/ (May 8, 2002), Myriam Weisang Misrach, "Through the Lens of Time."

OBITUARIES:

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2003, "Peter Palmquist, 66; Photography Historian," p. B-11.

online

NCCN.net,http://www.nccn.net (April 29, 2003), "In Memoriam: Peter E. Palmquist, 1936-2003."*