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Barry Goldwater and the Southwest
Barry M. Goldwater
A collection of photographs of the American Southwest by Barry M. Goldwater — better known as a five-term U.S. senator and the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, but a lifelong and genuinely accomplished photographer. For decades Goldwater carried a camera through the Arizona he loved, and his images of desert light, canyon country, and the people of the region appeared regularly in *Arizona Highways*. This 1976 volume gathers that work with a foreword by Ansel Adams, no less, in a mix of color and black-and-white plates. Setting politics aside, the book reveals a patient, affectionate eye for landscape and a real command of the medium. It is a document of place as much as a portrait of its maker: the Southwest seen by someone who spent a lifetime looking at it closely, and who cared about how it was recorded.
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The author
Barry M. Goldwater (1909–1998) was a U.S. senator from Arizona and the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, a foundational figure of the modern American conservative movement often called "Mr. Conservative." He was also, from the 1930s on, a serious amateur photographer whose work was long featured in Arizona Highways; photography was arguably his second great passion after politics.
The book
Barry Goldwater and the Southwest (1976) is one of three books of his photographs, alongside Delightful Journey and People and Places. A foreword by Ansel Adams — the towering figure of American landscape photography — signals the regard in which his eye was held.
How to read it
Judged as photography, the book stands on its own: assured compositions, a feel for Southwestern light, and a documentary interest in the region's land and people. Goldwater's political legacy is, of course, large and contested — a champion of small-government conservatism and a states'-rights defender who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (a vote he framed in constitutional terms), yet also a later libertarian voice on personal liberty. Readers will bring their own view of the politics; the photographs ask only to be seen as the work of a devoted observer of Arizona.
For more context
See Photographs by Barry M. Goldwater: The Arizona Highways Collection for a fuller survey of his images.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Barry M. Goldwater
- Year
- 1976
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Colorado