Guest Photographer Exhibition
Marion Patterson’s Intimate Landscapes exhibition will be on display November 24 to December 31 with her Opening Reception weather postponed to December 7 from noon to 4pm.
I’m not sure when Marion and I first met, but we agree it was a long time ago. We had been friends for years when she invited me to apply to teach with her at Foothill College for a full-time photography instructor position. Although after a year into my time there, I came to the conclusion I did not want the job, Marion and I have remained friends for decades. I’ve always admired the directness and sensitivity of her photographs. Marion’s photographs were among the first I thought of when I decided to start my Guest Photographer Series.
It is my pleasure to share some of Marions beautiful gelatin-silver prints on my gallery walls.
Point Lobos. 1993. Marion Patterson.
Kelp, Weston Beach, Point Lobos. 1993. Marion Patterson.
from the introduction to her book Grains of Sand
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
- William Blake
My photographs are meditations on the light that illumines and transforms the ordinary, the often overlooled. There are those rare moments when the everyday reality of our world is transcended and one glimpses the eternal and infinite. Through the alchemy of photography, I have tried to reveal those moments, those grains of sand, those reflections of the Eternal One.
January 2002
Schooner Gulch Beach. Mendocino Coast 2001. Marion Patterson.
Marion Patterson
Marion L. Patterson received a B.A. degree with a major in philosophy and a minor in art from Stanford University in 1955and an M.A. degree in interdisciplinary creative arts from California State University, San Francisco, in 1970. In addition to her degrees, shehas studied under some of the country's greatest photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Minor White, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall and Ansel Adams. Patterson has been an active free-lance commercial photographer in both the United States and Mexico, as well as a widely exhibited fine art photographer. She has participated in numerous photographic expeditions, including treks to Nepal, Pakistan, Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet.
From 1958 to 1961, Marion worked for Virginia and Ansel Adams in Yosemite and has remained closely associated with the Adams family since then. From 1961 to 1964 she was assistant to the photography editor of Sunset Magazine. While at Sunset, she prepared her first major exhibit, which was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Living in Oaxaca, Mexico, for a year resulted in another one-woman exhibit, at the Oakland Museum in 1966. In 1968, Marion Patterson began teaching at Foothill and De Anza Colleges in California, later becoming chair of the Foothill photography program. She has taught workshops for the University of California Santa Cruz Extension among others.