Rondal Partridge facts for kids

Rondal Partridge (September 4, 1917 – June 19, 2015) was an American photographer. After working as an assistant to well-known photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams in his youth, he went on to a long career as a photographer and filmmaker.

Early life

Partridge was born in San Francisco in 1917. He had a twin brother named Padraic. His parents were etcher Roi Partridge and photographer Imogen Cunningham. He grew up in a household where he was constantly exposed to the influence of several great California artists of the early 20th century. For example, at the age of four, he spent time staying at the home of photographer Dorothea Lange and her husband, painter Maynard Dixon. Partridge became so close to Lange that their relationship was often compared to a son's relationship with his mother.

Assistant to Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams

A 1935 photo by Partridge of Dorothea Lange

Partridge began helping his mother in her darkroom when he was five years old. At the age of 16, he became a photographic assistant to Dorothea Lange. He helped with her job taking pictures showing rural poverty for the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency of the U.S. government. Lange paid Partridge one dollar a day plus expenses to be her driver and darkroom assistant, and he often spent the night outdoors in a sleeping bag while she slept in a bed in a motel. Lange was paid four dollars a day.

From 1937 to 1939, Partridge worked as an assistant to Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park. He operated Adams's new automated darkroom in Yosemite Village, which produced photographic prints of Adams's work for sale to tourists.

In July 1937, Edward Weston, who had received a one-year Guggenheim Fellowship to photograph the American West, arrived in Yosemite. Adams had organized an expedition to the High Sierra, hiring three mules at Red's Meadow to take the group to the Minarets and Devils Postpile National Monument. Partridge traveled with them and helped them. Other members of the group included Charis Wilson (later Weston's wife), climber David Brower (later executive director of the Sierra Club), and another climber, Morgan Harris. After a week of taking photos and battling mosquitoes, the group returned to Yosemite Valley late at night on July 27. As they were eating a dinner of roast chicken, they learned that Adams's new darkroom in a nearby building was on fire. Partridge and others battled the flames until the fire was extinguished. Although thousands of negatives were lost, many masterpieces were saved. The fire had been caused by the carelessness of a photo technician sent by the Zeiss camera company.

Career as a photographer

A 1940 photo by Rondal Partridge of a migrant farmworker family riding a freight train in Roseville, California

In 1940, Rondal got a job with a New Deal agency called the National Youth Administration, photographing the problems faced by young people in the final years of the Great Depression.

Partridge's photography was different than Ansel Adams's photography. While Adams focused on the beauty of the natural landscape, Partridge photographed the manmade parts of Yosemite as well as changes to the manmade parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. He used his photographs as irony and social commentary to show how man had interfered with nature. One of his most famous works was called Pave It and Paint it Green. The photo shows the iconic Yosemite peak Half Dome in the background, while the foreground consists of a parking lot filled with cars. His photo Pave It and Paint It Green was part of an exhibition on the art of Yosemite which appeared at the Autry National Center, the Oakland Museum of California, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art from 2006 to 2008.

Partridge has taken portraits of ordinary working people, as well as many famous people including Odetta, Ruth Asawa, Judy Dater, John Carl Warnecke, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Diego Rivera as well as his mother, Imogen Cunningham.

Rondal Partridge died on June 19, 2015, at the age of 97.

Rondal Partridge quotes

• "You know, you have to be an optimist, a pessimist, sarcastic, and pleasant all at the same time to be a photographer."
• "Ansel [Adams] always jumped over the fence to photograph, walked past the garbage. He always looked to get an immaculate view, and I spent my life stepping back to include the garbage in my photographic view."
• "I never think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as making a point."
• I have spent my life learning by looking through a lens."
• "I have an abiding faith in the fact that time will change the value of photographs. What you see today may be so familiar to everyone that they don't immediately appreciate or value it."

Interesting facts about Rondal Partridge

• Rondal tied Ansel Adams's shoelaces together when he was asleep. Adams immediately fired him but hired him again after calming down.
• In 1941, shortly before joining the United States Navy, he married Elizabeth Woolpert, who graduated from UC Berkeley’s law school and later worked as an attorney representing low-income people.
• Rondal was the father of five children.
• Mr. Partridge later worked as a photojournalist for Black Star Agency in New York City and for the U.S. Navy Intelligence during World War II.
• His daughter, Elizabeth Partridge, said her father was “thrown by birth into this group of amazing people, and they all had something to teach him.”
• Elizabeth also remembers that her father bought a 1949 black Cadillac limousine, spray painted it gold, and put a mattress across the back for all the kids to sit on when they drove across the country to New York.
• Toward the end of his life, he focused on framing dried plants.