Collection Guide
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Baruch (Ruth-Marion) and Jones (Pirkle) photographs and
papers
MS.020
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Title: Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones photographs and papers
Creator:
Jones, Pirkle, 1914-2009
Creator:
Baruch, Ruth-Marion,
1922-1997
Identifier/Call Number: MS.020
Physical Description:
800 Linear Feet
(585 boxes; 35 flat file drawers; 484 framed items)
Date (inclusive): 1800s-2012
Date (bulk): 1947-1997
Language of Material:
English
This collection guide contains harmful language which was used by either the original
creators or the prior stewards of the materials in this collection. Library staff made the
decision to retain and repurpose this description because it may provide important context
about its creators, custodial history, and/or source. We are committed to describing
materials in a manner that respects those who create, are represented in, and interact with
the collections we steward, as well as preserving the original context of collection
materials. Ethically managing archival description is an ongoing and iterative practice, and
we welcome your feedback and questions at speccoll@library.ucsc.edu.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright for the items in this collection created by Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones
is owned by Regents of the University of California. Copyright for the items in this
collection created by other photographers is owned by the creators and their heirs.
Reproduction or distribution of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair
use requires permission from the copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the user to
determine whether a use is fair use, and to obtain any necessary permissions. UCSC Special
Collections and Archives can grant permission to publish materials to which it holds the
copyright. For more information see UCSC Special Collections and Archives policy on
Reproduction and Use.
Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones Photographs and Papers. MS 20. Special Collections and
Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This collection was donated in multiple accruals. The initial gift in 1997 was facilitated
by Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, and later accruals through 2014 were arranged by
Jennifer McFarland, trustee for the Pirkle Jones Foundation. The collection in its entirety
was given to UC Santa Cruz in 2016 by The Pirkle Jones Fund of the Marin Community
Foundation.
Alternative Form of Material Available
Many of the photographs in this collection have been digitized and are available online in
the UCSC Library Digital Collections Online site. These include all of Ruth-Marion Baruch's
negatives and the Pirkle Jones negatives of the Black Panthers, and his Berryessa Valley
collaboration with Dorothea Lange for
Death of a Valley.
Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones met in San Francisco in 1946 when they both enrolled in
the newly inaugurated fine art photography program founded by Ansel Adams at the California
School of Fine Arts (CSFA), now the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). In addition to
Adams, their instructors at the school included other luminaries of the photography world
including Minor White, who took over directorship of the program, Imogen Cunningham, Homer
Page, Dorothea Lange, and Edward Weston. In addition to their technical and artistic
influence on Baruch and Jones, friendships and collaborations grew out of their association
with this gifted faculty. Baruch and Jones married in 1949 at Ansel and Virginia Adams' home
in Yosemite, and became permanent residents of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Ruth-Marion Baruch (June 15, 1922-October 11, 1997)
Ruth-Marion Baruch was a poet, photographer, and teacher, born in Berlin, Germany. She
immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1927 and spent her childhood in New York
City. While attending the University of Missouri, where she earned Bachelor degrees in
journalism, creative writing, and literary criticism, she became interested in photography.
In 1946, she became the first recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from
the University of Ohio, where she wrote her thesis, Edward Weston: The Man, the Artist, and
the Photographer, after spending a month as Weston's apprentice at Wildcat Hill in Carmel,
California. While there, she met other photographers including Ansel Adams and Imogen
Cunningham, who later became her teachers, colleagues, and friends.
Baruch relocated to San Francisco and began post-graduate studies in photography at the
newly inaugurated fine art photography program founded by Ansel Adams at the CSFA/SFAI.
While at CSFA, Baruch met fellow photographer Pirkle Jones, collaborated with him on several
school assignments, and married him in 1949 at Ansel Adams' home in Yosemite. Baruch and
Jones lived in San Francisco for twenty years before moving in 1965 to their Mill Valley
home, designed by West Coast modernist architect Henry Schubart.
Over the span of her three-decade creative career, Baruch produced a number of projects
demonstrating a profound concern for women, children, and social justice issues. Most
noteworthy among these are her series
Illusion for Sale (1961),
Haight-Ashbury (1967),
George Jackson (1971), and
The
Shape of Birth
(1975). In addition to her solo work, Baruch collaborated with her
husband on two significant projects,
Walnut Grove: Portrait of a Town (1961)
and
The Black Panthers (1968); Baruch initiated the project by arranging an
introduction to Kathleen Cleaver, the Black Panther Party's press secretary and wife of
Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information.
Baruch's photography has been exhibited nationally, including at the de Young Museum (San
Francisco, CA); the Museum of Modern Art and Studio Museum of Harlem (New York, NY); Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); and Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort
Worth, TX). She is represented in the permanent collections of major institutions, including
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, International Museum of Photography at George
Eastman House (Rochester, NY), the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), The Art
Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Polaroid Corporation (Cambridge, MA) and the Oakland
Museum (Oakland, CA).
As an educator, Baruch spent the year after completing her undergraduate studies teaching
photographic lab work at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She served as a
guest artist at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1970 to 1989 where she worked with her
husband, as well as with experimental filmmaker and artist Barbara Hammer. Baruch also
co-taught a number of photography workshops with her husband. From 1969 to 1974, she
co-taught workshops in the High Sierra and in Mill Valley, and in 1980 she co-taught at The
Friends of Photography Workshop, founded in Carmel in 1967 by Ansel Adams.
Throughout her photographic career, Baruch continued to pursue her literary interests. In
the 1950s she and Pirkle Jones collaborated on Felinimus and Twig, a manuscript for an
unpublished children's book; Baruch wrote the text and Jones contributed the photographic
illustrations. In the 1950s and 1960s, under the auspices of the San Francisco Poetry Center
and with the sponsorship of San Francisco State College, she performed readings of her
poetry in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, the heart of the Beat movement.
Baruch also wrote the preface and text to
The Vanguard: A Photographic Essay on the
Black Panthers>
, which she and Pirkle Jones published with Beacon Press in
1969/70. In 2002, her book of poetry,
A Dangerous Thing, was posthumously
published by Apollo Press. Ruth-Marion Baruch passed away in San Rafael, California, on
October 11, 1997.
Pirkle Jones (January 2, 1914-March 15, 2009)
Pirkle Jones was an award-winning photographer and teacher whose body of work includes
documentary, commercial, and fine art photography. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, his family
moved to Lima, Ohio, where at age seventeen Jones purchased his first camera, a Kodak
Brownie. Throughout the 1930s, after graduating high school, he began exhibiting and
publishing his works in pictorial salons and regional camera clubs.
From 1941 to 1946, while serving in the United States Army as a Warrant Officer in the
Signal Corp of the 37th Infantry Division, Jones discontinued his photographic practice.
Upon his discharge, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to pursue photographic studies at the
newly inaugurated fine art photography program at CSFA/SFAI. There he studied under some of
the most renowned photographers in the United States, including the program's founder and
first director Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and Minor
White who served as the program's second director and principal instructor.
From 1947 to 1951, Jones served as Adams' assistant and was instrumental in the preparation
of Adams' Portfolio I: Twelve Photographic Prints (1948) and Portfolio II: The National
Parks and Monuments (1950). During this time, he also collaborated with Minor White and Al
Gay on an unpublished project documenting the architectural work of Bernard Maybeck. In
1948, Jones began documenting the oeuvre of sculptor Annette Rosenshine, a member of the
Parisian avant-garde whose works bear the markings of her artistic studies under Matisse and
her psychoanalytic studies under Carl Jung.
In 1949, after graduating from the CSFA, Jones married his classmate Ruth-Marion Baruch,
launching a forty-nine-year romantic and creative partnership. Together they documented some
of the San Francisco Bay Area's momentous cultural events of the late 1960s, notably the
Black Power movement. They lived in San Francisco for twenty years before moving in 1965 to
their Mill Valley home, which was designed by renowned West Coast modernist architect Henry
Schubart. In 1952, Jones began a forty-five-year teaching career that was as impressive as
his artistic achievements. For thirty-three years, he taught in the Photography Department
at his alma mater, CFSA/SFAI; for seven years, he taught Ansel Adams Workshops in San
Francisco, Yosemite, and UC Santa Cruz; and over a ten year period he taught a number of
workshops and master classes, many of which he co-taught with Baruch, throughout the
Monterey Bay area. Notable among these are the workshops he taught at The Friends of
Photography Workshop, founded in Carmel in 1967 by Ansel Adams.
In 1977, Jones was recognized for his photographic excellence by the National Endowment for
the Arts with a Fellowship Grant in Photography. His other awards include an Edward Steichen
Certificate of Recognition from the National Urban League for photographic excellence and
participation in the 1961 exhibition America's Many Faces; an Award of Honor presented by
the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1983; and a KABL Citizen of the Day Award in
recognition of his contribution to the welfare of the San Francisco Bay Area, also in 1983.
In 2004, Jones received an honorary doctorate from San Francisco Art Institute. Pirkle Jones
passed away on March 15, 2009 in San Rafael, California.
This collection contains the photographs and papers of Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones,
whose work visually documents the people and landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area during
a time of enormous social, political, and environmental change. More than 12,000 gelatin
silver prints comprise the bulk of this collection, including work by Baruch and Jones'
colleagues and collaborators. Sizes range from miniatures to 66 x 40 oversize prints. Also
included are negatives, color and black-and-white slides, and papers that contain project
files and correspondence related to their work in addition to personal letters and family
documents.
Sensitive content
Some photographs contain nudity, and some descriptions include identification of subjects
by race, ethnicity, or physical appearance. These descriptions were derived from inventories
provided by the artist and/or donor.
The collection is arranged in seven series by photographer and by format:
- Series 1: Ruth-Marion Baruch photographs
- Series 2: Pirkle Jones photographs
- Series 3: Other photographers
- Series 4: Negatives
- Series 5: Slides
- Series 6: Artwork
- Series 7: Papers
Early accruals of this collection were processed by Annie Tang in 2014, with the assistance
of crystal nelson, graduate student fellow in the Center for Archival Research and Training
(CART) program. The remainder of the collection was processed when the collection in its
entirety was given to UCSC in 2016, with a revised finding aid published in 2019 by Mary
deVries.
Note that box 109 has been removed from the collection. It previously held prints in the
Berryessa Valley series which were framed for a 2018 exhibition at the Barbican Centre. They
are described in the collection guide as framed and are available upon request.
Finding aid revision statement
This finding aid was revised in the Reparative Archival Redescription Project in 2021-2022.
Previous versions of this finding aid are available upon request.
See the following inventories to Series 5 Slides:
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Berryessa Valley (Calif.) -- Photographs
Berryessa, Lake (Calif.)
Black Panther Party