Robert Gumpert photograph archive, approximately 1970-2015

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Summary

Creators:
Gumpert, Robert
Abstract:
The Robert Gumpert photograph archive contains contact sheets (largely black and white, some color), slides, negatives (mostly 35mm), exhibition prints, audiotapes, and digital photographs related to his work documenting working people and social issues: unions; industrial, agricultural, and service work; the criminal justice system; and other subjects. The present finding aid focuses on the fully-processed part of the collection, the contact sheets, slides, and negatives.
Extent:
87,500 photographs (contact sheets in 21 boxes and approximately 87,500 negatives in 78 boxes), 9 sound cassettes (9 audio cassettes in 1 box (PIC box 22) + more in unprocessed cartons), 20 linear feet (24 boxes and cartons of unarranged photographic prints, release forms, magazines and tear sheets, and audio recordings), and 1.2 TB (4,021 files on one Apple iMac, 2 hard drives, 78 optical discs, and 7 zip disks. + 43 unprocessed DAT 65 tapes with unknown quantities of content)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Robert Gumpert photograph archive, BANC PIC 2016.033, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Background

Scope and content:

The Robert Gumpert photograph archive contains contact sheets (majority black and white, some color), negatives (chiefly 35mm), slides, exhibition prints, audiotapes, and digital photographs related to his work as a photographer documenting working people and social issues: unions; industrial, agricultural, and service work; the criminal justice system; and other subjects. The present finding aid focuses on the fully-processed part of the collection, the contact sheets, the small number of slides, and the negatives. The contact sheets date from 1970 to 2010 and the negatives date from 1970 to 2005. If there are color contact sheets present for a project or subject, their presence is noted in the folder listing.

Many of the photographs document workers in Detroit, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Appalachia, California, and other locations, working in an array of settings such as clothing factories, farms and orchards, racetracks, prisons, hospitals and ambulances, hotels and restaurants, and schools, and in occupations such as automobile manufacturing; high-tech manufacturing; fire fighting; law enforcement; mining; all aspects of construction including electrical work, carpentry, iron work, plumbing, and roofing; transportation; and other fields. Some of the companies pictured are: Teledyne-Ryan; Fairchild Industries; John Deere; NUMMI; Chrysler; Ford; Cadillac; General Motors; Prestalite; Allomatic; Arco, Bunker Hill, Phelps Dodge Valley Camp, and Kaiser mines; Hormel; Gallo Winery; Frito Lay; Aerojet; Tropicana; Sun Microsystems; and KLA-Tencor. Projects often include portraits of workers as well as pictures of the machinery, equipment, and tools people use to perform their jobs. Many of these photographs were taken for the California Department of Industrial Relations and there are images of DIR inspectors conducting sweeps and investigations, in meetings, and interviewing workers, and there are images of people participating in apprenticeship programs. There are also portraits of "Rosies," women who worked in ship building during World War II.

There are a large number of photographs in the collection related to labor unions and union activity including union conventions, picket lines, striking workers at home or gathering in meeting halls and other locations, rallies and parades, union campaigns and elections, portraits of prominent union officials, and portraits of union members and their families. The unions represented include: UFW, UAW, SEIU, ILGWU, ACTWU, CWA, UFCW, USWA, UPCW, PATCO, UPIU, UMWA, IAM, and others. Union officials pictured include Cesar Chavez, Owen Bieber, Jerry Tucker, Ed Sadlowski, Harry Patrick, William Winpisinger, Lane Kirkland, George Meany, Sol Chaikin, Murray Finley, Paul Hall, James Schlesinger, Patricia Harris, Ray Marshall, Lloyd McBride, and Benjamin Hooks.

Gumpert's documentation of social issues includes images related to rural life; aging; gay rights and marriage (his Pioneer Hearts project); immigration, including photographs of borders, amnesty organizations, and portraits of immigrants; poverty and economic disparities particularly in Detroit, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area; unemployment; pollution and other environmental concerns; homelessness; and runaway youth. He photographed a number of demonstrations on issues such as nuclear disarmament, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, and U.S. Latin American policy.

The criminal justice system is a significant focus of Gumpert's work and the collection includes photographs of law enforcement at work (including a Miami, Florida police officer, San Francisco homicide detectives, and members of the Tenderloin Task Force of the San Francisco Police Department), public defenders (particularly the office of Jeff Adachi in San Francisco), prison officers, as well as of people who are being detained, processed at jails after their arrest, or are serving sentences as prisoners.

The collection also includes photographs Gumpert took abroad in Mexico (particularly of maquiladora workers), Bangladesh, Germany (life on a canal boat), Haiti (including of the elections of December 1990), Pakistan (particularly related to the 1988 and 1990 elections and at an Edhi Welfare Center), Panama, the Philippines (particularly of the fighting, protests and elections during the transition from the government of Ferdinand Marcos to that of Corazon Aquino in 1986 and of living conditions in poorer neighborhoods), South Africa, Thailand, and Zambia.

Gumpert worked in the United Kingdom for a number of years and the collection includes work he did for UK publications (primarily "The Guardian", "The Independent", "The Sunday Telegraph", and "The Observer") on topics including drug abuse, prisons, and midwifery. Gumpert also took photographs for "The Daily Deal" in the United States. The bulk of his work for these magazines and newspapers are portraits of artists, authors, scientists, and business people. Subjects include: Alexandra Nechita, Po Bronson, Nicholson Baker, Shannon Hartnett, Joe Firmage, Carol Shields, Robert Altman (director), Moon Unit Zappa, Shirin Neshat, Daniel Clowes, John Adams (composer), Isabel Allende, Stewart Brand, Paul Oakenfold, Dan Carroll, Robert Conquest, Nellie McKay, Terry McMillan, Judith Moore, Jane Smiley, James Ellroy, Martin Cruz Smith, Dave Eggers, Dennis Peron, and Chuck Palahniuk.

Some of the other subjects included in the collection are politicians (Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale, Ted Kennedy, Jerry Brown, Elizabeth Holzman, a group of photographs documenting the work of the California Legislature) and political conventions (New York 1980, San Francisco 1984); Jews for Jesus; jazz and gospel groups performing in New Orleans and other musicians (Tom Juravich, bluesman Roy Rogers, the Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder, Clarence Brown, Stevie Ray Vaughan); views of cities including Washington, D.C., Glasgow, Scotland, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco including of the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; small towns in rural Virginia, Maine, Iowa, Wisconsin, Utah, and Michigan; the Pacific Stock Exchange; entertainers and performers (Pickle Family Circus, San Francisco Ballet Company, Medieval Times, rodeo participants); and leisure activities such as golf and dirt track racing. There are also still life photographs that Gumpert took of vegetables and tools, and some personal photographs of his family and trips.

There are approximately 50 slides. The majority appear to be duplicates of images that appear elsewhere in the collection. One group of slides is labeled "slide talk" suggesting the images were gathered for a public presentation. There are seven slides of a man identified only as Wang.

There are a large number of signed releases amongst the contact sheets. Their position in Gumpert's arrangement has been preserved. It is not always certain that the releases pertain to the contact sheets they are filed with. There are some folders that contain only releases; no contact sheets. And there are many contact sheets filed with no accompanying releases. There are a large number of releases in the unprocessed portion of the collection; most of those appear to relate to the "Take a Picture, Tell a Story" work.

Some contact sheets are accompanied by Gumpert's notes taken during the course of his picture taking or his interviews with subjects. Those notes might identify people in the pictures, provide their ages and occupations, detail some of the processes or tasks that are being performed, and provide other context for the images. Some contact sheets have typed captions, sometimes quite detailed, either affixed to the backs of the sheets or in an accompanying document. Several of Gumpert's notebooks are included in the collection. A few contact sheets are accompanied by the text (either in a typed document or as a tearsheet) of the article they were taken for or by other supporting information, such as a brochure from a company or a booklet about a nature preserve. A number of the photographs related to the auto industry and autoworkers were published in Solidarity Magazine, a UAW periodical, and those articles could provide additional context and captions for the images.

Biographical / historical:

San Francisco-based documentary photographer Robert (Bob) Gumpert began his work in the 1970s when he went to Kentucky to photograph a miners’ strike. He has worked nationally and internationally since, documenting social issues including addiction, homelessness, and poverty; work, including service, health care, agricultural, and industrial labor; union conferences and strikes; prisons and jails, prisoners, law enforcement, public defenders, and other aspects of the criminal justice system; and other subjects (https://robertgumpert.com/about). He has produced a number of bodies of work including “Division Street,” which documents the lives of people living in tent encampments through photography, found text, and interviews. Excerpts from “Division Street'' were published as a photo essay in Harper's Magazine in October 2016 and a book of the work, published by Dewi Lewis, was the winner of the 2022 Lucie Photobook Prize. (Please note, "Division Street" was an active project at the time Gumpert's archive was transferred to the University of California, and is therefore not represented in the present archive and finding aid.)

Beginning in 1994, Gumpert created “Lost Promise: the Criminal Justice System,” and beginning in 2006, “Take a Picture, Tell a Story,” in which he exchanged portraits of prisoners for extensive interviews. Gumpert has also produced zines on a range of subjects including Grand Central Station in New York City, the Pacific Stock Exchange, and portraits of UAW members (https://robertgumpert.com/coffee-and-donuts). Gumpert worked for a number of publications in the United States and the United Kingdom photographing authors, artists, musicians, scientists, and business leaders. He also worked for the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) capturing job sites, apprentice programs, investigations, compliance sweeps, and inspections. His work has been exhibited at the Photographer’s Gallery, Menier Gallery, HOST Gallery, and Middlesex College in the United Kingdom, and at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Saint Mary’s College of California and SOMArts Center in San Francisco, among other venues, and it has been featured on websites including SFCamerawork (https://sfcamerawork.org/sin-is-the-problem) and Allaboutphoto.com (https://www.all-about-photo.com/photo-articles/photo-article/1138/division-street-by-robert-gumpert).

Acquisition information:
The Robert Gumpert photograph archive was purchased from Robert Gumpert in 2015.
Processing information:

The image item count in the finding aid of 87,500 is based on the contact sheets (approximately 3500 contact sheets x roughly an average of 25 images per sheet). There may be more images in the negatives. A comparison of the contact sheets for certain projects, dates, or events with their corresponding negatives to ascertain if all negatives have contact sheets was not conducted. As a result, there may be a significant discrepancy between the numbers of images in each format.

Folder titles are derived from Gumpert's brief descriptions annotated on original envelopes or folders, and they have been retained (transcribed) in the collection and in this finding aid. Some may have been regularized or otherwise modified by library staff to improve clarity, consistency or searchability.

Contact sheets processed by Isabel Breskin with James Eason in 2024.

Arrangement:

Negatives and Contact Sheets: Gumpert employed a numbering system for his contact sheets and negatives that consisted of a two-digit year followed by a 3-digit roll number. For instance 85003 would be the third roll of film taken in 1985. After 1999, he continued using two digits for the year with the year 2000 noted as 20, 2001 as 21, 2002 as 22, and so on. Therefore, 21245 would be the 245th roll of film taken in 2001. That date/roll number is noted on the back of almost all of the contact sheets. He grouped and filed contact sheets by project or subject, not by the date code used to file negatives. Further negatives, not assigned date codes, were found by Library staff among the contact sheet and project files. Those have been rehoused to a run of negatives described separately in this finding aid.

The contact sheets have been arranged by the Library at the folder level. Gumpert stored his contact sheets in large envelopes and folders with a few descriptive words written on them. The contents of each envelope or folder have been transferred to a single folder and Gumpert's brief descriptions have been used for the folder titles in this arrangement. Further detail on the contents of each folder (locations, companies, individuals pictured, events, and so on) can be found in notes throughout the finding aid.

Gumpert largely arranged his contact sheets by subject and that choice has been preserved here. Gumpert generally kept subjects together (photographs with the subject headings Unions, Work, Social Issues, materials taken in foreign countries, materials taken for the DIR, and so on.) However, there are instances in which Gumpert filed some contact sheets separately from the bulk of the material on a certain topic. For instance, he did not file photographs related to the UFW with other union materials. In general, Gumpert's physical order has been retained with the exception of DIR materials, which he had separated and which have now been brought together in a single group. Gumpert's ordering of his subjects was loosely alphabetical (with a number of deviations and exceptions) and, again, his physical arrangement has been retained.

Some photographs have been sealed until 2054 due to healthcare content and third party privacy concerns. When a small number of frames on a few contact sheets in a folder contain such content, those frames were masked and the contact sheets were left in place. However, when entire folders contain materials with healthcare privacy concerns (such as the materials Gumpert took at the Highland Hospital Emergency Room in Oakland, California), those folders have been separated from the existing order and placed in restricted boxes at the end of the arrangement.

Gumpert tended to file journalistic jobs for any given year in close (but not absolute) proximity to each other. Thus, throughout the collection there are groups of subjects he photographed in a certain year – for instance, Daniel Clowes, John Adams, Isabel Allende and Stewart Brand, all photographed in 2001, appear in the arrangement together. These groups are, in other words, filed chronologically, rather than by alphabetical subject. When Gumpert provided the name of the publication these photographs were taken for, that information has been included in a note in this finding aid.

Gumpert stored the bulk of his negatives separately from the contact sheets, filed by date codes. However, some negatives were found in the envelopes and folders with the contact sheets. Those have been separated and their new location (NEG boxes 1-7) noted in the finding aid. In several instances, negatives for magazines and newspapers assignments were present, but with no accompanying contact sheets. In those cases, the negatives have been removed, a list of subjects has been inserted where the negatives appeared in the arrangement, and the current location of the negatives is provided in a note.

The negatives have been arranged according to Gumpert's date/roll number system. Prior to 1993, Gumpert kept most of his negatives in individual cardboard sleeves and noted the date and roll number (using the method described above) and often, but not always, a brief description of the contents. After 1989, Gumpert put his negatives in negative sleeve sheets, again adding date and roll information and sometimes a brief description. He stored those sheets in binders. Gumpert also kept a group of selected negatives from 1983 and earlier in a binder. For ease of discovery, those 1983 and earlier negatives have been removed from the binder and interfiled with the other negatives from the years 1970 to 1983. They can be readily identified as they are housed in plain archival sleeves and not in the commercial cardboard sleeves used for the other negatives.

Researchers can locate the relevant negative by finding the date/roll number on the back of the contact sheet and requesting the negative with the same number. That said, there are gaps in the sequence of negative numbers (for instance, between 8217 and 8295); some negatives may not be present. There are eight unnumbered sleeves after roll 7609-88. Details on the contents can be found in a note for NEG box 11.

Gumpert created two numbering systems for his negatives in 1983. One run was, with only a few exceptions, housed in the "1983 and before" binder and consists of negatives numbered 83000 to 83021-C13. That run is now housed in NEG box 29. The other run consists of negatives numbered 83-1 to 83229ThC. (Gumpert used hyphens for 83-1 to 83-119 and then dropped them.) That run is housed in NEG boxes 30-36. Researchers seeking negatives from 1983 should check both locations.

Digital filenames were set by Gumpert to be YY-MM-DD-Image#, but sometime a letter code for a project name was inserted before the image number, such as "YY-MM-DD-LF-Image#" (LF = Locked and Found project).

Physical location:
Many Bancroft Library collections are stored off-site and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
Physical facet:
: digital photographs and digital audio files
Rules or conventions:
DACS

Access and use

Restrictions:

Contact sheets (PIC boxes 1-19) and negatives are open for research.

Contact sheets with medical images (PIC boxes 20-21 and various folders elsewhere) : RESTRICTED due to privacy concerns. Sealed until 2054.

Negatives: available by appointment only.

Photographic prints, digital photographs, and audiotapes: UNPROCESSED. UNAVAILABLE FOR USE.

Terms of access:

Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). The photographer's copyright has been retained by him for his lifetime, to transfer to the University of California Regents at his death, according to the terms of the purchase agreement. In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For additional information about the University of California, Berkeley Library's permissions policy please see: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/permissions-policies

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Robert Gumpert photograph archive, BANC PIC 2016.033, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
Contact:
510-642-6481
bancref-library@berkeley.edu
Website