Harry Drinkwater photographs documenting Los Angeles art and Architecture, 1950-2010

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Summary

Creators:
Drinkwater, Harry, 1919-2014
Abstract:
The collection of over 140 photographic prints and 1200 negatives represents a portion of the professional and personal output of Harry Drinkwater, a Venice, California-based Black photographer who documented Los Angeles's mid-century modern design movement as well as its wider artistic and social circles. Los Angeles-based Black artists, architects, and designers and their works feature prominently in the collection.
Extent:
9 Linear Feet (5 boxes and 1flatfile)
Language:
Collection material is in English.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection of over 140 photographic prints and 1200 negatives represents a portion of Harry Drinkwater's professional and personal output and documents Los Angeles's mid-century design movement as well as its wider artistic and social circles. The Venice-based photographer's work captures the changing cultural landscapes of Venice and Los Angeles in the mid- to-late twentieth century: the opening of architect Paul Williams's Golden State Mutual Insurance Company building in 1949, the first Black owned insurance firm in the city; the performances of dancers Thelma Oliver and Ruth Saturensky; the artwork of Camille Billops, Robert Boggs, and Dewain Valentine; and the revitalization of Venice Beach. Black artists, architects, and designers and their works feature prominently in the collection.

Series I, Architecture and interior design, 1950-2010, primarily comprises photographs of work by noted Los Angles-area architects and designers, including Black practitioners such as Paul and John Williams, John Smith, Robert Kennard, and Tommy Greene. Three negatives depict Paul Williams's Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building. A few portraits are also included here, notably one of decorator John Smith seated in John Lautner's Chemosphere House. The photographs Drinkwater took for Kelsey Screens represent some of his first architectural work for hire.

Series II, Artists, 1960-2004, comprises a cross section of Drinkwater's documentation of Southern California artists, filmmakers, gallerists, and actors. Included are views of artists' studios; photographs of artists and actors at work; and portraits. Black members of the artistic community represented here include Don Amis, Bill Attaway, Camille Billops, Roland Charles, Thelma Oliver, and Noah Purifoy. Many of the artists, including Charlie Nothing, Bill Attaway, and Dewain Valentine, were part of the local Venice Beach art scene, while others such as Gordon Wagner, Don Amis, Roland Charles, and Noah Purifoy worked in the greater Los Angeles area. The artists represented range from up-and-coming, to established, to perennially counterculture artists. Also included here are few of Drinkwater's own projects as well as portraits of Drinkwater made by unknown photographers. Included are views of artists' studios; photographs of artists and actors at work; and portraits. Black members of the artistic community represented here include Don Amis, Bill Attaway, Camille Billops, Roland Charles, Thelma Oliver, and Noah Purifoy. Many of the artists, including Charlie Nothing, Bill Attaway, and Dewain Valentine, were part of the local Venice Beach art scene, while others such as Gordon Wagner, Don Amis, Roland Charles, and Noah Purifoy worked in the greater Los Angeles area. The artists represented range from up-and-coming, to established, to perennially counterculture artists. Also included here are few of Drinkwater's own projects as well as portraits of Drinkwater made by unknown photographers.

The photographs in Series III are primarily related to Venice, Santa Monica, and other southern California coastal locations, with an emphasis on Venice Beach and environs, where Drinkwater lived and worked for over six decades. A black-and-white joined panorama from the late 1970s or early 1980s records Ocean Front Walk, as it once again became as a tourist destination after a long decline following the closure of Venice's amusement piers and dance halls that began in the late 1940s and continued into the 1960s. Drinkwater's photographs capture the vibrant life of the area from the late 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Subjects range from views of legendary cultural venues such as the Comeback Inn, Venice's jazz showcase, and Mark Kornfeld's Sponto Gallery, to images of Venice boardwalk street performers, the Venice Graffiti Pit, and the annual Hare Krishna parade. Also found in this series are views of Santa Monica and other beach communities taken from the 1960s to the 1980s, and views of Los Angeles freeway construction in 1964.

Arrangement

Organized in three series: Series I. Architecture and interior design, 1950-2010, undated; Series II. Artists, 1960-2004, undated; Series III. Venice, Santa Monica and other coastal locations, 1963-2001, undated.

Biographical / historical:

Harry W. Drinkwater was born in Bakersfield, California on March 28, 1919 and grew up in Yountville, in one of the area's only Black families. At around age 13 he left his family and headed south to San Diego, Los Angeles, and Venice, but returned to Yountville in 1938 to finish high school. He joined the service in 1942 and was stationed in Weymouth, England as part an all-Black unit of the communication corps. At the very end of his tour of duty a turn at the camera during the shooting of his company's group photograph provided his first encounter with the possibilities of photography.

After the war, Drinkwater returned to Bakersfield but eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where he worked odd jobs, before joining the Civilian Conservation Corps, working at the Mexico-United States border near Tecate. From 1947 to 1949, Drinkwater used the G. I. Bill to attend the Fred Archer School of Photography, which had been founded in part to train veterans. Archer, who worked early on in the pictorialist style, had also been a movie studio photographer and an early proponent of advertising photography. His curriculum, which prepared veterans for work in commercial photography, joined formal experimentation with Hollywood film-style portraiture.

Following his graduation from Archer, Drinkwater worked for the Black community-based newspapers The Eagle (1947 to 1949) and The Sentinel (1949 to 1955), and for Elegant: The Magazine for Fashionable Living in the 1960s. In the 1950s, he also worked for Kelsey Screens, manufacturers of shoji-type screens, before becoming the primary photographer (1958-1961) for the modernist landscape architect, Garret Eckbo, whose Kandinsky-esque garden designs were influential in the development of mid-century architectural design. Although Drinkwater's negatives, as work-for-hire, were retained by Eckbo, his photographs are featured in Eckbo's books Urban Landscape Design (1964) and The Landscape We See (1969).

From the time he first picked up a camera in the late 1940s Drinkwater never stopped photographing. His work, at times quite stylized, belongs to a mid-century scene that is linked to Los Angeles's jazz, Beatnik, and modernist movements. Drinkwater's subjects ranged from art and architecture, to interior and landscape design, and to popular culture. He documented the changing cultural landscapes of Venice and Los Angeles, photographing Black artists and their work, as well as aspects of the area's wider artistic and social circles.

Drinkwater photographed the work of contemporary Los Angeles designers including that of his close friend, John Smith, who created the interiors of John Lautner's Chemosphere house. For the landmark 1966 exhibition 66 Signs of Neon, the first large-scale artistic response to the 1965 Watts Riots, Drinkwater worked with artist Noah Purifoy to photograph works for its exhibition catalogue Junk Art: 66 Signs of Neon. He also documented the work of Los Angeles artists such as DeWain Valentine and Gordon Wagner.

Drinkwater lived in Venice, California for over six decades, where he was both a fixture and chronicler of the area's vibrant arts scene. He died in 2014 at the age of 95.

Sources consulted:

Aushenker, Michael. "Harry Drinkwater, 1919 – 2014," The Argonaut, December 1, 2014. https://argonautnews.com/harry-drinkwater-1919-2014/

Getty Research Institute. "Modern Art in Los Angeles: Harry Drinkwater Oral History Interview," 2010, The Getty Research Institute Modern Art in Los Angeles and Pacific Standard Time Recordings, 2003-, accession number IA40018.

Acquisition information:
Acquired in 2011.
Physical location:
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Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
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