Wells (Annie) Photographs

Children Harvesting Grapes

Scope and Contents

Children pitch in with adults as families harvest grapes in the Sonoma County wine country. They rise at 5am and begin picking at first light. They pick grapes from leafy vines clothing them in obscurity. Cars whiz by and bicyclists pedal by, oblivious to the grape pickers in a sea of vines on a ranch in Santa Rosa, CA.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-11 1989 October 1

Scope and Contents

Griselda Gudina, 11 and Ana Maria Licea, 12 cousins and best friends play tetherball before they begin their morning of grape picking in a Santa Rosa, Ca. vineyard.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-2 1989 October 1

Scope and Contents

Vincente Figueroa, 4, trots after older children as they go out into the vineyards to begin their morning of harvesting.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 1989 October 1

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With the grapevines covering her like a tent, Griselda Guidino, 11, wiggles her 60 pound body to position for reaping the fruit.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-3 1989 October 1

Scope and Contents

Vincente Figueroa, 4, with his grape picking knife. He carries a small bucket around the fields. He is not expected to pick, but his mother gives him 25 cents for every bucket he fills with grapes.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-5 1989 October 1

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Michael Sanchez, 5, right and Vincente Figueroa, 4, are distracted from the grape harvest by a caterpillar.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-6 1989 October 1

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Families gather in the middle of the vines around noon for lunch. A bare piece of wood burns to heat chicken in sauce, eggs scrambled with bacon, corn tortillas and beans.

Box 1

"Children Harvesting Grapes" 4-7 1989 October 1

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Ana Maria Licea, 12, left, and Griselda Guidino, 11, relax after lunch before they go back out into the fields for another several hours of work.

Nutcracker Dreams

Scope and Contents

A behind the scenes look at the Redwood Empire Ballet preparing for their annual presentation of the Nutcracker.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-1 1992

Scope and Contents

Young ballerinas line up at the barre awaiting their turns to audition in the Lincoln Arts Center, home of the Redwood Empire Ballet, 1992.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-2 1992

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Natasha Lopez, 9, who plays a small soldier in the fight scene, receives instruction from staging director Danny Furlong.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-3 1992

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Staging director Danny Furlong watches Kirk Spillane practice his part as the Mouse King.

Package 1

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-4 1992

Scope and Contents

"Nutcracker" ballerina Leslie Nichols, left, discovers that a snowflake costume doesn't fit as Berkelee Lowrey-Evans laughs. In back, Katie Rosenfeld looks for a costume.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-5 1992

Scope and Contents

Danielle Harget tests her wings after finding an angel costume that fits.

Package 1

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-6 1992

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Dancer Alexandria Lopez waits in the costume fitting room with her mothers

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-7 1992

Scope and Contents

Left to right: Berkelee Lowrey-Evans, Cassandra Lopez and Alexandria Lopez wait in the wings and watch Murial Maffree, the Sugar Plum Fairy and a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, before they take the stage. The performances were held at the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts.

Package 1

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-8 1992

Scope and Contents

Muriel Maffree, principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, dances her role as the Sugar Plum Fairy while Katherine Rosenfeld, left and Berkelee Lowrey-Evans watch during a dress rehearsal at the Burbank Center for the Arts.

Package 1

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-9 1992

Scope and Contents

On opening night, Kim Bainbridge fixes her hair while Kirk Spillane, in Mother Ginger makeup, teases her. In back, Mandra Meyers gets ready.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-10 1992

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Issa Joachim, right, makes her entrance during the snow scene while Katherine Rosenfeld dances by on stage during the opening night performance.

Box 2

"Nutcracker Dreams" 1-11 1992

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Nancy Dobbs-Owen performs the part of the Snow Queen on opening night

Quinceañera Celebration

Scope and Contents

Best friends Noemi Mendez and Vicki Huerta celebrate a centuries-old coming-of-age celebration for fifteen-year-old girls.

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-1 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-2 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-5 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-6 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-7 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-8 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-9 1994 December

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-10 1994 December

Scope and Contents

The girl's mothers, Maria Mendez, left and Aurora Huerta sweep up at the end of the night.

Box 3

"Quinceañera Celebration" 3-11 1994 December

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Noemi looks around the barren Sebastopol Veterans Memorial Building at the end of the celebration that was months in the making.

Alliance Medical Center

Scope and Contents

These photos were taken at the request of Alliance Medical Center in Healdsburg, CA for fundraising. Alliance is a community clinic that serves the poor. The majority of their clients are farm laborers and their families.

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-1 1995 January 25

Scope and Contents

Miguel Moreno waits for his family outside Alliance Medical Clinic in Healdsburg, CA

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-2 1995 January 25

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Families wait in the crowded lobby of Alliance Medical Center, Healdsburg, CA

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-3 1995 January 25

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Jose Luis Bermuda, 7, watches as his mother Irene Gonzales has blood drawn.

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-4 1995 January 25

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Staff member Maru Cano holds Penelope Zamora, 5 mos. as Julia Diaz, Medical Assistant talks to Penelope.

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-5 1995 January 25

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Irene Cornona waits for her appointment by the clinic hallway where Physicians Assistant Richard Coshnear reviews patient records.

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-6 1995 January 25

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Irene Corona breathes as Dr. Steve Sheerin listens to her lungs during an exam.

Box 4

"Alliance Medical Clinic" 5-7 1995 January 25

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Herman Solano, 7 mos., looks to his mother Isidra Solano as physician's assistant Richard Coshnear examines him because of a chronic fever and cough

A Death Without Fear

Scope and Contents

Michele Moser, with pancreatic cancer, plans her death and funeral with help from the Natural Death Project.

Package 1

"A Death Without Fear" 2-1 1997

Scope and Contents

Michele Moser receives a Reiki treatment from Janelle Melvin, right and Jerri Lyons, of the Natural Death Project. "If it goes as I've planned, I'll pass over with friends and family touching me. Just special people," says Michele.

Package 1

"A Death Without Fear" 2-2 1997

Scope and Contents

Michele sits in her living room as Janelle Melvin, right, and Jerri Lyons deliver the cardboard box in which Michele will be cremated. Michele, who practices an ancient Egyptian religion, called the box her sarcophagus.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-3 1997

Scope and Contents

Michele hugs Jerri Lyons, goodbye after their first meeting to discuss Michele's funeral.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-4 1997

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Michele sits in her living room as Jerri Lyons, center and Janelle Melvin show her husband Brad Moser a scrapbook of photos from other funerals.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-5 1997

Scope and Contents

Brad Moser, Michele's husband, sits with a scrapbook of funeral. Jerri Lyons and Janelle Melvin give Michele a Reiki treatment.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-6 1997

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Michele plays with her 10-month-old granddaughter, Robin Fettig, several weeks before her death.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-7 1997

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A friend applies makeup to Michele just hours after her death. Husband Brad Moser observed, "Isn't it amazing what happens when you've lost the pain?"

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-8 1997

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In preparation for guests in their home, Brad vacuums his wife's room the afternoon after her death. Michele requested to lie in state in their home and was laid on a bed of ice in her cardboard sarcophagus.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-9 1997

Scope and Contents

To add a light note, friend Sally Raspberry, left, puts glitter on Jerri Lyons' face before Michele memorial service.

Package 1

"A Death Without Fear" 2-10 1997

Scope and Contents

Minister and friend, Barbara Champlain ends the "Celebration of Michele's soul and spirit" by playing a wooden flute. A Multi-denominational memorial ceremony was held in a redwood grove on the Moser's property.

Package 1

"A Death Without Fear" 2-11 1997

Scope and Contents

Michele's body is dressed in a black velvet dress that she chose to be cremated in. She was adorned with rose petals and jewels by friends paying their last respects. Her fingernails, as always, were painted purple.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-12 1997

Scope and Contents

Friends, from left, Jerri Lyons, Janelle Melvin and Anna Macias look on while Brad and Michele's daughter Toni Fettig position her sarcophagus in a van for the ride to the crematorium.

Box 5

"A Death Without Fear" 2-13 1997

Scope and Contents

Jerri Lyons hugs Toni Fettig at the Santa Rosa Memorial park moments after leaving Michele's body in the refrigerated building behind them, The connection was now broken, and this was the first time that Michele's friends, husband and daughter openly wept.

Features and News

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 6-02 1996 February 4

Scope and Contents

Janet Paseka holds onto Santa Rosa, California police officer Sgt. Tim Senkir as rescuers save her daughter Marglyn's life.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 9 1991 November 25

Scope and Contents

Rock impresario Bill Graham's helicopter dangles from a high power transmission tower on the rainy night it crashed along Highway 37 near Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California. Graham, his long-time companion Melissa Gold and pilot Steve Kahn were killed instantly. They were flying from a Huey Lewis and the News concert in Concord, California to Graham's home in Marin County.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 10 1991 November 25

Scope and Contents

Maggie Green holds one of her twins, Laura, 5 months, in front of the children's Bell Tower on the day the memorial was dedicated to the Green's son, Nicholas, in Bodega Bay, California. Nicholas, at the age of 7, was slain by bandits while traveling with his family in Italy in 1994. Nicholas and his family became beloved heroes in Italy and the world when Nicholas' organs were donated and saved the lives of seven Italians.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 11 1993 February

Scope and Contents

At least 30 million discarded tires are heaped in steel-belted mountains across the State of California. These unsightly monuments to Californians' love affair with the automobile pose a growing fire hazard as they pile up in ever-larger numbers. Marino Mendoza is dwarfed by a pile of tires as he tosses old treads to be baled at Chuck Royster's tire dump near Tracy, California. Royster estimates he has six million tires stockpiled there.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 12 1996 February 10

Scope and Contents

Paramedic Rick Smith comforts 5 month-old Christopher, a passenger in the blue car when it crashed into a building in Santa Rosa, California.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 13 1993 December 5

Scope and Contents

After a 66 day search, the body of 12 year old Polly Klass was found in a shallow grave beside Highway 101 in Cloverdale, California. Investigators look underneath the piece of plywood used to cover her body.

Box 6

"News, Sports, Features" 14 1991 March

Scope and Contents

Penngrove, California firefighters carry a man in medical distress from an E Clampus Vitus club initiation rite. E Clampus Vitus is an all male organization founded during the California Gold Rush in 1857. The "Clampers" are known for parties at historical sites where they install plaques. The group in Penngrove to celebrate its history.

Box 6

"Features" 15-2 1996

Scope and Contents

Holly Kyle, 56, left, and Sally Pola, 60, help Flora Randolph, 79, with her hairpiece before practice.

Box 6

"Features" 17 1990

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It's the "Elvis is everywhere at the Sonoma County Fair Photo Opportunity," where dozens of Elvis fans held up--well--Elvisfans. Holding the paper fans-like-masks, the fair audience became a hoard of Elvises.

Box 6

"Features" 19 1994

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Mick Jagger at Oakland Coliseum Arena during the Rolling Stones tour in 1994.

Box 7

"Features" 20 1988

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Marilyn Laubhan leads her arthritis water exercise class through a full range of motions at the Greeley, Colorado recreation center pool.

Box 7

"Features" 21 1992

Scope and Contents

Peter Rowinsky, 18, said, "There's a single quote from Emerson, 'Whosoever would be a man must be a nonconformist.' That's really the core of my life."

Box 7

"Features" 22 undated

Scope and Contents

Elaine Parkington and her daughter Cali, 15, under a bridge in Santa Rosa, California where they used to live. "My mom is everybody's mother," says Cali. "She's given away her own blankets to keep somebody else's kid warm."

Box 7

"Features" 23 1990

Scope and Contents

Edmond Cooper, top, and Ashley Blade work on their ballet moves while practising in the main auditorium for the first performance in the new Dorothy Rohnert Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park, California.

Box 7

"Features" 24 1988

Scope and Contents

Brad Payton, right was hired as director at Ellipse Care Center in Redwood City, California. The only nursing home in the state for people with AIDS.

The sun was hot, the air cool and the sky clear blue. It was a day when Californians are certain that there is no other place on earth they would want to live. Brad was tired of doing paper work again. Everyone was napping or content and it was time to do something that he had put off for awhile. Michael had died two weeks before. Brad needed to go through the belongings Michael's family had left behind. Brad went to the back to the nursing home and emptied the contents of a plastic garbage bag on the floor. He knelt among clothes, a briefcase, photographs, a painting and some stuffed animals. This was Brad's time to say goodbye to Michael. He slowly and carefully separated the things they could use at Ellipse. He packed the rest into a tattered suitcase to throw away. The back door opened and flooded Brad with warm sunshine and cool air as nursing assistants wheeled James through the door. James had been in the yard enjoying the day. In two weeks, James would be dead and once again Brad would have to find a way to say good-bye.

Box 7

"Features" 25 1990 March

Scope and Contents

Andy Azevedo, 17, rests with his girlfriend Alex Porrata after receiving chemotherapy at a hospital in Santa Rosa, California. In the background his mother Marilyn, left, aunt Maureen Rouager and sister Cheryl Azavedo keep a vigil in his room. Andy died on June 20, 1991.

Box 7

"Sports" 26 1994 July 10

Scope and Contents

Sweden goalie Thomas Ravelli dives to make a save on the first penalty shot by romania during Sweden's victory in the World cup quarterfinals at Stanford Stadium, Palo Alto, California.

Box 7

"Sports" 27 1992 April 24

Scope and Contents

The Golden State Warriors' Chris Mullin, center gets caught in a tangle of arms with Seattle Supersonics' Tony Brown, left, and Gary Payton. Mullin came away with the ball in a win in the second game of a playoff series.

Box 7

Unidentified photograph of ostrich undated

map-case C-3, Folder 2

"Swimmers" undated

Scope and Contents

Includes two posters

map-case C-3, Folder 3

"Russian River Rescue" 1997