Driving Through the Wilderness

After the Solemn Mass on Lent I, I drove up to Cooperstown, NY, in order to view at long last the Charles Frederic Zabriskie collection at the Fenimore Art Museum. I thought it would be an easy drive and it was, up until I turned off the interstate and began negotiating the small roads that MapQuest had recommended for the final 50 miles. I don’t have much sense of direction on the best of days so I wasn’t surprised when I came to a fork in the road and had no idea which way I should turn. I opted for the westerly direction and was nearly blinded by the late afternoon sun, scarcely helped by a pair of UV4 sunglasses. Luckily there was hardly any traffic but as I drove I did have a strong sense of being in that wilderness that Fr. Harding had spoken of in his sermon that morning. I stopped once to consult the map (to no avail) and realized how utterly quiet and totally forsaken this area seemed under a blanket of snow and a chill factor in the single digits. I had wanted some peace and quiet but this was downright eerie. I felt like I was in one of those Twilight Zone episodes where I was suddenly the last person left on earth. I decided to keep going into the blinding sunset and prayed that I would eventually come to some kind of civilization, which eventually I did, in the form of a very small town with one lonely flashing signal light. This was Cooperstown, not exactly as I had pictured it, but a welcome sight all the same. I seemed to be the only guest at The Cooper Inn that night and after a hearty Italian dinner at Nicoletta’s with a handful of other guests, I settled in to watch the Academy Awards. I was glad they didn’t go on past midnight as they usually do since I wanted to get an early start on the Zabriskie collection. I was a bit puzzled that Crash was awarded Best Picture. It was entertaining and had some good insights, but I think Brokeback should have won.

It was a rather restless night and I had a long strange dream of being held hostage in a department store occupied by terrorists, with people getting killed all around me until I finally managed to stroll out untouched with a faun-like character. I got to the Museum about 9:15 am and had to go through a bit of a process to get in since the Museum was closed officially until April 1, although I had arranged to view the collection with the curator. After entering through the loading dock and passing through security, I met Bev Olmsted, who showed me to a small archive room filled with the Zabriskie collection, which I had to myself for the first couple of hours. Bev was working on another floor and I had forgotten to ask her where the ladies’ room was located, so I had to go out looking for it on my own, unsuccessfully. After the second pass by a room full of museum curators, one of them came out and demanded to know who I was and what I was looking for. I explained and then he wanted to know why I didn’t have a security pass. I had a sense of déjà vu remembering the security guard at the Zabriskie plot, and I looked rather sheepishly at him and said I was just trying to find the ladies room. He took pity on me and pointed the way down to another floor, but after that he must have insisted that I not be left alone since I had company in the archive room for the rest of the day. I wasn’t planning to lift anything, but I did want to take some digital photos, and that was definitely not on. I asked the curator sitting with me and was told that any reproductions would have to be done by their staff. I had to sign a statement that said I would not be using any of the material for mercenary gain after I gave the list of the photos I wanted copied.

It was hard to decide on just a few of them since they were all wonderful. CFZ took about 55,000 photos in all and probably half of them are still waiting to be developed from the original glass plates, which are stored in another location. I spent six hours there that day and went through 30 albums and two drawers full of photos. What a rare sense of beauty he had, each photo so artfully done. There were whole albums full of portraits of his family, friends and Cooperstown neighbors and many photos of the area around their summer home, Glimmerview, on Lake Otsego. I also found a wonderful series of Fr. Ritchie, our second rector, which I am having copied. These are such treasures since we only have one badly deteriorated photo of him in our archives, and I look forward to sharing them with the parish.

CF Zabriskie’s health was likely compromised by his exposure to the chemicals used in developing the glass plates in those early days of photography. He spent long hours in his dark room developing the thousands of photos he took and eventually died of meningitis on April 20, 1914 at the age of 66. But what a vast treasure he left behind. I hope to bring an exhibit of his photos to St. Ignatius some day soon.

As his great-grandaughter, Christiane Hyde Citron, wrote in a summary of the exhibit, call The Joy of Photography, “The Zabriskie photographs show a high degree of sensitivity and esthetic feeling in their composition, together with sophisticated technical craftmanship. … He was particularly adept in his handling of light, and often returned over and over to a particular site because of his fascination with the light. … Many of the Zabriskie images reveal a compelling artistic judgment. There are abstracted shapes in the composition of a scene, and strong drama and emotion in the images. These photographs were clearly intended as more than simple documentation, as fine art.”

Today, March 14, is CFZ’s 158th birthday.