Kinsey Photographer
 Produced by Dave Bohn & Rodolfo Petschek
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 1995 Black Dog & Leventhal Pub.
  ISBN: 1884822223

The photographs of Darius Kinsey, taken at the turn of the century, provide a vivid record of the settling of the Pacific Northwest. With his wife Tabitha, usually found having fun or in the dark room, Kinsey captured the beauty of the landscape & the grit of its pioneers.

In this over size tome, Rodolfo Petschek & Dave Bohn have culled from Kinsey's 4,500 extant negatives, a magnificent collection of duotone photographs. Together with memorabilia of this loving couple's marriage & contributions by their children this is one amazing family album.

There are humorously posed scenes of the life & times of the Kinsey tribe complete with grandparents in pioneer garb; a set of Tabitha & friends in what was probably the ancestor of the dollar booth snapshots; huge forest stills of oxen hauling original growth logs; of loggers & their mechanical donkey; several of the great Cedar Stump turned into a home & ladies in pantaloons with their gents scaling snowy cliffs on Mount Baker.

It's emotional perusing those clear & sharp images of original growth cedars which, quite simply, dwarfed husky loggers & their families. The legends of Paul Bunyan echo down the decades. Emotional knowing how very, very few of these immense ancient trees are now left less than a century later.

In a couple of plates it comes as a surprise to see figures of men on railroad trestles - they are so small & the logs so large. Being a train child I loved the Sauk River Lumber Company engines so spanking new & shiny! Darius Kinsey did not shy away from danger either - there are some perilous shots of rivers in flood & moving a mechanical donkey down a steep slope. From the stories our Poppa tells of his time in the woods some 50 years after these photos were developed, I know how intensely dangerous was the work in the forest.

Balanced with all of that are group poses by camp kitchen crews; homesteaders' cabins in clearings, surrounded by a high fence & higher trees, thrusting back the undergrowth; an old homesteader's cedar cabin built beneath the trees, surrounded by the profuse forest flora, disturbing little.

Throughout this wonderful book there are writings from appreciative camp bosses; observations by people interviewed who had known the Kinseys; double page spreads of the Kinsey Photographer's advertisements; reproductions of pages from newspapers & a lively history of Darius & Tabitha's life & times. I love one ad: OUR ONE DESIRE IS TO PLEASE If you are Pleased tell Your Friends; If You are not, tell Kinsey, Sedro-Woolly, Wash..

Definitely a gift for the giving season - to scan & return to hour after hour indoors, beside a warm bright fire that burns the wood that comes from the forest into which Darius & Tabitha Kinsey ventured so long ago.

Rodolfo Petscheck is a photographer & author who has done extensive color photography of the Grand Canyon as a boatman rowing a dory of his own design & manufacture.

Dave Bohn is a photographer, writer & teacher whose books include: Glacier Bay, Backcountry Journal & Rambles Through an Alaskan Wild.
(10/17/99)

Rebecca