Few would dispute that John Fielder is Colorado’s best-known photographer today, quite possibly ever. For nearly half a century, his numerous books, calendars, prints and exhibitions have opened millions of eyes to the glorious grandeur and beauty of the state, offering glimpses of some of Colorado’s most stunning, and often nearly inaccessible, locations in both the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains.
The breadth and quality of Fielder’s massive oeuvre of landscape photography came into sharp focus in recent weeks, with his announcement that more than 5,000 of his photos (out of a total of 200,000) are being donated to History Colorado, the state’s historical archive, where they are to be digitized and exhibited as part of its permanent collection.
At 72, the Washington, DC native and Coloradoan since the 1960s says that the Colorado wilderness has not seen the last of him or his camera. He intends to keep searching for the ideal places and moments for his award-winning photographs, but acknowledges that the pace and exertion of his efforts might have to be somewhat lessened.
His donation of his life’s work to History Colorado, therefore, is less a swansong than a retrospective of a passion that began as an avocation and quickly became a vocation.
Earlier this month, Fielder — who has long been a generous contributor to this newspaper — engaged in an interview with the Intermountain Jewish News in which he discussed his love for Colorado as expressed through his art, his concerns about how climate change and population growth are affecting its unique beauty, the impact of his own work upon that growth and the spiritual dimensions of nature.
More than once, Fielder brought up Colorado 1870-2000, his three-volume project in which he followed the footsteps, as close as he possibly could, of William Henry Jackson, a 19th century pioneer photographer who was among the very first individuals to direct a camera at Colorado landscapes.
He also contributed five photographs, among his own favorites, and explained why each of them is meaningful to him.
IJN: The donation of your life’s work in photography to History Colorado is a very generous gift to the people of Colorado. What motivated you?
Fielder: I have never really felt that I own my photos permanently. I mean, it’s been nice to have these images in order to make books, calendars, and fine art prints but it’s become clear to me that there may be a better purpose for the images, which is why Idecided is to allow commercial and personal use on a relatively unlimited basis, as a way to make the world a better place, more than just me selling photos.
How do you feel about the public reaction to the donation?
It’s been heartwarming. I’ve heard from hundreds of people. Friends, old acquaintances, people that I don’t know, pat me on the back. I wasn’t expecting that, and it just convinces me that it was the appropriate thing to do, for two reasons.
Number one, I think it’ll be fun for people who couldn’t have done what I’ve done, with a couple of strong legs, to see the most remote parts of what I think is the most beautiful place on earth, Colorado.
Secondly, given the exponential speed of global warming, that I do what William Henry Jackson did for me 24 years ago — to create a perspective between then and now by encouraging people during that project to extrapolate by drawing a line from 1870 to 2000.
I want to extend that to wherever — 2050, 2100 — and ask them if they’re happy with what they think things might look like at the end of that line. If not, what are they going do about it?
How felicitous is it that I’m in a position now, much like Jackson was, having photographed the whole state, to create a new point on the graph, to draw the line from the late 20th and early 21st century through whichever point somebody else might observe, perhaps to a point even further into the future, to photograph the condition of the planet?
Given how much we’ve learned about global warming in the last 20 years, we have to ask ourselves if we are happy and, if not, what are we going to do about it to change our lifestyles in order to slow it down.
How did you feel about following in Jackson’s footsteps? Did you feel some sort of connection to this 19th century photographer?
Yes. It was a remarkable time, being at least seven years removed from him. He died in 1942, I was born in 1950, so we lived a generation apart. To get to know somebody by looking at 22,000 glass plate collodion negatives and contact prints, to read his journals and get to know him, was a remarkable experience.
Elaborate on the idea that, let’s say, 75 or 100 years from now, a photographer aspires to follow in your footsteps in Colorado. What do you think that person might see and what advice would you give?
Well, I know what they’re going to see; some of that extrapolation is already possible. In the last 20 years, we’ve lost millions of acres of forest around the planet, and here in Colorado, due to climate change and the attack of insects on trees and forests. We’ve lost ice and snow in the form of glaciers.
The weather has changed to become more unpredictable and capricious and violent, so the curve isn’t optimistic.
Be that as it may, it’s all about slowing it down. I want to give my grandkids — I’ve got six now — an opportunity to enjoy some of the life that I was able to enjoy: biodiversity, beauty, sublimity and the humility from having something bigger than you are, which is nature.
I’m sensing in what you’re saying a certain sadness, in that the beauty you record might not be there tomorrow, echoing perhaps John Denver’s lyrics, “more people, more scars upon the land,” and the possibility that Colorado’s beauty might be fading away.
I don’t want to scare the children, but it’s not difficult to see where this is going.
On the other hand, the urgency that it creates is beautiful and sublime all by itself, and I’m counting on my fellow humans to do something about it, just like I’ve done something about it by donating my photos to History Colorado.
Since you brought up John Denver, I’ll be presumptuous and say that he has been criticized somewhat for bringing more people to Colorado than we probably need, and so have I , with the manifestation and distribution of my photos.
But an important part of this solution is that a John Denver song or a John Fielder photo on a book do not inspire advocacy on the part of a person to write a letter to their local newspaper, to contact their local, state, or federal representative or senator and urge wise things be done to make the change. That is usually done most effectively via laws to make the world a better place.
It takes being outdoors. Not only seeing, like I’m seeing, out of my window right now, a 10-foot snowpack on the Gore Range to my west, but smelling the decaying aspen leaves in October, that pungent aroma touching the white dust on the bark of aspen trees; hearing the trickle of a creek, melting from the snow; tasting that steely color of the snow.
Unless one appreciates the complete sensuousness of nature, you’re never really going to be an advocate.
So getting people outdoors is critical, and the more the merrier. After that, all you have to do is manage the number of people, which is what we’re supposed to be doing with the laws we have in this country, and give our land managers at the federal, state, and local levels the budgets they need to keep a certain number of people in or out of a given ecosystem.
You say that Colorado is the most beautiful place on earth. Is that what made Colorado the central feature of your career in photography?
I have learned over my lifetime that I’m an alpine guy, that my favorite ecosystem on earth, whether it’s in Colorado, the American West or around the world, is to be above the trees, where the views are infinite, where the flowers and meadows become the reflections of mountain peaks.
I was brought here in 1964 by my middle school science teacher, along with six other middle school kids, on a field trip for five weeks, visiting archaeological, biological, geological and paleontological places on a 6,000 mile journey to Colorado and Canada.
I’ll never forget the day I saw Long’s Peak from Rocky Mountain National Park.
I told Mrs. Hickman, my teacher, at age 14, that I was going to live here someday. And I pulled that off.
What’s the first photograph you ever took?
I had a Brownie Hawkeye camera that used 120 black and white roll film when I was growing up in the Connecticut countryside. I remember photographing bucolic deciduous tree scenes in my neighborhood in the late fifties.
The first Colorado photo I ever took was in the summer of 1967. My Uncle Fred got me a job working on a quarter horse cattle ranch in the Wet Mountain Valley, near Westcliffe. I had a 35 mm rangefinder camera and one of my first photos was of Crestone Peak and Needle, the fourteeners, reflecting in a pond on the ranch.
What would you hope to be your last photograph?
A mountain reflection in a pond, somewhere that I’ve never seen before, which is my favorite kind of photo and my favorite kind of place.
Actually, that’s a leading answer because that’s exactly what I’ve done the last two years. Not far from where I live in the Gore Range, even after exploring what I thought was almost the entire mountain range, believe it or not, I’ve been able to find a couple of new places that have turned out to be the best reflection photos I’ve ever done.
Has the physical intensity, and perhaps even the danger, of your work in the wilderness — the hiking, climbing, skiing and camping — taken a toll?
Yes. I’ve got two titanium knees and a titanium cobalt hip, but that only kept me out of action for a couple of years. I was able to substitute a book called Ranches of Colorado for another book about lottery lands we protected in Colorado, which didn’t require the physicality of the other photographs. So I never really missed a beat.
As it turned out, my joint replacements were perfectly done and didn’t really restrict me once I recovered.
But the hard part was what Mother Nature threw at me over 50 years — the unexpected. Even though I’ve never come close to death in the wilderness, I have had to rescue myself over 100 times. Most recently, for example, in 2020, I had to out-ski an avalanche for the first time in 30 years. And in 2019, a bear attacked one of my llamas one night. I didn’t find it for nine days, almost dead. I had to carry 125 pounds out on my back. I mean, it goes on and on — my river raft flipping, vehicles getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.
I’ve had to be a problem solver and so far I’ve been able to do that without death staring me in the face.
Was it all worth it?
[Laughter] Yes, it was worth it. Oh yeah.
I can say that in retrospect what I’ve been able to enjoy has been worth the trauma. All it took was a steak dinner, a pat on the back from my late wife and my kids and a week off to forget the episode and get back out on the trail.
You have spoken of trying to find the “perfect” moment in which to capture something on camera. How difficult is this to achieve? Why is it so important?
Perfect moment maybe isn’t the best way to say it. I’ve been accused of trying to candy-coat nature and make it look better. Do you remember the columnist Ed Quillen? He was a facetious, cynical guy, and in one of his editorials he called my calendars, which I’ve done now for 41 years, “John Fielder’s great place of the month calendars,” because I was making things look so perfect.
Actually, it’s been an evolution. At first, that’s your goal, because you don’t know any better than to make nature look as good as it possibly can. But nature is not perfect, and I don’t judge nature by good, bad, beautiful, boring, because it’s none of those. It is what it is.
It’s the situation that we find ourselves in and I’ll take whatever it gives me. I’ll find a way to do that based on my knowledge of light and how that works best with cameras and how to get to the right place at the right time and make a good composition.
Nature is where we exist. How lucky are we, whether in our mind’s eye it’s pretty or not, to be a sentient being on a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a universe and — although this may go against the Jewish faith and every other religion — in a multiverse where everything is infinite.
There may be no answer to how, why, where, when or whatever, but how lucky are we to exist?
Is there a spiritual dimension to your art, a desire to capture the wonder of creation, or perhaps even the presence of G-d, in a place as beautiful as Colorado?
One thing I’ve learned after 72 years is not to be presumptuous about anything. I keep learning new things — what my limits are, what my limits aren’t, how sublime nature is, how well I can capture an image of that.
Boundaries are anathema. When you create boundaries for whatever, including these mystical thought processes we’re discussing, you limit your ability to enjoy your time on earth.
Whether it’s in regard to faith in a traditional sense or quantum physics in a scientific sense, I recognize no boundaries and I desire none to ever restrict my freedom to think.