Quizzical Eye. The Photography of Rondal Partridge

Son of the renowned photographer Imogen Cunningham, Rondal began helping his mother with her work at the age of five. At seventeen he became Dorothea Lange's apprentice, and in the late 1930s he began working for Ansel Adams. Intimately associated with the great photographers of his time, Partridge has absorbed all the techniques his famous teachers could give him, yet he wears this professional lineage lightly, dedicating himself to following the paths down which his own strange genius leads him.

Quizzical Eye: The Photography of Rondal Partridge is filled with breathtakingly intimate portraits, devastating environmental statements, compositional wonders, and telling moments from six decades of American history--the essential works of a man who has dedicated his long life to capturing single moments on film.

Elizabeth Partridge (daughter of Rondal Patridge) is the author of Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange and This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie.

Sally Stein teaches art history and visual studies at the University of California, Irvine, and writes about the history of photography in the United States. She is currently at work on her fourth book, a volume of essays on Dorothea Lange.