Nata Piaskowski, Photographer
Bill Schenley
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/28/BAG028FSOB1.DTL
(w/photo)
Nata Piaskowski, a noted San Francisco photographer whose work was
influenced by friends including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor
White and Imogen Cunningham, died Aug. 19 at the Jewish Home for the
Aged in San Francisco.
She was 92 years old.
Her photographs are held in museums throughout the United States,
including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York and the National Portrait Gallery in
Washington, D.C.
Ms. Piaskowski, described by friends as an exacting artist and
inquisitive, gentle spirit, had a life touched by tragedy but
brightened by creativity. Her mother and father died in the Warsaw
ghetto at the hands of the Nazis. Ms. Piaskowski, born and educated in
Lodz, Poland, was living in Switzerland at the start of the war and in
1942 immigrated to the United States with her husband. Not long after
their arrival, her husband committed suicide.
The brightness came to Ms. Piaskowski through art. Living in Carmel,
Ms. Piaskowski met Weston and Johan Hagemeyer and became involved in
the town's artistically progressive community. In 1947, she moved to
San Francisco with painter Martin Baer, her partner until his death in
1961. The two had a great love and a lively circle of friends that
spanned from the Bohemians to the Beats.
She did portraits of photographers including Weston, painters
including Gordon Onslow-Ford and poets including Robert Duncan. She
was a regular at seminal literary events including Allen Ginsberg's
first reading of "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco.
"I met Nata in 1968 at Tassajara Zen Center," south of Carmel, painter
Vesta Kirby recalled. "She was a tiny thing, under 5 feet tall,
carrying her large camera and tripod. She just had an incredible eye."
Although Ms. Piaskowski had long dabbled in photography, her career
began in earnest in 1948 when she studied with White, known for his
textural photographs, at the esteemed California School of Fine Arts
in San Francisco. The school's guest lecturers included Adams,
Cunningham and Dorothea Lange.
"Her compositions were magnificent," said Robert Emory Johnson, an
artist who curated Ms. Piaskowski's last major show at the Schneider
Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon. The retrospective included black and
white images from 1948 to 1992 and ranged from a painterly still life
to an ethereal picture titled "Rock and Sea."
"She was very intelligent and very sensitive in her choice of music
and poetry and was always encouraging other artists," Johnson said.
"She was a deep and serious artist throughout her life."
Judy North, a painter who lives in Marin, met Ms. Piaskowski in 1957.
"She and Martin lived on Polk Street and often went to the Foster's
cafeteria across the street," North said. "I was standing in line and
we struck up a conversation. I just fell in love with her at first
sight. I could see the depth of her heart and soul."
North laughed recalling Ms. Piaskowski's exacting ways.
"She labored over every photograph, over the cropping, the color, the
cropping, the color. She was really tough. She drove the dark room
people crazy."
Her precision was matched by her loyalty and compassion, North added.
When Baer was in the hospital and nearing the end of his life, Ms.
Piaskowski "willed him to keep living."
"She wouldn't let him eat a single meal of hospital food while in the
hospital," North said. "She brought him his meals three times a day.
This was before organic food became what it is today. She was into
whole grains, vegetables, healthy living. She walked everywhere she
went."
Even in her late eighties and early nineties, Ms. Piaskowski wanted to
talk about photography and art. In 1992, she had a major show at
Skyline College in San Bruno with celebrated San Francisco
photographer Ruth Bernhard.
A memorial of her work will be exhibited in September at the Davis &
Cline Gallery in Ashland, Oregon.
Friends say Ms. Piaskowski's wish was to be cremated. She asked that
her ashes be laid next to her partner, Baer, and scattered at sea.
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See:
http://www.davisandcline.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=331