If anyone was ever born to be a photographer, it was Rondal Partridge, whose name you’ve likely never heard, but you likely know his mother, the legendary photographer Imogen Cunningham. Partridge’s father was the printmaker Roi George , and their family friends included the likes of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. When Rondal was 4 years old, he began spending significant time with Lange and her husband, the painter Maynard Dixon, and began assisting his mother in her darkroom from age 5. He hit the road at 16 with Dorothea Lange when she was hired by the Resettlement Administration, a Federal agency created to study rural poverty as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1934/5, in the depths of the Depression, Lange made her career with these legendary photographs, and was paid $4/day by the agency. As her assistant/driver, Rondal was paid $1/day, and often camped while Lange slept in motels.From 1937-39, Rondal worked as an assistant to Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park, and was in charge of Adams’ ‘automatic darkroom’ that produced prints for sale to tourists. In the Spring of 1940, Partridge was commissioned by the National Youth Administration (NYA) (another New Deal Federal agency) to study youth culture and youth unemployment in California. Partridge traveled from Berkeley to Los Angeles, photographing high school students and other young people, and his work reflects his time studying under Dorothea Lange, with its poignant social concern, and some of her artistry.That Spring, he happened upon a motorcycle hillclimb event in Santa Clara, CA, which is now the heart of Silicon Valley, but then was simply another agricultural valley in a state known for its many fertile regions (many of which have been similarly paved over). Today the Santa Clara valley is teeming with suburban housing developments and the campuses of the tech industry, although a few notable wineries dot the surrounding hills, especially in the southern part of the valley.Partridge followed his NYA commission with a stint at the Black Star photographic service, and during WW2 he served as a photographer for the US Navy. Postwar, Partridge worked as a freelance photographer, writing and lecturing on photography and film for universities. He returned to photograph the Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, notably contrasting the development and automotive traffic against Adams’ natural splendor, in a famous series published as ‘Pave It and Paint It Green’, which was also made into a film.This chance series of photos capture an amazing and long-lost era of California history and amateur sporting competition. Hill Climbing was an incredibly popular professional sport in the late 1920s, as the ‘Big 3’ battled it out for supremacy in ‘vertical drag racing’, but the Depression put a lid on motorsports, which led the AMA to create Class C racing in 1934, which specified only catalogued racing machines were eligible for sanctioned racing events. This killed the era of highly developed factory specials (OHV, alcohol-burning v-twins from H-D, Indian, and Excelsior), but popularized motorcycle racing to a much broader audience, like as this photo series demonstrates. It was Everyman racing, on every sort of machine, and looks like tremendous fun.
Great article and photographs. I enjoy The Vintagent.
absolutely
Pretty well off hill climbers to have new Harleys and really neat leather jackets. I guess, by 1940, things were picking up, economically.
By 1938 the GDP had returned to 1929 levels, although it took till ‘41 for unemployment to equal pre-Crash levels. That’s 9 years! So by 1940 I guess some folks had jobs…and the new jackets and Harley reflect it. They probably came from San Francisco, it’s about 40 miles north of Santa Clara, and wasn’t hit quite as hard as other cities…
Makes me wonder what thrills and spills my ’26 Scout went through before being repurposed as an AHRMA road racer. Thanks for the great pictures and reflections on a different time.
Thank you. They were great shots and excellent write up
agreed
I enjoy the vintagent immensely………. really good stuff…….. keep up the good work