The DREAM WORLDS of Arthur Tress: A Journey in Film and Photography

Arthur Tress is one of the leading artists in the landscape of postwar American photography. His extraordinary photographs, 2 million over more than six decades, are in the Cantor Art Museum collection, and both the De Young Museum and the Getty Collection have featured critically acclaimed major retrospective exhibits.  Now a spry 85, Arthur’s body of work encompasses and spans poverty in Appalachia, Southern Sharecroppers, San Francisco in the 1960s, Civil Rights, Urban Environmental issues and Gay Rights, evolving into magical realism/social surrealism exploring fantastical provocative dreamscapes as he continues his evocative portraits of nature along the California coast and haunting images of urban landscapes. In 2019, the Stanford Libraries acquired Arthur’s archive as part of the launch of their new Photography Initiative. 

Arthur’s 1970 landmark series Open Space in the Inner City: Ecology and the Urban Environment established him as a pioneer of urban environmental and environmental justice photography. His 1972 book, The Dream Collector, a haunting exploration of children’s dreams, established him as a master photo artist with a unique vision.

Photography is my way of defining the confusing world that rushes constantly at me. Where are the photographs we can pray to, that will make us well again, or scare the hell out of us?

Arthur Tress

The kaleidoscopic artistry of Arthur Tress is a creative universe unto itself – documentary works, haunting portraits, personal narrative expressions, his own fables and fairy tales. There is Arthur Tress of the big city, submerged in the New York school of photography and the eccentric portraits he makes for magazines. There is Arthur Tress running from the Vietnam War, instead doing sociological photography in Japan, Mexico and China – the power of ritual. There is the artist fearlessly documenting and exploring his life as a Gay man. Then there’s Arthur Tress of the West Coast, who spent 25 years living in Cambria and now resides in San Francisco, taking daily photographic trips to nearby towns or capturing The Life Cycle of The Orange Rubber Traffic Cone, as one of his recent photo books is titled.

The evening will consist of the Stanford Premiere of the acclaimed film, Arthur Tress: Water’s Edge, an intimate journey as Arthur grapples with relationships, legacy, the aging process, and loneliness all while continuing to develop his photographic art within the hidden, desolate, and decaying corners of California.

A conversation and Q & A with the audience and Stanford Professor Richard Meyer, Arthur Tress and the filmmaker, Stephen Lewis, will follow the screening.

This special event is presented by the Bill Lane Center for the American West & Planet Earth Arts @Stanford and Co-Sponsored by: Stanford Departments of African & African American Studies, Art & Art History, Communication & Sociology, Doerr School of Sustainability, Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford Humanities Center, American Studies, Continuing Studies, Urban Studies, Stanford Libraries, Institute for Diversity in the Arts and Taube Center for Jewish Studies..

For more information about Arthur Tress, please visit here.