main content Stafford Photography Exhibit
As part of the William Stafford Centennial, Lewis & Clark College Special Collections will be sponsoring a retrospective exhibit documenting William Stafford’s life and career. In addition to manuscripts, letters, artifacts, and publications, the exhibit will showcase Stafford’s lesser-known artistic work as a photographer. Between 1966 and 1993, Stafford took more than 16,000 photos— 175 of which will be featured in an interactive touch-screen exhibit in Watzek Library. (Thirty framed prints will be exhibited on the second floor of Miller Center for the Humanities.) The exhibit will open on January 21 and run through August.
Photos courtesy of the Estate of William Stafford and Lewis & Clark College Special Collections. Text by Jeremy Skinner.
Photos courtesy of the Estate of William Stafford and Lewis & Clark College Special Collections. Text by Jeremy Skinner.
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U.S. Poet Laureate (2010–11) W.S. Merwin and poet Carolyn Kizer at the National Council of Teachers of English conference, Rice University, November 1966. -
Richard Hugo, 1971. Although Stafford was a conscientious objector and Hugo was a bomber pilot during World War II, the two Pacific Northwest poets had deep respect for one another. -
Ted Hughes, Washington D.C., spring 1971. One of the greatest poets of his generation, Hughes was an early admirer of Stafford’s poetry. He and Thom Gunn featured Stafford in the Faber & Faber anthology Five American Poets (1963), which introduced Stafford to a British audience. -
Kenny Johnson, June 1988. Johnson was a Lewis & Clark English professor from 1947 to 1978 and one of Stafford’s closest friends. -
Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison at a literature panel for the National Endowment of the Arts, New York, December 1973. -
George Starbuck, 1966. Starbuck was a poet who forged a connection with Stafford after being fired from SUNY Buffalo in 1963 for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. Stafford himself refused to sign a loyalty oath in 1951 after being offered a teaching position at the University of Colorado contingent upon his signature. -
Counterculture icon and author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 1974.
