Tucson before Tucson

Tucson used to be that city from the Beatles' song "Get Back." You know, that city: Jo Jo left his home in Tucson, Arizona / For some California grass. After last Saturday, it became that place where elected officials are nearly assassinated. Well, Sara and I were down there the day before, on Friday. After the trip I hadn't had time to do the post-trip blog, and then Rep. Giffords was shot along with many, many others, which meant that posting about our little day trip so soon after a tragedy was kinda silly.

But after tonight's beautiful and eloquent speech by the president, I think it's OK to say that, yes indeed, we took another trip to Tucson. It was a quick one. For a Christmas gift to me, Sara had made an appointment for us to view some original works at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography, which houses one of the larger archives of famous photographers' works in the country. It's free to view, but reservations are required. So when we celebrated our Christmas she wrapped a box with a note in it. It was pretty cute of her; and it was a terrific and thoughtful gift. The archive is probably most famous for the work of Ansel Adams, who left the bulk of his work — including original negatives — to the university. (The photo up top is one of Adams' most famous shots.)

I could only pick so many collections of work to look at, so I picked two different sets of original LIFE photographer W. Eugene Smith and also Richard Avedon's famous series called The Family, which featured shots of a much-younger Ralph Nader, Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld and a scowling George H.W. Bush, who at the time was running the CIA. It was very cool to see these images in their original forms as printed by Avedon himself. The two goofballs — I say "goofballs" with some affection — who went up into the archives with their matching white gloves and returned to display the photos we picked out were funny guys. One was young and quiet, and he took the verbal abuse from a much older man with a ponytail who talked everyone's ears off.

After Avedon we took a peak at a small fraction of Smith's works, which I enjoyed more than Sara. Smith shot throughout the Pacific during World War II, so his works are mostly battle shots and fatigued soldiers, but later he tackled other subjects in some very famous photo essays. I've always been a fan of Smith's, but to see his original works mounted and captioned (in little typerwritten cards) in his own hands was pretty cool. When we arrived back to Phoenix I jumped on eBay and Amazon to find used copies of his books, which made Sara glare at me: she told me, "You're birthday is right around the corner, jerk!"

After our tour, we jumped back in the car — drove within blocks of what would become a shooting gallery the next day — and headed back home. We were in Tucson for about three hours. What's funny, though, is that this trip's ultimate purpose was to look at photographs, yet we did not take one single photograph during the trip. Weird!