Stephen H. Willard - Pursuit of the Purple Shadow

Biography of the California artist Stephen Hallet Willard (1894 - 1966) which illustrates his life and his work in Gelatin Silver Photograph, Textured Screen Prints, Hand-Tinted Photographs, and his unique Photo Paintings. Willard's work in the 1920's and 1930's helped in the establishment of the Death Valley National Monument by President Hoover in 1933, The Joshua Tree National Monument in 1936, and The Kings Canyon National Park in 1940. He was a prolific creator of black and white Real Photo Postcards which he printed himself, as well as becoming one of the most successful contributors of images to the Curt Teich Company in Chicago, who was one of the largest producer of photo-mechanically colored postcards in the world. The promotion of Palm Springs through Curt Teich's colored postcards helped to popularize Palm Springs to a national audience. His unique work in Photo Painting developed through his experimental mixing of the medium of a grayscale photo enlargement with both tran