Through the Lens of Barry Goldwater

This exhibition features prints made from Arizona Senator Barry M. Goldwater’s spectacular color slide collection, which in 1993 was generously donated to the Heard Museum by Senator Goldwater. This extraordinary and rare collection comprises nearly 1000 color slides and contains some of the earliest color landscape photographs of the Navajo and Hopi tribal lands, the state of Arizona, and geographical areas that have long disappeared since the creation of Lake Powell. Using primarily Kodachrome film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935, Goldwater adopted the new technology and photographed and developed color slides for his personal pleasure as well as for lectures and publications. Visitors will travel along with a young Barry Goldwater and share in his wonder at the Grand Canyon during a sunlit snowfall and the power of a rainstorm over Monument Valley.

Also included is a rare showing of computer artist Robert Silvers’ photomosaic portrait of Barry Goldwater. Silvers utilized nearly a thousand of Goldwater’s images from the Heard Museum’s Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives collection to create a nearly life-sized image. These photographic memories underlie the rich life of Barry Goldwater as observer and adventurer and come together to let us marvel in the magic of this 21st-century art form.