The Big Picture: Rod Rolle

Feb 16

Feb 16 The Big Picture: Rod Rolle

Rod Rolle’s camera has taken him across the country, from his hometown of New York City to precarious KKK rallies in North Carolina, to here on the Central Coast, where he studied photography at the Brooks Institute in the 1980s. His first published photo in the New York Daily News happened almost by accident, when he was stuck in traffic on a bus headed for the unemployment office in Jamaica, Queens. He hopped off the bus, hoping to make it to the office quicker on foot, when he saw the source of the congestion – a large sinkhole had opened in the middle of the street. He snapped a few shots before picking up his unemployment check, then decided to make another stop.

“I went down to the Daily News and asked: ‘Can I talk to the photo editor?’” Rolle said. They brought him to the newsroom, took his film, and a few days later he received a check in the mail for $5. Over the next few decades, Rolle went on to photograph movie stars, athletes and world leaders.

When he moved out to the West Coast, Rolle became fascinated with the Pacific Coast Highway, and on weekends he would grab his camera and take a drive up the highway to explore the state’s soft hills and fertile valleys. It was on one of these drives that Rolle happened upon Guadalupe, a small farming town (technically a city) known as the “Gateway to the Dunes.”

The small community has a population of 7,000, depending on the time of year. It’s the type of town that doubles in population during the growing season, and its charm piqued Rolle’s curiosity. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is really nice,’ and my jaw kind of dropped,” Rolle says. “When I got back from that ride, I was telling all my friends at Brooks about this little place.”

A few years later, in 1988, Rolle was recruited along with Chicano muralist Judy Baca by the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission to document the Guadalupe community and provide reference photographs for a four-part mural that depicted the history, culture and diversity of the city.

Rolle and Baca spent a lot of time in the city from 1988 to 1989, engaging in conversation with its residents and getting a feel for the community. The photographs Rolle captured during the Guadalupe Project are now on display in the Santa Barbara County Administration Building’s Garden Atrium. Sarah York Rubin, the executive director of the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture, said she first met Rolle through his wife, local activist and Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle.

Rubin describes Rolle’s work as that of a conduit rather than a narrator. His photographs capture a moment and allow the viewer to decide for themselves what it means. He cares deeply for his subjects, and that trust is reflected in their willingness to be captured as they are by his lens.

“He has such a deep love of humanity, and that really comes through in his photographs,” she said. The photographs were initially on display at the Betteravia Gallery, but Rubin transferred the exhibit, along with ten additional photographs from the Guadalupe Project, to the county’s atrium gallery this year. The exhibit’s main feature, The Big Picture, is Rolle’s ambitious attempt to gather the entire population of Guadalupe in the city’s main strip for a family-style portrait. Taken just after the fog burned away in the early afternoon of April 29, 1989, Rolle took four 4x5 shots and superimposed them together to create an all-encompassing snapshot of the city. A family crowds around their grandmother in the forefront, while around them, all types of retail workers, line cooks, day laborers and blue-collar folks of every shape, age and race showcase the town’s rich diversity.

Rolle chuckled when he remembered the day of the shoot. Crowding the city’s residents into the street was no easy task. “Holding their attention for ten minutes was kind of difficult,” he said. But getting them to show up was much easier. Rolle and Baca had become part of the city in those few months, and its leaders and residents were more than willing to pitch in and spread the word. “We sent out flyers, talked to the city council and police department. They were real helpful,” Rolle said. Highway 1 was shut down for the photo, as it ran right through the street where the town had gathered.

Other photographs in the exhibition feature the people of Guadalupe, captured in Rolle’s stark black and white, each recognizing a different section of the city: a family of field workers, bandanas wrapped around their necks to protect them from the sun; a welder, peeking out from the shadow of his hood; a group of bakers, surrounded by sheets of fresh pan dulce, the sweet smell almost wafting up through the photo. Each is a reflection of the community, capturing the pulse of a city during a special time in its history.

A lot has changed since the late 80s, but Guadalupe remains much the same. It continues to be a small, blue-collar town with genuine people and a strong work ethic. A place where the names in the cemetery stand testament to a legacy of rail workers, farm workers and tradespeople.

Rubin said Rolle has a way of making space for other people. His talent is to put a moment in the frame and share that moment so that we can see it with him. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s a jazz drummer, sincehe uses his camera in much of the same way, shooting from the hip, letting the subjects be themselves and working around them to make something truthful, powerful and beautiful.