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Tuesday July 21, 2009 Edition
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Celebrating The Essence Of A Vermont Summer & Forty Years Of The Artistry Of Warren Case

Capturing the marriage between the land and the farmers, this photo graced the cover of Vermont Life in the 1950’s.
photo provided
Capturing the marriage between the land and the farmers, this photo graced the cover of Vermont Life in the 1950’s.
The first balloon festival in Vermont held in Quechee, captures the wonder of summer and flight.
photo provided
The first balloon festival in Vermont held in Quechee, captures the wonder of summer and flight.
Warren Case was always ready with camera in hand.
photo provided
Warren Case was always ready with camera in hand.

Tuesday July 21, 2009

By Cookie Steponaitis

    The 1952 Vermont Life Cover proudly bears the heading, “This is a story about a way of life… and the story of life in Vermont.” Adorning the cover is a quintessential summer scene with leaves of varying hues of green hanging suspended in a moment of warm sun in a crowded town square clamoring with life of all ages. Laughter rises, hands are clasped, and berries, flowers and music fill the mind with imagery.  A well known landmark mountain is prominent in the background and the spires of a white church rise in the distance. A postcard image out of time, or is it? What defines a Vermont summer and how do others around the world view us based on an imagery that exports details about life in the Green Mountain State?

    Rod Case cannot remember a time when he was not in a photograph.  He is the second of three children born to photographer Warren Case and his wife Olive. Rod grew up with his father, his camera, and his passion for capturing the Vermont he knew and loved, demonstrating his uncanny ability to craft photos that endure over time and enchant each new generation that sees them. “There must be about sixty postcards around the area,” estimates Rod, “that either have my brother, sister or myself in them. My dad, Warren was a professional photographer and always told us the great photographers never leave home without their camera. So, since the early 1940’s he captured life in Vermont in film. We’d go out with him and he would just stop and say hop into the field, climb the tree, fish in that brook or climb into that barn.”

    Although known to many in the area as one of the classic Vermonters, many are shocked to learn that Warren was actually an import. Born in Baltimore, Maryland and moving to Vermont with his family as a baby, it wasn’t until his death in 1994 that Rod even knew his father was born out of state. “That was one carefully kept secret, I can tell you,” he remarked. “When our mother told us that for dad’s obituary we all just looked at each other in amazement. Dad simply seemed to be as much a part of the fabric of Vermont as the soil and the photographs he took.”  Warren’s family actually has a history of involvement with photography. His father, who was the pharmacist at the Park Drug Store in Middlebury, Vermont, was also a professional photographer. Between the work of his father and grandfather, Rod conservatively puts his total family collection of images at thousands and explains that they not only documented life in Vermont from 1936-1995, but were sold to companies around the world to promote products and Vermont as well.

    When you examine the family scrapbooks of Warren’s career you see the diversity of photograph sales on many Vermont Life, Railroad Life Magazine and Philadelphia Enquirer covers. Magazine advertising and images of maple products for candy boxes are shipped around the world. You also see that Warren specialized in movies and photographs for the Vermont Fish & Game Department, capturing countless images of the arrival of the Canadian Geese and all steps of the reserve in Addison. In 1950, Dupont Color Media purchased several of Warren’s scenery images and they adorned the film boxes of the company around the world for over a decade.

   While Warren’s love of photography began at the hand of his father, Warren was already an established photographer by high school, serving as the photographer for all sporting events and the Yearbook. High school also opened another critical avenue of his life when in his junior year his class went on a trip aboard the Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, where Warren was introduced to another junior from Bristol named Olive. After four years of dating and a “lot of roller-skating,” reminisced Olive, “ the pair was married in Rochester, New York where Warren went to college at Rochester Institute, obtaining a degree in photography. He worked for Dupont and became their lead color lab processor for Holiday Magazine covers, before returning to Vermont and opening his studio over Park Pharmacy where he ran his own business from 1946-1956.

   Warren opened color labs around New England for Dupont and developed film for some of America’s most famous photographers including the staff of National Geographic and Life Magazine. When Warren’s own New England Color Studios opened in Middlebury, the photographers followed him, trusting no one else with their work. He then went to work for Kennedy Brothers in Vergennes, originally as the photographer and retired from there as the vice president shortly before his death.

    While many photographers have a passion for the art, few possess the ability to frame a photograph so beautifully in its complexity that even after forty years it draws you in and challenges you to complete the story of the place and moment in time. In preparation for the interview, both the reporter and the son were involved in a long discussion while deciding what images to choose. Rod chose sixty images of what he felt represented his father’s finest work in recording Vermont at its best. Scenery, covered bridges, animals, friends, young children at play, veterans sharing a story, the passing of a parade, the gentle rain of summer and the arresting beauty of a moose all stop and challenge you to write about the photo reflecting a story about life in Vermont.

    With his camera attached at the hip, Warren was one for the first photographers in the valley to take his craft to the air. Rod’s collection of his father’s work includes over forty years of aerial photography of Addison County and the surrounding area. Each one is a historian’s dream and documents buildings, scenery, and place of the towns we call home. Never one to want his photographs to be compromised, Warren was even able to con his friends including Alfonse Quesnel, Joe Rock, and Frank Churchill to cut holes in the bottom of their planes so that as they flew along, Warren could lie on the floor of the plane and photograph straight down on the towns below. With an uncanny eye and the heart of an artist, he documented the development of the county and the changing faces of the landscape of Vermont and its agricultural use.

      Friends with other local photographers, Warren had a particular running bet with friend and fellow Middlebury photographer John Smith. “When we were growing up,” Rod recalled, “we were always at John’s house or they were always at ours. The two men had a bet which would land a Vermont Life cover first. One Sunday we were driving into John’s driveway and the light caught dad’s eye. He pulled out his camera and documented the sunlight reflecting off of a maple tree in full color in John’s yard. The next week, Dad submitted the photo and Vermont Life bought it on the spot. When he called John to tell him it was a tree from his own yard, John laughed and told him, you got one on me this time, but just wait.” Years later John called Warren to tell him about the perfect spot he had found for a Mt. Mansfield photograph with no obstructions in the shot. Warren simply grinned and dropped off his own photo from the same spot. Warren had found it one week ahead of his friend.

    While some artists intend their craft for a lucrative market, Rod openly shared that for his father it was about the beauty of the picture and his need to share it with others. “Dad never cared if they sold,” remarked Rod. “He wanted people to see them and enjoy them. In fact when dad knew he was dying he planned his funeral. Instead of a solemn occasion, he wanted everyone invited to a party and asked that we fill the funeral home’s many rooms with his work. At his prodding we set the date, set up a full exhibit and planned the open house for his celebration party. Dad died two days later and the celebration was held on his selected date. The funeral home contained no casket, no mourners. It was a celebration of the life and work of Warren Case.”

      If you are passionate about Vermont and love to see photography that has been recognized for over forty years as a vivid documentation about life in this state, stop by Kennedy Brothers in Vergennes, Vermont or contact Rod Case at [email protected]. The text that accompanied Warren’s 1950 spread on Middlebury, Vermont in Vermont Life reflected, “Middlebury is everything a Vermont town should be. Rolling countryside, patchwork of yellow and green, open fields, open hands and a sense of community that defies time.”  Just as what makes Vermont special defies generations, so does the incredible power of the photography of Warren Case. He left us in 1994, but forever documented the heart of the people and environment with a unique integration of present and past, culture and modern, citizen and friend, farmer and animals, and a blending of the various hues of green that make Vermont’s summers so remarkable. The decades and fashions may change, but the essence of Vermont is there for all of us to see and experience, in our own lives and in the luminous photography of a man who loved his home and the towns in which he lived, worked and captured on film for generations to come.


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