Photographer Judy Dater's archive acquired by UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library

The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, has acquired the archive of photographer Judy Dater, preserving a career that spans more than half a century. The collection includes letters, diaries, drawings, books, and photographs that trace Dater's development from a child in Hollywood to a central figure in West Coast photography.

Dater's early exposure to film came through her father's movie theater, where she developed a fascination with black-and-white imagery. She studied art at UCLA and San Francisco State University, where she took her first photography class in her senior year and immediately recognized it as her life's pursuit.

While a student in San Francisco, Dater encountered leading photographers including Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, Minor White, and Imogen Cunningham. The archive holds correspondence from Adams and Weston, the latter of whom once enclosed a pine twig in a letter. Adams hosted students for cocktails and darkroom demonstrations, ringing a brass gong to signal the evening's end.

A chance meeting with Imogen Cunningham at Big Sur Hot Springs in the early 1970s began a mentorship and friendship. In 1974, Dater created her best-known photograph, "Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite," depicting the 90-year-old Cunningham peering around a redwood tree at the nude model Twinka Thiebaud, daughter of painter Wayne Thiebaud. The image became the first full-frontal nude published in Life magazine in 1976.

Curator Christine Hult-Lewis notes the photograph references Thomas Hart Benton's painting "Persephone" but replaces the male gaze with a shared moment between women. Art historian Lauren Kroiz describes it as a playful intervention in feminist photographic history. Dater has said the image speaks to women's connection across generations.

The archive reveals Dater's working method through complete series from portrait sessions, showing alternate takes alongside final images. Her subjects have included writers Maxine Hong Kingston and Wole Soyinka, historian Leon Litwack, and, in a recent project, Bay Area residents posing with firearms accompanied by their written narratives.

Dater describes her 1972 Deardorff field camera as part of a "trust machine" that helps build rapport with subjects. She emphasizes listening and directing as essential to portraiture, aiming to capture something deeper than surface appearance. Hult-Lewis characterizes the results as looking "into their soul."

Dater is currently photographing Black luminaries including former UC Berkeley vice chancellor Russ Ellis, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., artist Mildred Howard, and philosopher Cornel West. This series will join the archive upon completion. The collection will be open to researchers after processing, which may take several years.