Terrel Alison Jackson learned to compose, select equipment, and gain technical skills with little assistance from other, more experienced photographers. His introverted ways helped him develop a special awareness of situatedness, presenting his photographic subject with an informed sensibility towards its environment. His method guided how he composed each subject throughout his life, which now seems to me to have been a never-ending series of photographic seasons and sessions. Though disabled to a lesser degree (preventing him from enlisting in the military) my father’s entire photographic collection reflects key times of his life: shooting young female models dressed in casual sportswear on field trips with the local camera club; sneaking into theatre wings with his friend and fellow photographer using questionable “press passes.” Passes which helped them shoot big band orchestras closer and with more action than an audience could experience.

 

Traveling with friends or his employer to Chicago, Mexico City, the Western National parks, using all types of films and all sorts of media, including movie film. Capturing shy pictures of my mother in brilliant Kodachrome or Kodacolor, and later photographing her flowers, our dogs, and me. In the midst of these were the images he shot with his friend, a man I only knew as Mr. Miller, an advertising salesman with El Paso Herald-Post. It is during this time that many of his best images of the city are strangely unpopulated as their photographic journeys happened on Sundays.

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In all, dad’s love of photography reflected his moves from work situations to work situation. His glowing neon image of the Warner Drug Store was his second job after high school. There, he was employed to sell cameras, film, and film processing. Previous to Warner’s, he was a darkroom technician immediately after high school, working for Fredda VonZell at her self-named photo studio. He developed and printed the portraits shown in her studio storefront. Later, his images of the El Paso Drive-In theatre (once located where the Chelsea apartments now stand), and the Texaco station once located at 1401 Texas Street, provide an interesting view of the Franklins, vehicles, and clothing of both his family and the city. The Texaco station was once leased by my grandfather and the men shown working there his in-laws, my grandmother’s relatives enticed to come to work in El Paso, situations that seemed to never work out for them or my grandfather.

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In all, the four images presented for the 2018 5th Annual La Fe International Photography Exhibition reflect an El Paso during the years around the time of World War II. Captured with either a medium format Kodak Medalist camera or a Speed Graphic large format press camera using Kodak black and white films. Each image was no doubt developed by dad, and later were printed by my supervisor James Dean, lead photographer at El Paso Natural Gas Company. It is for his assistance that I am grateful to have had the images available for exhibition here.

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Carolyn Rhea Drapes

August 16, 2018