Load right, aim sharp, and shoot well. The satisfaction of good
pictures will be your reward. - Brownie Hawkeye Instruction Manual,
1959.
This is the first picture I took in my life. Roll 1. Frame 1. The
Hawkeye has a fixed focus lens and no F-stops so I can't take credit for
the exposure. But I'm proud of the composition. I realized from that
very first experience that I could speak though images. I became a
photographer that day. - David Pace, 2020, sixty years after taking his
first photograph at age eight.
This rich archive of Brownie Hawkeye photographs tells both a personal
and a cultural story. The photographer, David Pace, just eight years old
when the first photographs were taken in 1959, captured family life at
church, at home, at school, and at work in post-war America. Without
consciously intending to construct a narrative of cultural change, the
young photographer recorded the decline of an agricultural economy and
the expansion of a new economy of consumer products, in which
subdivisions replaced cherry orchards, and car dealerships replaced
walnut trees. The photographs capture an important moment in the
pre-history of one of America's most iconic locations: Sunnyvale,
California, the heart of what we now call Silicon Valley. The
neighborhood where David photographed family and friends with the
Brownie Hawkeye is now the site of technology giants Apple, LinkedIn,
Google, and Nokia. The young photographer, with his ability to "speak
through images," left us a set of powerful Hawkeye photographs that
narrate a story of the origin and history of Silicon Valley. - Diane
Jonte-Pace, 2021.
