Poetry
A Dangerous Thing
By Ruth-Marion Baruch
Widely known as an important twentieth century American photographer, Ruth-Marion Baruch also turned her remarkable eye inward to explore through her poetry the depths of human suffering. Her poems, written for the most part in the 1950s and 60s, have remained unpublished until now. This collection, under the title poem, A Dangerous Thing, gives voice to this powerful, at times awesome, figure.
Meanwhile what is to be done poetically? Ruth-Marion’s strategy is intense verbal condensation in which contrary feelings are simultaneously expressed and denied. Hers is an honest alternative to the easy sentimentality of half-truths. In view of the prevailing darkness of her visions, it is remarkable how life-affirming her clear and forthright declarations are….
—Mark Linenthal
Photographer and poet Ruth-Marion Baruch was born on June 15, 1922 in Berlin, Germany. She is believed to have received the first Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Ohio University in 1945, writing her thesis on Edward Weston. She attended the first class at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, devoted to photography, where she also met her future husband, the photographer Pirkle Jones. She studied with Ansel Adams, Minor White, Homer Page and Edward Weston. Her photographs have been exhibited around the U.S., in places such as the De Young Museum, San Francisco; the Lost Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas.
Cover photograph:
Birds, San Francisco
© 1953 Ruth-Marion Baruch
Back Cover:
Ruth-Marion Baruch, Tadich's Grill, San Francisco
© 1955 Pirkle Jones
Frontispiece:
Ruth-Marion Baruch, Carmel, 1945
by Edward Weston
© 1981Center for Creative Photography,
Arizona Board of Regents, reproduced with special permission of Cole Weston
2002 55 pages $15.00 ISBN 0-942996-41-0
