February 17 - June 13, 2026 (Closed March 14-30)
David Pace loaded his new Brownie Hawkeye camera with a roll of 620 film, peered through the view finder, and pushed the shutter. It was his eighth birthday. Later, he wrote, “I realized from that very first experience that I could speak through images. I became a photographer that day.”
He also became a collector. His childhood photos of family, church, and classroom influenced the collection we began to create many years later: Doisneau’s La Pendule, one of our first purchases, uncannily resembles David’s early work.
Our collection was shaped as well by the wisdom and vision of David’s mentors: Carmel-based photographer Morley Baer advised, “Intensify and transform!” And Morley’s stunning photograph Kiva transformed - and gave intensity - to our collection.
The greatest influence however, was gallerist - and collaborator - Stephen Wirtz. Stephen mentored us as collectors, introducing us to photographers like Michael Kenna whose stark landscapes we loved. Stephen shared with us his collection of World War II prints transmitted by wire from European battlefields to American news outlets, which became the foundation of Images in Transition: Wirephotos 1938-1945. Rephotographing vintage wirephotos to expose artefacts of transmission and evidence of retouching, David and Stephen highlighted, cropped, and enlarged the images. Their goal: to “intensify and transform.”
David taught in ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½’s Department of Art and Art History until 2012. He died in 2020. He would have been delighted to know that photographs from our collection have a home in the de Saisset Museum. And he would have been honored to see his own Hawkeye and Wirephoto images in dialogue with selections from our collection.
-Diane Jonte-Pace, Professor Emerita, Religious Studies, ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½, January 2025
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David Pace and Diane Jonte-Pace, Hawkeye, Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, 2021.
David Pace and Stephen Wirtz, Images in Transition: Wirephotos 1938-1945, Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, 2019.
Pictured: Installation view.