Roger Laell Minick (born July 13, 1944) 

The “Sightseer” images were first exhibited at the Grapestake Gallery in San Francisco in 1981 . Minick’s photo project on the rural Ozark Mountains of Arkansas begun in 1969, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972. 

“In 1984, Minick entered the graduate art program at the University of California, Davis, where his MFA graduation show in 1986 consisted of both a series of paintings and a series of color photographs. For the next twenty-five years Minick taught photography throughout Northern California, including San Francisco State University, Sacramento State University, San Francisco City College, and the Academy of Art University of San Francisco.”

Dylan Swift is Roger Minick’s nom de plume.

REVIEWS

• LOS ANGELES TIMES, “Legoland”, April 14, 2000
• FRIEZE (magazine), “Sightseer Series”, June-July-August, 1997
• LOS ANGELES TIMES, “Sightseer Series”, March 14, 1997
•  Katzman, Louise (January 1984). Photography in California, 1945-1980. Hudson Hills.
• SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Misc. Reviews, May 19, 1977; March 4, 1981; June 5, 1988; Sept. 16, 1989
• Albright, Thomas (March 1981). “Photography, From Satire to Biography”. San Francisco Chronicle.
• ARTFORUM, “Sightseer Series”, Summer 1981
• ARTWEEK, Misc. Reviews, Nov. 13, 1976; Feb. 15, 1980; March 7, 1981; April 16, 1988; Sept. 17, 1988;
• CHICAGO SUN TIMES, “Southland Series”, June 15, 1980
• SMITHSONIAN, “Hills of Home”, December 1975
• VILLAGE VOICE, “Delta West”, A.D. Coleman. June 25, 1970 [in Light-Readings, p.39]

Last saw his work at the Chandler; the place with the great blind dog.

from Delta West: “I speak about where you get on certain things in life and things confuse you. And when you get confused, you don’t know which way to go — and you take the wrong road in lif, the space is narrowed to the coffin. It’s definitely narrowed to the coffin. You just revert to this. You revert to the wandering shadows of shadows and the space is definitely narrowed to the coffin. And when the space gets narrowed to the coffin, well you know and I know, there’s no more space left for us. It’s all over. It’s all over right there. Now that’s definitely right!” https://www.rogerminick.com/delta-west

• Born in Ramona, Oklahoma, in 1944, Roger Minick grew up in the Ozarks of Arkansas, moved to Southern California in 1956, and entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in history

• 1966 he began a black and white photographic project on the land and people of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in California. Three years later, the project became Delta West (Scrimshaw Press, 1969),

• 1965 and 1975, Minick was on staff at the ASUC Studio, serving as director from 1971 to 1975.

• In 1970, he began a black and white photographic project on the rural Ozarks of Arkansas, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 to complete the series.

• Minick not only co-designed his own books Delta West and Hills of Home but also books by other photographers, including Margo Davis’s Antigua Black (1973), Richard Misrach’s Telegraph 3 AM (1974), and Steve Fitch’s Diesels and Dinosaurs (1976).

• 1974 through 1976, Minick worked on Southland, a project in which he photographed freeways, vernacular architecture, and made portraits of people at fast-food outlets and shopping plazas in Southern California.

• 1977, he was one of five photographers selected to work on a two-year National Endowment for the Arts Photo Survey project on the Mexican American community

• 1980, Minick began work on Sightseer, his first photographic series in color. Images from this series were included in the hardcover book and major traveling exhibition American Photographers and the National Parks, sponsored by the National Parks Foundation and published by Viking

• 1981 through 1985, Minick took color photographs in enclosed shopping for a project he called The New Main Street.

• Between 1987 and 1989, Minick began a color series photographing people on the streets of San Francisco which he called StreetWork

• 1984, Minick entered the graduate art program at the University of California, Davis, where his MFA graduation show in 1986 consisted of both a series of paintings and a series of color photographs

• 1998 to 2003, Minick photographed widely with the Holga camera 

• 2006, Minick switched from analog to digital, and over the next few years experimented extensively making manipulated prints using Photoshop.

• 2010, Minick founded Perambulation Press