Showings:

Downtown Restaurant Gallery
2102 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley CA
April 8 — June 20

Postcard | Poster | Flyer

Andrew Stern’s Historic Photographs:
“Running of the Bulls” Pamplona, Spain 1953 • Festival of San Fermin

The photographs on display here were taken in July 1953 in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls (Fiesta de San Fermin), the last year before American Express tours started coming through. At the time, I was stationed in France with the U.S. Army and had recently read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Motivated to see for myself, I decided to go to Pamplona using leave time. I bought my first good camera, a Contax, at the PX. (The franc was then 12 to the dollar). Photography had been in my blood through high school and college.

It was a wild six days: bullfights every day, an encounter with Hemingway himself, a meeting with Antonio Ordonez, then numero Uno bullfighter in his hotel room, lots of dancing and drinking red wine from a bodega. And on the last day, I did run the bulls, and survived.

The original slides were preserved under glass. They were then cleaned, scanned with a professional Imacon scanner, adjusted in the latest version of Photoshop, and printed on a new Baryta coated paper from Ilford. Rob Reiter at THE LIGHTROOM in Berkeley printed the large photographs. The portfolio helped me to get my first professional job, as an assistant to Hans Namuth, the noted photographer of the New York abstract painters, such as Jackson Pollock.

I was a professional photographer in New York and Washington, DC for many years. Later I became an award winning news and documentary producer at PBS and ABC News. I came to Berkeley in 1969 to the Graduate School of Journalism. I inaugured the broadcast journalism, documentary, and photography programs.

I currently have an acclaimed exhibit of 46 photographs shot in Appalachia 1959-63 touring several universities and galleries in Kentucky. This exhibit is expected to be shown in Washington DC and the SF Bay area next year.