Cyndi Stivers Testimonial

Theo loved sending jokey Christmas cards each year, starring herself; this was a compilation of several previous years.

I met Theo when I was a cub reporter at LIFE magazine in 1982. Before I got the job, seeing her credit, I thought Theo was a man—a common error, as it turned out. I was delighted to find out that not only was she one of LIFE's few female contract photographers, she was also young and fun and a great girlfriend to travel with. For months, I had heard hilarious tales from my colleague Nancy Griffin, who'd been assigned with Theo to stories on the Police, Van Halen, and Debra Winger. (The before-and-after shots of Van Halen's hotel room were classic!) Finally, I got my turn to work with Theo, traveling with her to Paris for the very enjoyable shoot of what turned out to be a dismal movie: Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers (1984). Theo and I dined at La Coupole with Edie McClurg (who later stole all her scenes in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and shopped the Marais with Rae Dawn and Robbi Chong. Rae Dawn came to Theo's memorial last spring—just one example of a friendship that endured long after the stories were finished.

Another time, we hit the drag races, first in Montreal and then in New Jersey, for a profile of the original speed queen, Shirley Muldowney, whose record-breaking life was being turned into a movie called Heart Like a Wheel (1983). Shirley was portrayed by Bonnie Bedelia, a superb actress whose nephew, Macaulay Culkin, turned out to be the famous one in the family. The best part about this assignment was that after we finished shooting at Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ, we drove to my father's farm in Pittstown, where Theo would spend several happy Thanksgivings as an honorary member of our family.

Over the years, we spoke a lot about the fact that she had been adopted. For most of the '80s and '90s, she was not tempted to search for her birth mother, fearing that it would seem in some way disrespectful to the Westenbergers, whom she adored. But she remained open and curious, and I do think her unknown origins helped make her a wonderful photographer: She was always trying on others' lives for size as if they might have been hers. Theo defined herself by her work—and many of her dear friends were people she met on the job but kept around her, as her family of choice. I feel so fortunate that I got to be one of them.

I'm not sure how I acquired this shot of Theo as a little girl, but I love it, because it foreshadows the incredible rigor and precision underpinning her work. Once she started shooting pictures, it always felt like a party, but like many artists, she fretted and agonized and obsessed over the technical details beforehand. Of course she really knew her stuff, and she always kept that anxiety well hidden from her subjects. As soon as they showed up, it was all joy...and Theo was so playful, she brought out the best in even those who were jaded about the process (myriad movie stars) or uncomfortable posing; indeed, she made many a stiff mogul look congenial on the cover of the late, lamented Manhattan, inc. magazine. She also loved capturing dreamy landscapes. But to me, her most distinctive shots reveal her quirky humor and contagious enthusiasm, whether chronicling a twins convention or peering into a closet at row upon row of Imelda Marcos's shoes.

Theo 1969

Ardath Weaver contacted me a few weeks ago after hearing about Glenda Wharton's Theo Westenberger Women of Excellence Award. She had known Theo as a teenager at the beginning of her photographic life. Here are some photos and a testimonial:







Today I learned that North Carolina filmmaker Glenda Wharton had received the Theo Westenberger Award for Extraordinary Achievement By Women in the Arts and I was reminded when I saw her name that I had been meaning to try to reconnect.

I had recently been looking at snapshots we took in 1969 - the summer we went to Europe instead of Woodstock. We were in a Sarah Lawrence College summer study program in Paris followed by a Greek island cruise - studying art with Barbara Rose. I recall Theo as dramatic and stylish and never without her camera.

Flavors of 1975 Books for Sale

Forward by Laurie Frank of Frank Pictures:

I knew Theo very little before her too short, peripatetic, resolutely creative life ended on February 28, 2008. I met her in Cuba in 1992, we spent a week in Havana together where she photographed Castro for Vanity Fair and I accompanied Anne Louise Bardach, who wrote the story. I saw Theo one more time, when she came to stay at my house in Hollywood. She had come to LA to ask for a show of her photographs at my gallery. I turned her down. It wasn’t that the work was not perfect. It was. In a time when commercial female photographers were virtually non-existent, Theo had shot three presidents and an award-winning array of covers of actors like Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Aniston for the best magazines in the world. But it was consummately professional photography that Theo showed me, not the skewed, deeply personal vision that could only belong to a singular eye. Had Theo showed me her hand painted photographs, the series, Flavors In 1975, I would have jumped at the chance. Lucky, for me and unlucky for me, because I didn’t speak to Theo again until 3 weeks before her death. I hope my love for Flavors In 1975 and the great privilege of representing the work will inspire equal awe, delight, and remembrance of Theo Westenberger, the artist, the consummate photographer, the laughing lovely girl.

Theo had grown up in a Richard Neutra house in La, Canada-Flintridge and these are the photographs of a homegrown eye. They are exquisite perceptions of a specific moment and a particular place, so captivating of that time and that place that the fact that a look from our vantage point from the twenty first century backwards to the used car lots, miniature golf courses, detritus of the Rose Parade, Goodyear blimp, and Cinderella’s castle doesn’t render them clichés, is almost an impossibility. Yet Theo pulls it off. Yes, these are our perceptions too, this is how we all remember the California of the seventies, but each photograph holds a particular surprise, a pop and a power that blows them out of  the ball park (even if it is Disneyland). There was no Photoshop in 1975, the happy incongruities had nothing to do with iphoto or even luck, just everything to say about Theo Westenberger’s gift and her sense of humor. Using Marshall’s oil paints on black and white prints, she radically recreated her environment to realize her very own private left coast, a gorgeous place in living color that is to be her  living legacy.

 

Debra McCall

Theo was with grace: grace in her walk, her appearance, her words, gestures, thoughts and laughter. When I first met Theo, we had no idea how many ways we knew each other; those details emerged over years of friendship.

Our first encounter was a photo shoot she did in my loft and on the streets of our Tribeca neighborhood for the German design magazine Ambiente in 1984. I had reconstructed the 1920s Bauhaus Dances of Oskar Schlemmer that premiered at The Kitchen and the Guggenheim Museum in ’82 and ’84, respectively. My dance company was about to embark on a six-week engagement in Europe—a tour of the Netherlands, plus Geneva, Alabama Halle in Munich and the First International Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, France. Theo came armed with numerous cameras, assistants and lighting, schlepping them up three long flights. She was ready and on top of her game. My dancers were rehearsing with props and costume, polishing some of the finer details of the production. Theo jumped in as though she were a dancer, shooting away at the “interior” of the makings of the performance, capturing the little humorous asides and perfectionist critiques of a choreographer and dancers. We all felt enormously comfortable and “loved” by her infectious enthusiasm and by her appreciation for the Bauhaus aesthetic. 

Lucky for us, the day we arrived in Munich to perform, the article in Ambiente appeared on the newsstands. Coincidentally, an exhibition of Oskar Schlemmer’s work organized by the Schlemmer family opened, and the city was abuzz with rediscovery of performance from the 1920s. Theo’s photos in the magazine captured the “sense of play” so critical to Schlemmer’s intent. Not only did her photos make a splash, but the entire enterprise was so successful that it garnered further invitations to perform at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Molly Surno, Theo’s Director of Collections, recently sent me a postcard I had written to Theo at the time. It is a reproduction of the densely saturated “Lady with Fan,” by Alexej Jawlensky, a dark-haired woman in a hat with a giant red flower. In another era, it could have been a portrait of Theo, so elegant and vibrant it is.  I was thrilled to receive this postcard as it chronicled all the synchronicities and excitement of our tour in Germany. It also came on the heels of a recent trip to the Middle East which echoed many features of that generative time. It seemed a wink-of-the-eye affirmation from Theo that, yes, I am on the right track.

After the era of Bauhaus touring, I attended parties and evenings at Theo’s, but moved to Italy in ’87 after which we lost touch. Approximately 2002 or ‘03, I was at the annual Watermill fundraiser for Robert Wilson. Alas, Theo and I met eyes and laughed. Our houses in Southampton were no more than a seven-minute drive apart. I was lucky to spend languid evenings on her back porch, indulge in wonderful dinners with friends around the bench under the great tree, chase geese and swans from her pool with my son, witness her passion for gardening and track her hesitation and excitement as she went through the process of discovering, then meeting, her birth mother and family. The young Theo with all her hopes, doubts and generosity emerged around this new family. Meanwhile, through those years, we discovered with delight and surprise that we had many friends/connections in common. She had been a Dartmouth roommate of Meryl Streep who married my former boyfriend, Don Gummer. I knew Meryl through her brother, Harry, with whom I danced in college and New York in the 70s. Leon Falk, the film producer, was a mutual friend. Carol Kiser, Theo’s assistant, was married to another former boyfriend of mine, Eliot Schwartz, and they have a house between Theo’s and mine in Southampton. Then there is Margot McLean, Theo’s dear friend who met James Hillman at a workshop that he and I gave at the Open Center in New York in 1989; they are happily married. And finally, Mattie, a former classmate with my son in Utah, is the daughter of Beth Rickman, a close longstanding friend of Theo. So with these 5 degrees of separation, we had much to share.

 I saw Theo most content when she spoke of, or visited, with her sister Laurie, Laurie’s husband, John, and Theo’s three nieces and nephew. Despite lifestyle differences, Theo highly valued her relationship with her sister and family, giving much time and thought to what presents would be most appreciated when she traveled West to visit them and cherishing the visits they made to New York and Southampton. This provided a too infrequent opportunity for expression of the maternal side of Theo, but it was clearly a strong part of her, very heartfelt and ever so sweet to witness. She expressed the same with my son, Adrian, who admired and respected Theo’s moxie, humor and sophistication.

Recently, Molly sent me photos from the Ambiente shoot. Besides the playful ones from rehearsals, two of me at age 33 are my favorites. Theo captured my essence, walking down Reade St., my home street in Tribeca, and in front of the World Trade Center by the Odeon where we spent many evenings. I am so thankful that these are back in my life, for I understand how talented a photographer Theo was to be able to capture me so accurately in a short time. Now, I choose to think of Theo at her home in North Sea, scurrying about the kitchen, looking after guests feasting and laughing at the bench around the great tree. Or enjoying her daily swim and chasing swans and geese from her pool. Or entertaining at sunset with friends, drinks in hand, surrounded by the rich colors and curious artifacts in her lovely house. To Theo, your grace and generosity live in our memories, and your photos keep your vivacious spirit alive. Thank you for your soulful gifts.

 

Debra McCall