An Introduction
BY MATT TYRNAUEr
Excerpt:
Canyon and desert were the main environments of Kali, who, for the explosively productive years of her life—from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s—was, a secretive and therefore obscure master of the visual arts, hidden among the mostly conventional West L.A. housewives of her generation; the woody station wagon-driving car pool moms and the occasional white Mercedes-driving grandes dames, indigenous to the Southland canyons and the stylish desert cities of the 1960s and 1970s. Joan Archibald—or Kali, in the darkroom—turns out to have been one of the great chroniclers, and interpreters, of the waning twentieth-century years of her adopted hometown; a secret historian of the era we now know mostly from the heavily marketed triumphs of The Beach Boys, The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion, and Shampoo.
Kali was born Joan Marie Yarusso in 1932, Islip, New York. She married Bob Archibald, a trumpet player. He was apparently on the road a lot. Joan Archibald was divorced by the age of thirty, and, according to her daughter, Susan Archibald, got in a car and headed across the country. She ended up in the Malibu of 1962. With her good looks and some allure, she became a fixture at the beach parties of the era, which extended from house to house, and rolled from orange-tinted sunset into the gray Malibu dawn.
Susan archibald
Kali’s daughter describes growing up with her wildly creative mother.
“I don't know what started it but she picked up a camera and she saw things and her minD—”
“I learned the word when I got older which was cool. I was my mother's muse … through the use of disguise with wigs and clothing creating her vision of characters or personas”
“I want to call her a pioneer because my mother was one of the first black-and-white photographers that started painting and creating overlays to her photographs… “
“My mother always said, ‘The best photographers, the best artists do it alone.’ It's a very, very true statement. If you want to be great at something, you need to do it alone. “
But no one knows exactly when and how Kali’s style developed. She had, at one time, been interested in painting. She painted wine bottles. The urge to paint never was sublimated by a consuming, seemingly manic, foray into photography.
In the November 1970 edition of Camera 35 magazine, there was the only significant article ever published on the work of Kali. The article is called “Eyes by Kali,” and it ran with some of her photos focusing on young people’s eyes, the magazine’s editors clearly at pains to pick a theme from her voluminous portfolio. “Kali is . . . a young woman who lives in Palm Springs, California, and creates painterly pictures for a living,” reads the text.
There might have been, as Camera 35 suggests, some Artography sold. Susan suggests that Kali sometimes sent her work to the Transworld Feature Syndicate, a now-defunct photo agency. There are no records of any sales. There was only one known gallery show of Kali’s work, which was, according to Susan, near Monterey, in the early 1970s. Mostly, the hundreds of prints were tossed into storage cabinets and large, hard-shell American Tourister suitcases, never to be seen until now.
The UFOs, Susan believes, had been following her mother for years in both barren Indio and in the Palisades canyon.
Kali recorded, obsessively, the appearance of the flashes and unidentified images in her closed-circuit monitors that she had on back of the Palisades house. She sketched them, and made notes, logging the time codes in her journal and on the bottom of Polaroids. The unprocessed film was discovered in a flight bag by Susan in Kali’s home in the Pacific Palisades, just south of Malibu. It was recently processed, and selections appear here in “Outer Space.” Approximately five hundred more unprocessed rolls were mistakenly thrown out by a cleaner. The time codes in the journals, matched with the time codes from the infrared monitors on the processed film, give an immediacy and insight into Kali’s late nights in the canyon house.
In 2017, suffering from Parkinson’s and memory loss, Kali was found wandering in the canyon near her home. She was picked up by authorities, and placed in a public assisted-living facility. Eventually, Susan was contacted, and she was moved to a private nursing home.
As Kali’s home was being cleared of her belongings, all of the photos in these volumes were discovered, amounting to a major discovery of an almost-lost oeuvre from a genre-defining artist.
On January 14, 2019, Kali died from complications of Parkinson’s disease. She was eighty-seven.
Read the whole story of Kali in Matt Tyrnauer’s full introduction.
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Dedication: Grandma Betty and to my brother “Archie”
To the woman who watched over us all, while inspiring our life’s dreams and independence. Grandma Betty looked after me throughout her life with heartfelt guidance. And most of all “KALI” her daughter (my mom) to follow her heart and soul within all realms of her original creativity in Art and Photography and her zest for life. Grandmother, you never wavered in your belief, confidence, and knowledge.
Archie!: My big brother, what more can I say … I’m sending you the first copy to heaven of Len’s book for Mom “Kali”. Love you forever more … and after that !
In Memory:
“Kali” aka Joan Archibald 1932-2019…To our very own undiscovered genius. Your hidden “Artography” photographs are bringing us joy each and every day…How and when you did all these, just simply amazes me. We hope this book is something you can show your friends up there…We still feel your strength!