Dean Discusses His Latest Book — Fidelman: A Body of Work
Fresh off the press from Di Angelo Publications, Dean Fidelman’s coffee table book showcases a lifetime of incredible photographs
Photo by: Dean Fidelman
It’s a damp morning in Mariposa, just west of Yosemite, where after a night of light rain falling under a full moon, the skies have cleared, and mist rises from the landscape.
Dean Fidelman, age 67, has come over and is sitting in the green velvet chair in my office. He ignores the dog spittle and fur caked into the old seat and settles in. In a thick, black Olde English font, “Stone” is written on one hand and “Nudes” on the other. The tats are a statement from his 20-some years photographing climbers, sans clothes, as they climb on many of the most iconic areas in the US.
Dean’s collected and archived the climbing scene since his teens, with a camera in hand – usually not even his, just some loaner he picked up from a friend — for 50 years. As a kid, he’d share caves in Joshua Tree with the Stonemasters, wake up in a ragtag patch of ratty sleeping bags, stained clothes, and body odor, and catch a shot of one lighting up a cigarette at dawn.
He captured John Bachar soloing 5.11 and 5.12 back in the 70s, plus John Yablonski doing the same, and as the decades went by, he continued photographing the sport’s best. He wasn’t just there in on the action – the highballs, the bold, sans-rope sends, he also captured the lifestyle.
His images, often black and white, were as much art as they were a love of the scene, the players, and the rocks.
In the 90s, he connected with a young Chris Sharma and snapped several images that appear in the book. One, previously unseen by me, features Cedar Wright blurred in the background, with Chris’s relaxed eyes staring at Dean. The two climbers are surrounded in granite, and whatever magic Dean sprinkled into the scene to make the shot resonates with me. In the following pic, Chris is sitting in the dirt, shoeless, and shoveling food out of a can with a spoon.
In the 2000s, Fidelman captured Dean Potter soloing 5.12d Heaven in Yosemite. Another time, in Lower Merced Canyon and dangling from a rope, he captured images of Steph Davis free soloing the 5.10 Outer Limits.
This is his sixth book. For his book Yosemite in the 50s, Dean received the Literary Award from the American Alpine Club. For The Stonemasters: California Rock Climbers in the Seventies, he won the Mountain Exposition at Banff. And he’s not over yet. His next projects are The Valley Muse and the StoneMonkeys Book with James Lucas.
Aside from an introduction by John Long, the book is mainly images – no captions, no stories. The images speak for themselves. The table of contents reads: The 1970s and the Stonemasters; Chasing Fashion Across the 1980s, The ’90s: From the Soundstage to the Cliffside, Stone Nudes; and In Living Color.
“I’ve seen you go through quite a bit of emotional states when making your images and books,” I say, looking over at him merely a few feet away. I’m referring to his human side, artistic and perhaps manic side, which I’ve witnessed over our almost 30-year friendship. “What was it like with this one? A lot of ups and downs as well?” I ask.
Dean grabs his lighter off my desk, sparks a 50/50, and tells me about his latest title.
I went blind, you know? [He’s since gotten his vision back] I was sick, and I had catheters in and was in the emergency room, like, a week and a half. It almost killed me. That’s why I haven’t made too many books, you know, because each one like chips away at me. But this one really took me down for a while, and since I was so ill when I was making it, I could only work for a few hours at a time.
I was like, man, this could be it [the end of my life]. Right? So I tried to do my best.
“I see a lot of people in the book have since died, and a lot were your friends; it looks like around a dozen. It must’ve been quite emotional,” I ask.
Yeah, it was. But for sure, I was so fortunate to get that time with them, to be there with the Stonemasters, the Stone Monkeys. Stone Nudes grew out of that. And toward the end of the book, we have the color, which is evolving.
What’s next?
I’m not sure where I will go, but I’m not done making photographs, of course. And not done working on books.
Spanning 175 pages, each 11 by 14 inches, and priced at $200 USD, Fidelman: A Body of Work is Dean’s most significant book to date. It’s his lifetime. His release party will be on December 15 in Los Angeles. The book is available for pre-order here; if you order in time, it can arrive before Christmas.
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