As a young girl living in Hollywood, California, Judy Dater spent many afternoons fascinated by the images projected on the screen of her father's movie theater. Beginning as a UCLA art major, she completed her education with an MFA in photography from San Francisco State University. In the counterculture atmosphere of the 1960s San Francisco, she began a lifelong dedication to cpaturing the humanity, mystery, and soulfulness of people through photographs. Judy Dater's photographers are collected and exhibited by over one hundred museums woldwide. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. Only Human is her sixth book.

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Theresia de Vroom

Only Human by Judy Dater

The Portrait Within by Marilyn Symmes

The Archaeology of a Photograph: Unearthing Judy Dater by Gloria Williams Sander

Looking Back: Judy Dater, The Lasty Fifty Years by Donna Stein

Plates

List of Plates

Selected Bibliography

"Only Human is a taut and poetic compilation of images that emphatically reveals the breadth of Judy Dater's achievement as a photographer over five decades. We see that her photographs are concerned with acknowledgment, with personal identity and belonging, with loneliness and solidarity. The best of them possess a beauty, intelligence and complexity that elevates them above the merely interesting to the often profound."

Julian Cox, Chief Curator and Founding Curator of Photography, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

" Only Human is Judy Dater's masterpiece that solidifies her position among the major American photographers of the second half of the 20th century, (The book)  moves me. It moves me in many ways: at the basic level, I get a thrill from the wonderful black-and-white reproductions. I love the fact that it's about humans without being about humanity: it shows individuals, even when it's just a back or a pair of hands, never descending to the generic or the symbolic...and especially not to the objectified.”  

Michael C. Johnson editor, Online Photographer

Judy Dater was born in Hollywood, California on June 21, 1941 and grew up in Los Angeles. Her father owned a movie theater, so movies became the prism through which she viewed the world and they had a profound influence on her photographer. From 198 to 1961 she attended UCLA, majoring in Art. In 1962 she moved to San Francisco and completed her education at San Francisco State University, majoring in photography.

She became part of the community of the west coast school of photographer, primarily represented by the photographers Ansel Adems, Edward and Brett Weston, Wynn Bullock, and Imogen Cunningham. Edward Weston was no longer alive, but the others all took an interest in her work and encouraged her to pursue photography as a career. Imogen Cunningham was particular influential as she was the only one of the group whose primary work centered on portraiture.

Her career has been long and varied, combining teaching, creating books, traveling abroad and conducting workshops, making prints, vieos, and photographing continually.