Post by beatlies on Nov 6, 2006 20:38:48 GMT -5
"Jo Jo" Joseph Melville See Jr. ---his home in Tucson, Arizona
JOSEPH MELVILLE SEE, JR, 61, died March 19, 2000 at his home in Tucson, AZ, of a gunshot wound, just one month short of his 62nd birthday. See was born April 19, 1938 in Albany, NY, and grew up in Scarsdale. His parents, Joseph Melville and Matilde Pilger See, traced their ancestry to the earliest Dutch settlement of the Hudson Valley. Although his father, an insurance executive, died when See was very young, he served as a model of a life of adventure because he had joined the French Foreign Legion to serve in the Lafayette Escadrille early in World War One. See graduated from Princeton in 1960 with a degree in geology, went on to graduate work at the U of New Mexico and then to the U of Arizona, where he earned an MA in geology (1965). See was attracted to geology because as one of the last great exploring disciplines it offered a life of risk and adventure. His first employment involved geological and mining exploration in eastern and southern Africa. While at Princeton, he met Linda Eastman whom he married. Their daughter Heather was born in 1963 and they divorced soon after. Linda married Paul McCartney, but See never remarried. Soon after moving to Arizona, he became interested in both photography and the native peoples of the Greater Southwest. He developed his photographic skills and soon was deeply involved in ethnographic filmmaking. He was a perceptive observer of other cultures and produced many dramatic and moving images. He continued to work as an exploration geologist to support himself and for many years was involved in assessing the economic potential of long-abandoned mines, especially in South America. Increasingly, however, he devoted his time and efforts to filmmaking and the study of indigenous art in northern Mexico. In the early 1980s, after the death of his mother, See received a modest inheritance that allowed him to devote full time to these interests. He made films of the Huichol, Seri, Tarahumara and Tepehuan in Mexico and the Tuareg in north Africa, several of which were screened nationally on PBS. He helped Tepehuan leaders to revive old ceremonies by sharing with them the details of J Alden Mason’s research among the Tepehuan early in the last century. There is a large collection of his Huichol, Seri, Tarahumara, Tepehuan and Yaqui images in the Photographic Archives of the Arizona State Museum at the U of Arizona. (Raymond H Thompson)
JOSEPH MELVILLE SEE, JR, 61, died March 19, 2000 at his home in Tucson, AZ, of a gunshot wound, just one month short of his 62nd birthday. See was born April 19, 1938 in Albany, NY, and grew up in Scarsdale. His parents, Joseph Melville and Matilde Pilger See, traced their ancestry to the earliest Dutch settlement of the Hudson Valley. Although his father, an insurance executive, died when See was very young, he served as a model of a life of adventure because he had joined the French Foreign Legion to serve in the Lafayette Escadrille early in World War One. See graduated from Princeton in 1960 with a degree in geology, went on to graduate work at the U of New Mexico and then to the U of Arizona, where he earned an MA in geology (1965). See was attracted to geology because as one of the last great exploring disciplines it offered a life of risk and adventure. His first employment involved geological and mining exploration in eastern and southern Africa. While at Princeton, he met Linda Eastman whom he married. Their daughter Heather was born in 1963 and they divorced soon after. Linda married Paul McCartney, but See never remarried. Soon after moving to Arizona, he became interested in both photography and the native peoples of the Greater Southwest. He developed his photographic skills and soon was deeply involved in ethnographic filmmaking. He was a perceptive observer of other cultures and produced many dramatic and moving images. He continued to work as an exploration geologist to support himself and for many years was involved in assessing the economic potential of long-abandoned mines, especially in South America. Increasingly, however, he devoted his time and efforts to filmmaking and the study of indigenous art in northern Mexico. In the early 1980s, after the death of his mother, See received a modest inheritance that allowed him to devote full time to these interests. He made films of the Huichol, Seri, Tarahumara and Tepehuan in Mexico and the Tuareg in north Africa, several of which were screened nationally on PBS. He helped Tepehuan leaders to revive old ceremonies by sharing with them the details of J Alden Mason’s research among the Tepehuan early in the last century. There is a large collection of his Huichol, Seri, Tarahumara, Tepehuan and Yaqui images in the Photographic Archives of the Arizona State Museum at the U of Arizona. (Raymond H Thompson)