C. Cameron Macauley and William Heick have made life-long careers of photographing people. A retrospective of their work will be shown at Gualala Arts Burnett Gallery from January 14 through February 5. They've been taking pictures since the 1930's, and their work as artists spans over the past seven decades. Many people in their pictures are important as recognizable faces and important figures in the 20th century. They have a humanistic, photojournalist approach to photography.

Cameron Macauley has also worked as a filmmaker, author, teacher, publisher and appraiser. His work has appeared on the covers of eight books and magazines. Over the past 50 years, he photographed the lives and cultures in over 20 countries. Macauley has taught photography at the University of Wisconsin, the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California.

As a film producer, he has worked on more than 50 films and has received film awards including the American Film Festival Blue Ribbon Award, the New York Columbus Film Festival Cris Award and the Berlin International Craft Film Festival Award.

His current activities are consulting, research and the appraisal of recorded media. He recently consulted on the famed Zapruder film, documenting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

William Heick's career in still photography as well as filmmaking has covered locations on six continents spanning seven decades. Born in 1916, W.R. Heick grew up in Kentucky and attended the University of Cincinnati. He married Jeanne Ridge in 1942 and after serving as a naval intelligence photographer during World War Two in the Pacific. He continued his education at San Francisco State University as well as the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) where he studied photography, painting and sculpture under such notable teachers as Ansel Adams and Minor White. It was during this period that he met and made lifelong friends with both Imogen Cunningham and Dorthea Lange who he regards as the primary influences on his photographic work.

His fine art photography has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the DeYoung Museum, the Seattle Museum of Art, the Henry Gallery (University of Washington), the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology (U.C. Berkley), and the University Art Gallery (Cal State at Chico) among others. He is one of the eleven living photographers included in "100 Years of California Photography" at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

W.R. Heick worked through most of the 50's and 60's as producer-director, assistant historian and cinematographer for the world wide engineering firm of Bechtel Corporation. While with Bechtel he wrote and filmed documentaries of their major projects with special emphasis on ethnic and social consideration in remote areas of the Arctic, South America, Africa, Greenland, Europe, The Middle East, Australia, Indonesia and the islands of New Guinea and Bouganville. A number of these films have received festival awards and many have been obtained by the U.S. government for use in promoting American interests abroad.

While on leave from Bechtel in the early to mid sixties W.R. Heick served as producer-director and chief cinematographer for the Anthropology Department of the University of California at Berkley on their National Science Foundation supported American Indian Film Project. He filmed a number of award winning films in this series along with the documentary "Sucking Doctor," a Pomo Indian doctoring ceremony considered by anthropologists to be one of the most complete and outstanding films of an aboriginal ceremony made to date. This film was shown at the Gualala Art Center in 2004.

Among his important humanitarian films W.R. Heick produced two for the American Friends Service Committee - "Beauty for Ashes" documents the Quaker's project to rebuild forty churches that had been burned by nightriders during Mississippi's racial strife in the turbulent 60's. "Voyage of the Phoenix" his second film for the Quakers, was financed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. It is documentary on the controversial voyage of the yacht "Phoenix," which sailed through the American battle fleet during the Viet Nam war to deliver medical supplies to North Viet Nam when the bombing of that beleaguered country was at its peak. "Voyage of the Phoenix" was acclaimed by "Variety" as "The best color show CBC has shown so far."

Beginning in 1970 W.R. Heick worked as director of photography for artist producer director Fred Hobbs on two feature length 35mm films: "Alabama's Ghost" and "The Godmother of Indian Flat". Both were released through Hollywood to critical acclaim in the arts community.

During the mid-seventies working as an independent producer under his company name "Film Forms International Inc" with associate, the late, Gordon Miller, W.R. Heick produced the "Indonesian Dance Series." This series, funded with grants from Caltex Pacific Indonesia and Pertamina, documents fourteen traditional dance performances from the islands of Java, Bali, Sumatra and Kalimantan. This important collection is currently in use at universities throughout the world and is available on video from the University of California at Berkley.

W.R. Heick's later films include "The Other China," a four part mini-series filmed on location in Taiwan in 1988 documenting the social and cultural fabric of Taiwan. These four hour shows aired nationwide on PBS networks.

These are just the highlights of a career now in its seventh decade. W.R. Heick has produced over 200 films, tens of thousands of photographs, and drank an appropriate number of martinis along the way. At age 84, with his wife Jeanne, four grown children and four grandchildren he still works in his darkroom, office and on location. When asked to sum up his prolific career he stated simply "It sure beats working!"

Mr. Heick and Mr. Macauley will be at the reception Saturday, January 14 from 5 to 7 pm. A special conversation will be held with the photographers in the Gallery on Sunday, January 15, times to be announced.

Gualala Arts Center is located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, and is open from 9 am to 4 pm weekdays, and weekends from noon to 4 p.m. Please call (707) 884-1138 for more information.