Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2011 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects 2011 Between a Peasant and a Patroon; Photographs of Richard Aldrich Rubi Rose Siblo-Landsman Bard College Recommended Citation Siblo-Landsman, Rubi Rose, "Between a Peasant and a Patroon; Photographs of Richard Aldrich" (2011). Senior Projects Spring 2011. Paper 17. http://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2011/17 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects at Bard Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Projects Spring 2011 by an authorized administrator of Bard Digital Commons. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@bard.edu.
Artist Statement The qualities that excite me about photography are light, the relationship between colors, texture and everyday activities. I seek to capture the moment. Part of my every day life is living at Rokeby, one of the old Hudson River estates. I see Richard Aldrich every day. He is the eldest son and inheritor of one of the last estates continuously owned by the original family. When I was working on a portrait project during my junior year at Bard I asked Ricky as he is affectionately known if I could photograph him. Ricky is decidedly out of the ordinary and embodies a way of life that is fading away from contemporary culture. As I followed Ricky around I became intrigued by the way he spends his day; his relationship with his land; the variety of his many relationships, which encompass every social strata; his fascination with machines; his willingness to get his hands as well as the rest of his body dirty. I spent so much time photographing him that I became his apprentice, ready to pass him a wrench or push his ice boat. He introduced me to some of his favorite things: gas, oil, ether, and WD-40. He explained that WD-40 means water displacement and forty indicates that they perfected the formula after the fortieth try. The first photograph I took of Ricky was last summer. I was driving home
on the narrow dirt road that leads to Rokeby when I was stopped by Ricky s battered old car parked right in the middle of the road. Ricky was sitting in the trunk of his car holding court with several intrigued people around him. This illustrates Ricky as a social paradox. I did not have my camera that day so I used my iphone to capture the moment. I never left the house without my camera again. That moment inspired my senior project. I followed Ricky around for a year and photographed him from morning until night. We went from Red Hook, NY to get paint to Red Bank, NJ to iceboat. I am still photographing Ricky and will make a book with selected photographs that illustrate the broader context of his life: his family, his mansion, and his travels. This show focuses on Ricky, a loving, caring, humble, generous and hardworking man with boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for life! Rubi Rose April 2011
Historical Background Nestled in the Hudson Valley on the East side of the river is a 196-year-old land grant estate. Originally named La Bergerie, what we now know as Rokeby was given to the Aldrich family by King James II of England in 1688. Later, William B. Astor and Margret Livingston Armstrong gave it as a wedding gift to their daughter Laura. Several generations later the name was changed to Rokeby, after a poem by Sir Walter Scott. The Rokeby of today includes a large mansion, ten smaller houses and 460 acres of land abutting the Hudson River. Richard Aldrich is the eldest of three children who inherited the estate when he was in his twenties. He is the tenth generation descendent of the Livingston and Astor families. Rokeby is one of the last Hudson River estates still owned by the original family. Ricky (as everyone knows him) is a graduate of Harvard University and the Johns Hopkins School of International Relations. He speaks twelve languages. His ancestors include Peter Stuyvesant and John Jacob Astor. After he graduated from college he traveled around Eastern Europe. In Poland he met is wife, Ania. Ricky returned from Europe to Rokeby in 1970. Today, Ricky spends his time maintaining the structures, infrastructure and fields of Rokeby. Of all of his many tasks, he loves driving his tractor the most because it gives him time to think. Ricky is very social, but he also cherishes his
solitude. He gets up early to go on his daily rounds, first visiting his tenants and then going into town where he is bound to run into his friends. He is welcome wherever he goes, ready to discuss local and world events, politics, history, science, the workings of a backhoe or a cherry picker. Of his prestigious lineage he quips, Jake [John Jacob Astor] did the right thing (he went down with the Titanic). His scope of knowledge is vast; he is a walking encyclopedia. He has a droll sense of humor, often punctuating his comments with an impish grin. Even though technically he owns the land, the land owns him. Ricky is a huge list maker. He types his lists on his vintage typewriter in the kitchen of the big house (as the mansion is commonly called). He does not shy away from heavy work. Even today at seventy, he is out cutting up large trees with his chainsaw, transporting them long distances with his tractor, and then using his favorite new toy a saw mill that transforms the those trees into boards that will be used for the new floor in the old barn. A writer once said of Ricky Ricky would give you the shirt off his back, but who would want it? You might not want his dirty shirt, but you would welcome him anytime he happened to show up.