Words: José da Silva. Photos: David Stoecklein 2023-01-23 10:29:29
Carrie Peck catches some rays in Sun Valley, ID, circa the mid-1980s. With soft snow and dozens of bluebird days to choose from, David Stoecklein was able to experiment with then-novel ski angles that not only captured action, but also character. It was springtime in 1970s Utah, and the wildflowers were just starting to bloom when the general manager at Alta Ski Area, Onno Wieringa, ripped the only toilet from the floor of his little house. Lugging the porcelain throne up his ski hill, he met photographer David Stoecklein midmountain, and set his friend to work. Unfazed, Stoecklein staged what would become an enduring shot, sitting a third friend, a woman, on the toilet with her ski pants pulled down and ski boots on, facing the Mt. Superior-dominated horizon as her skis stood watch. A poster version of this moment is still on the wall in the Snowbird Ski Team locker room with the slogan, “Ski the Rockies, we have the runs!” Then living at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, UT, Stoecklein was in the incipient stage of his photography career. Years later, before his untimely passing in 2014, he would capture some of the most iconic photographs in the American West—pensive images of cowboys and mustangs. But he began with carefully staged shots that codified the neon fluorescence and freedom of ’70s and ’80s skiing. A few years after the fateful shoot in the Alta grass, in 1979, he’d find his way to Sun Valley, ID, helping preserve a freestyle skiing revolution on film and changing the way professional photography was conducted in the mountains. Raised in Pittsburgh, David Stoecklein went west in 1969, at the age of 20—first to June Lake, then to Mammoth Lakes, CA, and then to Cottonwood Canyon, until finally settling in Sun Valley. That’s where “his photography really took off” David’s wife, Mary Stoecklein, says. At the quiet mountain replete with bluebird days, he immediately landed a job with Smith goggles and soon became one of the most in-demand photographers in the ski industry. From 1982 until 1989, he scored covers with the most-renowned ski publications in the world: Powder, Ski, Skiing, Ski Canada, and even a Sports Illustrated ski issue. He worked with world-class skiers such as the Crist brothers and premier clients like Patagonia. With the money he saved up from commercial projects, Stoecklein conducted independent stock photography shoots and sold those photos to agencies. “He would go out and shoot pretty much seven days a week,” Mary says. “And the mountain was not crowded at all. He had it all to himself.” Beyond client work, Stoecklein was also constantly self-publishing. He released Sun Valley Signatures, his first book of photography, in 1982, and more followed. Along with his books, he produced posters, cards and calendars. As his photography proliferated through ski culture—initially shot on Nikons with Kodachrome film before he became a Canon Explorer of Light in the 1990s—his methods began to mold the modern ski-media industry. At the time it was rare for skiers being photographed to get guaranteed pay, says Joey Cordeau, who became one of Stoecklein’s core ski models after meeting him in Sun Valley. If Stoecklein had a client, he brought his group of skiers with him and made sure they all signed contracts and were compensated properly. “He totally broke through a lot of barriers, as far as that goes,” Cordeau says. Stoecklein also directed his photographs with clear vision, while other photographers would post up and give the skiers free reign. “He knew what would sell and he’d go out and get it,” Cordeau says. Sometimes that meant building features to blast through and gap over, or finding a specific line Stoecklein knew would shoot well. When Stoecklein died in 2014 from cancer, he left behind an incomprehensibly large body of work. Today, his son and photographer Drew Stoecklein manages the portfolio—over one million images, thousands of signed prints, 28 published books, calendars and countless advertisement campaigns. Despite his career’s origins, the spirit of his work is not defined by ski magazine covers—in fact it’s hard to find any of his ski images at all. A quick search of the Stoecklein lineage will pull up shot after shot of mustangs, cattle and cowboys. While the mountains once led Stoecklein to the American West, it was the early pioneers of the land—and particularly their struggle to survive during the region’s rapid evolution—that became his life’s work. The January sky was the cold, deep blue of a snowy pre-dawn and the ranchers could only be tracked through the flurries by the muted glows of their lanterns. Working through minus-27 degrees Fahrenheit, cowboys were shuttling newborn calves into one of the ranch’s barns before they froze to death. When Stoecklein clicked the shutter on what would become his most well-known image, “Winter Save,” a solemn cowboy rested in his crosshairs, cradling a calf with his right wrist, while his left hand pulled the brim of his hat down to protect his face. Part of a Copenhagen tobacco ad (titled “Some Men Never Compromise. They Cope.”), the shot came roughly 10 years after Stoecklein started training his lens on the culture of the American West. His first book of Western photography, Idaho Cowboy, was published in 1991, two years after his work had last graced a ski magazine cover. He loved shooting in the mountains, but his eye had started to wander from manicured slopes toward a starker, less glamorous reality after an agency asked for “interesting faces.” In an interview with Photo/Design Magazine in 1986, he said he found those faces in the landscape around him instead of on-piste. “The first [face] I saw that really made me want to photograph it was a cowboy,” he told the magazine. “I hunt with them, fish with them, drink with them, but I have never photographed them before. It opened up a whole new world for me.” Stoecklein took the cultural gaze he’d developed in the ski world and brought it to the frontier. After he published Idaho Cowboy, he published more than a dozen books on the American West. His editorial work was featured in magazines such as Western Horseman, Farm and Ranch Magazine and Working Ranch, and he worked with such clients as Marlboro, Chevrolet, Ford and Wrangler. Engaged even on a meta level with his new subject, Stoecklein also ran Western photography workshops out of his ranch in Mackay, ID. But the disparate tones of his early and late photography also express the differing perception he had of each of his subject areas. As Stoecklein photographed cowboys, he was making an intentional attempt to preserve what he saw as history. At Sun Valley, taking pictures of 20-year-old skiers in neon spandex and one-piece ski layers, he did not contend with any sort of duty, say both Mary and Joey. He was not deliberately recording ski history. Then again, cowboys are not skiers and time did not treat them similarly. The cowboy was representative of a culture and ideology that Stoecklein believed in, that inspired him to plant roots out West, and it had been in a state of perpetual endangerment since the turn of the previous century. In the 1980s, industrialization and urban sprawl was becoming a 20th century “winter of death.” Beginning in 1980, 17,000 ranchers lost their jobs annually, and tens of thousands of acres of ranchland were vanishing across the region. Stoecklein hoped to capture an American West that appeared to be in its death shudders. “He wanted to be a historian and document it for all to see. Because, you know, people were selling off their ranches,” Mary says. Across the way, the ’80s were boom times for skiing, an era of rapid expansion both physically and culturally. Deer Valley cut their ribbon in 1981, and Snowbird’s addition to the Cliff Lodge set a new standard for après ski. As the 1980s progressed, the number of skiers, resorts, lifts and trails all grew. Lifts started to carry more skiers, faster. The decade popularized telemark skiing, Nordic skiing and snowboarding. Stoecklein’s photographs convey these differing contexts. The skiing images are like brief flashes of light and they preserve ephemeral things—fashion and style. The photos of the American West are almost ageless. After he turned his focus to the cowboys and ranches of the west, Stoecklein never returned to ski photography in a serious way, says his son Drew. After a stint as a professional skier, Drew has now become a photographer himself. He says his dad remained a lifelong skier, and that he and his brothers grew up between Sun Valley and the family ranch in Mackay as a result. “He still absolutely loved skiing,” Drew says. “Every morning he and his buddies would go off at 9, rip around, and be back at work by 10.” As David Stoecklein matured as an artist, it seems he chose what he perceived to be more thoughtful imagery. But in a sense, he was perhaps more successful at preserving a moment in ski history than an era in ranching. His pictures of the latter are timeless—often only temporally distinguishable based on fine details or the quality of the photograph. The period in his ski photography, on the other hand, is immediately recognizable. No helmets, perms, neon, spandex, and tight composition? That was the ’80s, baby.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.