28 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY november 23-29, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com life took next. Today Fuess is an acupuncturist and healer—he has taught kundalini yoga, tai chi, and more. “It just kind of happened,” he says, reflecting on his varied life path. “But the key to it is sincerity.” On a warm fall afternoon at his home high on a hill in Carmel, Fuess is bursting with stories to tell and memories to share as he flips through photographs, some now 50 years old. He professes to have never photographed someone he didn’t like, and all the stories are filled with a deep admiration. “I really liked him,” Fuess says, appraising a photo of the artist Jack Swanson, known for his paintings of Western landscapes, holding a sculpture of a horse. “He knew being a cowboy from the inside out.” Not all the people in the photos were, or are, well-known; few have a reputation that stretches beyond the specific community they were a part of. Still, their stories, both small and significant, weave the fabric of a certain time and place. Many of the people in Fuess’ photographs have since died, changing the nature of the portrait from an artifact of the present to one of the past. “The thing about these people is they were the real deal,” he says. “This was a golden age—and I was in a cherry spot.” It was this conviction that inspired Fuess to gather 100 of his portraits in 2013 for an exhibition he titled You Must Remember This: A Love Letter to the Monterey Peninsula (available to watch via YouTube). The images that make up this photo essay are a smaller selection of that exhibit. Fuess still takes photos—all with his phone these days. It’s a device Fuess feels ambivalent about (“it takes people out of the moment”), but one that has undoubtedly democratized photography, allowing all of us to photograph the people and places and small moments that make up our lives. In 50 years, what will our camera rolls have to say about life as it was in 2023? Only time, and our own desire to remember, will tell. Bird’s Eye View, a collection of portraits by David Cushing Fuess, will be on display at the Press Club starting Dec 1. 1123 Fremont Blvd., Seaside. 394-5656, montereycountyweekly.com/pressclub. Chang Dai-chien was one of the most famous Chinese artists of the 20th century who spent time living in Carmel and Pebble Beach. Fuess interviewed Dai-chien in Pebble Beach in 1975 and learned that he ritually buried his paint brushes in his backyard because “they were such an extension of his being.” “Rosie” is the namesake of Rosie’s Bridge in Carmel Valley. He owned a bar inside the Cracker Barrel—“He was actually called Rosie because his cheeks were red from drinking,” Fuess recalls. Dick Price was the co-founder, with Michael Murphy, of Big Sur’s Esalen Institute in 1962.
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