Photographs
Alberto Lau Photo Archive to Yale
The late David (Deel) Kasdon and his future wife Jenny play chess against Gary Kopff, 1967
(Use the arrows at left and right or the dots below the image to scroll through the photos.)
Alberto Lau’s historic photographs and his documentary from our era at Yale will soon be permanently housed in a collection at Yale.
Alberto met recently with officials of the Yale Arts Library Special Collections and Film Archives to plan the donation of his personal photo archive of Yale-related pictures from the 1960s.
The Alberto Lau Collection of photographs and videos at Yale will give Yale and the wider community access to historic and unique images not published anywhere.
The photos are “Probably one of the most complete photographic documentations of the period. Few others were such shutterbugs in those days of film and darkroom chemicals,” Alberto says.
The Lau collection will include prints, slides, and many negatives, 35mm- and 2 ¼-inch. Some are already digitized, and Yale will scan them to high-resolution library standards.
“I am honored and happy about this development. It’s probably the closest I will ever be to becoming immortal. As our classmate Henry Bean put it, ‘You have written history. The future will see the past through your eyes.’”
Alberto graduated from the Yale School of Architecture in 1970, where he participated in the 1st First-Year Building Project in 1967. The project involved building a community center in New Zion, Kentucky, with direct labor by first-year Architecture students and faculty. The First Year Building program has continued uninterrupted every year since. It proved so popular that applications to the school soared. The story of the 1st First-Year Building Project is told in Alberto’s video interviews and photographs on this webpage: https://www.yalearch1970.com/kentucky-building-project
As Peter Rose (Yale College 1966, Architecture 1970) points out, “… Thanks to you, all of us, your lucky classmates, will be forever present in the Yale archives. Everybody depicted will also achieve a kind of immortality.”
Alberto’s personal photo collection includes pictures of Architecture students, faculty, and undergraduate student life, including sports. He also has headshots of the entire Yale Law School faculty of the late 1960s.
Yale has also requested Alberto’s two 16mm reels of Mayday, the documentary on the 1970 Black Panthers demonstration that was made by a group of Yale students, including Nick Doob ’69, Alberto Lau ’67, Josh Morton ‘67, André Ptaszynski ‘67, and others. It was shown on PBS, at the Whitney Museum, and at the Museum of Modern Art. Classmate Josh Morton previously donated his 16mm Mayday reel to Yale, but the university’s film archivist wants Alberto’s copies as well. Mayday can be seen here: https://www.yalearch1970.com/copy-of-paul-bloom
Alberto was a photographer for the Yale Daily News from 1964 through 1967. He also served as 1967’s Class Photographer, with his photo essay appearing in the 1967 Class Book, our graduation yearbook.
Time Capsule – for a visual trip down memory lane, you can view youthful photos of many of our classmates on Alberto’s website about undergraduate Yale, The Gladdest Years. Enjoy the professionally photographed portraits of David Lippmann, the late Deel Kasdon, Frank Berson, Ned Foss, the late David Storrs, Jon Hankin, Henry Bean, Alan Burdick, Tim Timberlake, Josh Morton, Ed Amarant, and other young, handsome, and beautiful contemporaries of the mid-‘60s.
Many of Alberto’s pictures and videos can be seen on the website he created for his Yale School of Architecture classmates, https://www.yalearch1970.com/.
More of Alberto’s photography can be viewed at https://albertolauphotography.weebly.com.
Jim Bourne
Besides being a jazz buff (listen to his interview with Duke Ellington on the Performing Arts page) Jim is an accomplished professional photographer. You can see the full array of his works on his web site, www.JimBournePhoto.com, but here’s a sample:
Great Egret, St. Augustine, 2010
(Use the arrows at left and right or the dots below the image to scroll through the photos.)
To contribute photography or links to photos you wish to share with your classmates through our new website, send the information to either Barry Bardo (barry@bardocommunications.com) or Marty Snapp (catman442@comcast.net).