TIME OUT SAN FRANCISCO -- Judy Dater has been creating art for more than 50 years in a surprisingly tidy studio in west Berkeley. There, buried among the relics of her long career, sits her San Francisco State University Master of Fine Arts portfolio (1966), which includes Lovers No. 1 (1965), the first photograph in the series that would help make her famous and a focal point in the De Young’s upcoming Dater retrospective, Only Human.
The show traces Dater’s career from her days in San Francisco and her New Mexico sabbatical to her current works. In the 1960s and ’70s, Dater ambled around Haight-Ashbury with fellow shutterbugs Minor White, ex-husband Jack Welpott and Imogen Cunningham, who, as a pioneering feminist photographer would significantly influence Dater.