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The ranch belonged to my family for almost forty years. We spent most of our weekends, holidays and a few stretches of every summer there. In 2013, half a century after my family's purchase of the ranch and thirteen years after we sold it, I dug a binder of black-and-white film negatives out of my closet -- it contained scenes from the ranch that I had not looked at for nearly four decades. Finding this binder of film strips was like digging out an old family album of familiar fields, ravines, creeks, and mountain vistas, and I was overwhelmed with sadness and longing for times past. I hope these pictures convey some of the subtle beauty of California valley farmland and foothills from nearly a half-century ago. I know they represent my personal vision of a gradually disappearing rural Western landscape. In memory of my father, Robert Hofstadter, I am producing a book of these ranch images and additional scenes, to mark what would have been his 100th birthday in 2015.
(~1971-1976; Film origin)