Producer Biography
Eve Ewing is a native Southern California photographer who grew up on the horse and cattle ranches of La Jolla, California long before it became a coastal resort destination. Her passion for the Californios began as a young girl who rode her horse to school along the ridges below Mt. Soledad.
"My earliest contact with Californios were the vaqueros that worked with the cattle and horses, as ranch hands, on California's oldest Spanish Land Grant - Rancho Los Penasquitos, when it was still a working cattle ranch in San Diego, County. Santos and Richard were kind, polite, hard-working men who earned the respect of the rancho owners. They were tireless, dependable, capable and when they worked with the horse and cattle it was more like watching an elegant dance. They roped and rode smoothly and effortlessly. Like all great athletes they made what they do look easy. Undoubtedly they started as toddlers roping their squeeling siblings, chickens, goats, pigs and anything else that moved."
In 1964, this bustling blonde, 24 year old, motivated by a radio call from her father headed down to Los Angeles Bay, Baja California. Her father who was doing the first Grey whale counts for the Scripps Oceanographic Institute from his aeroplane landed for fuel when a group of vaqueros, scientists, filmmakers, and photographers lumbered off the trail and onto the beach. Their photographers were tired after 6 months on the trail and Eve Ewing was eager to replace them. After gathering her chaps, boots, camera and film she was packed into a small plane with 50 pounds of dehydrated eggs and at that point became an official member of the Meling/Alford mule Expedition that traversed over a thousand miles of the Baja California penninsula between Tecate and Cabo San Lucas. On this 6 month journey she became completely emersed in the Californio culture she would come to love.
"As we rode through - what was then a wilderness - we encountered a sparse culture sprouted from the old Spanish Mission system that had settled so much of the western frontier. The people were proud of their heritage, a culture deeply rooted in a Catholicism that tempered any arrogance. Honor, self-restraint, respect and hospitallity was at the core of their own self- respect and dignity. Here I was in the homeland of Santos and Ricardo, the vaqueros had come to know and admire so many years before. It was the beginning , for me of another 40 years of exploration and friendships deep into this home-land and culture."
Eve has completed over 50 pack mule trips into the mountain ranges of Baja California discovering and recording the pre-historic rock art of a culture long gone. Her interest in this 10,000 year old indiginous civilization would constitute a large portion of these explorations. The Californio people of the mountains were at first her guides and before long her family.
As young woman, in the 1970s, she eventually found herself pursuing and honing her love of photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Here she studied under Immogene Cunningham, Minor White and at a summer session in Yosemite with Ansel Adams.
"This gave me a foundation that sharpened my eye and taught me a reverence for light that would guide my passion for many years to come."
Her passion for the camera and the mysterious cave paintings found though out the Baja California Penninsula has lead to photography exhibits at the San Diego Natural History Museum, several rock art articles published with the San Diego Museum of Man, the American Rock Art Research Association, the San Diego Union Tribune, Geo Magazine and Pacific Discovery.
The realization of Corazon Vaquero is another chapter of a journey which began over 40 years ago.
|
EVE EWING 
