From Mountains to Rivers the Water Flows Spotlight: Paul Ryan INTRODUCTION BY MAXWELL TAYLOR KENNEDY
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AUL RYAN is celebrated as a legendary ski and nature photographer, and as an award-winning cinematographer. He is also one of the most courageous men I know. His career was far from a predictable one. Paul grew up in an Irish Catholic family in the socially conservative suburbs of Boston, often finding joy exploring the mystical woods and waters of the Charles River, which ran through his back yard. On the coldest winter days, he would skate the river’s ice avoiding the thin spots where warmer spring water puddled up. His parents approved of his adventures but not when it came to career choices. Paul studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytech, where he also played Division I ice hockey. After graduation, his immediate desire for adventure surpassed his economic pursuits. He abandoned job opportunities and set out on a fling with downhill ski racing. He just wanted to see how good he could be. But it was a bad snow year in Vermont, so he headed west in his 1955 Chevrolet — one last chance to see the country before getting down to work building its infrastructure. Paul had no personal experience of the West other than the writings of Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A sense of rebellion simply called out to him. He spent that winter racing the national circuit on the great mountains of Colorado, Utah and California, but he never skied quite fast enough to match the top racers. A friend gave him a camera instead. He took incredible photos right from the start, and he was eager
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to preserve his experience of the West. At the end of that ski season, Paul got a job offer to be an assistant engineer for a major construction company building a dam in Idaho. Someone had noticed his photographs, though, and he also got a letter from Ed Siegel, the manager of Sugar Bowl ski area in California, offering him a job as their official photographer. Paul put the two letters side by side over his small bathroom mirror. Each day he tried to decide. One job offered a solid career with a good income, a life his parents wanted for him — his anticipated career as an engineer. The other offered adventure and the exploration of a new vision for his life, but it was an option without the luxury of certainty, not much money and no security. One day as he was leaving the house, for no particular reason, he realized that even without the promise of stability he would take the photography job at Sugar Bowl. SKI Magazine did a feature on the area that year. They sent their own photographer but ended up using only Paul’s photographs. That spring, John Fry, the editor of SKI, called Paul to offer him a full-time job as their staff photographer. For the next two years, the job took him around the world photographing the people and places that built the ski Industry: Jean Claude Killy, Karl Schranz and Billy Kidd; Aspen, St Moritz, Portillo. Paul’s ski racing days had led to friendships with many of the international racers, and soon Bob Lange asked him to make a film on the World Cup race circuit. The movie Ski Racer combined interviews and innovative racing footage with the rock music of the era to create a classic film. He later skied with conservationist and