Paul Macapia – in memoriam
Untitled, From the Dungeness and Grey Wolf, 1972, Paul Macapia, American, 1934-2009, color photograph, 10 3/4 x 10 3/4 in., Gift of Neil Meitzler, 77.24, © Paul Macapia
Paul Macapia
1934-2009
Long-time museum photographer and a great Northwest artist, Paul will be missed by all who had the pleasure to work with him at SAM.
I knew Paul as a teenager, well over 45 years ago, when his day job was a medical photographer in a local Seattle hospital. I was struggling through a lot of things in my life, and Paul showed me a lot of kindness and opened his life and family up to me. Unfortunately, I was not enough of genuine individual at that time to appreciate what he was trying to accomplish with me. I know that I was a sore disappointment to him, because I know that I let him down in so many ways as a teen.
Now that he is gone, I can say that he was my surrogate father, and first mentor. He gave me some great insights into knowing what life was all about and how he saw the world through his photography. I am sorry that he is gone, and I hope that people will take the time to take a second look at his work, especially his photographs of rivers and streams. Truly I will miss him.
I was just recently in Seattle visiting some friends and family for a few days, and learned that Paul Macapia had died. I was floored at the news! Paul and I developed a close friendship while working together at SAM. As a former staff member of the Registrar’s Dept at SAM I had the honor of working with Paul for several years. He and I worked very closely on developing a set of protocols and goals for bringing the Seattle Art Museum’s art collection to viewers and researchers everywhere via digitizing the collection and making it available on the web. Paul was an important force for keeping this endeavor going. SAM still moves slowly in this direction, but Paul’s work undoubtedly set a strong foundation.
I admired very much Paul’s patient approach to his work. I often thought he had the eye of an eagle and the patient practice of a Zen meditation master. Maybe he did have those things. Whatever the case, his special approach to photography and the specialness with which he treated each object in the collection made his photographs stand out, not just as documentary images, but as works of art themselves.
Paul and I used to get together for coffee, typically on Fridays, to discuss work projects, life, goals, my academic work at the time, how his daughter and son-in-law were getting on in Albuquerque (where I now live). Those were important encounters for me, and he never let me buy the coffee! I miss you Paul, and I will always remember our time together at SAM.
It was a pleasure to know Paul while working for a time in the darkroom at SAM. He was a kind soul who was interested in many things. He was supportive of my foray into pinhole photography- even giving me a box of old equipment that I used to fashion my first camera. A few years later he came to a show of my work and bought a photo: it was a thrill to know this kind of support. He will be missed. Condolences to his family.
I never met Paul Macapia, but I admired his work. I had always wanted to meet him. Macapia…is that a Filipino name? My daughter met him and it never occured to her that he might be. And after thinking about it, she said that maybe Paul was a mestizo.
She told me that she was going to a wake on Vashon Island for a photographer from SAM. I blurted out Paul Macapia? She asked me, how did I know? I didn’t. But I knew that he was well-known. I am sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet him. But I can still admire his work. He left a wonderful treasure of work to admire.
Please accept my condolences to his family.
Paul was a co-worker at SAM and above all, a friend. Paul was selected for travel to China on behalf of SAM to take the initial photographs of the Chinese exhibit that was the first public display of their precious anitiquities at SAM outside their country.
His skill and gentle personnality was remarkable to the Chinese and told so much of the man we all admired. We will miss Paul.