Diane Kaye
Jan. 16, 1943 - Oct. 1, 2020 Aptos, CA
Diane Kaye passed away peacefully on Oct 1st at her home in Aptos, CA, after a valiant fight with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA, a degeneration in the body’s autonomic nervous system for which there is no cure or effective treatment).
Diane Sheryl Kaye was born on Jan. 16, 1943, in Tacoma, WA, to William and Dorothyann Griggs, the middle of three daughters. Later the family moved to La Jolla, CA, where Diane grew up, attending La Jolla High School and swimming in the Pacific Ocean as often as possible!
In 1961 Diane was admitted to UC, Berkeley, where she majored in German Studies, including a semester at the Karl August Universitaet, Goettingen, Germany. She was awarded the Edward Frank Kraft Scholarship Prize, and graduated in 1965, Phi Beta Kappa, with Honors. In 1966 she married Don Kaye and joined Control Data Corporation (CDC) as a systems analyst, and in 1972 she joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where she was a member of the team, led by Doug Engelbart, which developed the original computer mouse.
The transforming moment in Diane’s life occurred in 1979 when she made her first visit to a photographic darkroom to see how a picture began to form in the developer. Knowing nothing about it yet being totally captivated, she immediately went home and set up a darkroom in a bathroom (and she had a darkroom in every home since!) — initiating her subsequent life as an “almost full-time fineart photographer”. Shortly afterwards she took her only formal class ever, but then over the next few years had the privilege of spending time with Jerry Uelsmann, Ruth Bernhard, Michael Kenna, Ansel Adams, Roy Mcsavaney, Rod Dresser and other master artists.
Fine-art photography, and black and white photography in particular, became her life’s passion. As Diane herself said back in 1999:
“Intuition and a deep love for the alchemy of the darkroom are the forces which drive my passion for black and white photography. I tune myself to hear what in the environment calls to me and speaks to my spirit, wanting to be photographed. When doing my best work, I feel like I’m in a trance. Then I turn to the darkroom to render an image which expresses the intensity of the original experience. I value sensual lines, mystery, romance, ..a dreamlike quality and the classic brilliance of traditional silver-based film and paper. The craft and science of photography provide an engaging challenge to balance the purely artistic, and I enjoy constant experimentation.”
She used a wide variety of cameras — Wista 4x5, Pentax 6x7, Nikon FE and a Widelux panorama in the film days, and digital Epson, Panasonic, Fuji and Leica more recently — but her long time favorites were “almost blind” plastic toy film cameras from China. She also let her creativity run riot in the use of alternative processes (especially lith, solarization, and lumen), and using the bed of an A3 scanner as a ‘lens’.
Diane’s work has been recognized with solo exhibitions in galleries in Berlin, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Palo Alto, Carmel and Pacific Grove. It has won many national and international prizes and awards, and has been featured on magazine covers, in many publications, and in multiple gallery and on-line shows. She was an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS). Diane’s work can be viewed at: www.dianekaye.com and www.fineartbotanicals.net
Her creativity, spontaneity, vision and amazing skills will be sorely missed in photography, but not as deeply as the wonderful, compassionate, generous, loving lady herself.