Del Carlo, Arnold

Biographical Note

Arnold Del Carlo was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 3, 1921, the first son of Natale and Estelle (McGowan) Del Carlo. During his childhood and teenage years, Del Carlo became fascinated with both airplanes and photography, but it was not until the beginning of the Second World War that the two interests merged. After completing Basic Training with the US Army in rural Texas, Del Carlo was sent to Bombardier School, where he was assigned to a partner cadet. The two cadets worked together, with one dropping bombs on a target and the other filming the puffs of smoke created by the bomb. The 35mm movie film was later processed in the laboratory where Del Carlo worked, showing the smoke relation to the target.

After having completed training at the Bombadier School in Texas, Del Carlo was sent to study engineering in the Army Specialized Training Program at Niagara University in New York. After a year, however, the program was closed and he was sent to Camp Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In August of 1944, Del Carlo was assigned to the Headquarters Company of a combat engineers' regiment, the primary tasks of which were to build bridges and repair roads, enabling the Allied forces to move through Europe unimpeded by poor road conditions. Although Del Carlo's job was draftsman, he carried his own Kodak folding camera with him, photographing and developing the films as he moved across Europe with his company.

Following his discharge from the Army in 1945, Del Carlo returned to St. Paul where he enrolled at Macalester College. There he studied engineering while also photographing college clubs and dances in his spare time to supplement his income. His first professional job as a photographer was a summer job for the Northern Pacific Railroad, entailing him to photograph the rail line from St. Paul to Seattle, Washington. Using his father's car, he drove himself along the rail line as he photographed the line, developing the prints in the bathrooms of the hotels he stayed in.

Shortly after that summer, Del Carlo moved with his parents to San Jose, California, where he enrolled at San Jose State College. While pursuing a degree in architecture, Del Carlo was first hired to take pictures of sorority dances with his Speed Graphic camera and subsequently approached by Danny Hill from the athletic department to take pictures of the college sports teams. When his SJSC work was seen by Henry Haggland of Hale's Department Store, Del Carlo was hired by that company to photograph merchandise items so artists could draw them for newspaper advertisements.

It was during this time that Del Carlo met Angelo Butera, with whom he would work for the next 12 years. Together, they worked from a studio on East San Fernando Street in San Jose, shooting fashion shows, studio portraits, and providing newspapers with photographs free of charge in an effort to advertise their work. In 1950, Del Carlo met and married Joyce Skillrud, who was working as a model on the set of a photo shoot. They moved into a house Del Carlo himself designed and had built on Chauncy Way in San Jose. In his new home, Del Carlo used the garage as a studio for his commercial work and the spare bedroom as a darkroom. The Del Carlos lived in the Chauncy Way residence for ten years and welcomed three children into the family. In 1956, Del Carlo and his business partner Angelo Butera moved their studio to 1295 The Alameda, San Jose where they worked together until 1960 when Del Carlo decided to separate from Butera in order to pursue further his specialization in commercial photography.

In 1963, Del Carlo built a duplex on a commercial lot on Brokaw Road, using one half as a studio and renting out the other half to a seamstress. The following year, Del Carlo moved his family to Mendelsohn Lane in Saratoga, where two more children were born to Joyce and Arnold.

Throughout the 1950s and into the 1980s, Del Carlo photographed in many areas of specialization, including portraiture, glamour, fashion, weddings, architectural and aerial photography. Regular customers included advertising agencies, housing developers requesting interior and exterior photographs of family homes, building developers in need of aerial photos of land parcels before and after construction, and electronic companies who commissioned photographs of products and equipment. For several major building projects, Del Carlo became the official photographer; he documented the construction of IBM Building 025, the San Jose Sewer Plant in Alviso, as well as the General Motors Corporation plant, which later became Nummi, and is now Tesla. In addition to commercial photography, Del Carlo spent much of his career in wedding and fashion photography, developing his own routines and techniques while working with models, as well as brides and their families.

After earning his pilot license and purchasing a single-engine Cessna 170A aviation aircraft, Del Carlo provided aerial photographs to his customers as well. In order to take photographs from the air, he cut a 12-inch oval hole through the floor of the back seat so he could shoot vertical and oblique images. For some of the aerial work commissioned, Del Carlo utilized an Army surplus K-17 aerial camera with 9x9 inch film, while for other assignments he employed a hand-held Pentax 2¼ x 3¼ camera with a focal plane shutter. Most of the aerials Del Carlo shot were 4x5 obliques, which were identified by the locations captured in the foreground, as well as by coordinates determined with a 1950s Regal city map.

Del Carlo continued his photography work through the 1980s until he retired in 1990. His first major project after retirement was the compilation of a "before-and-after" photography book based on the images he had taken in the 1940s while serving with the Combat Engineers and those shot in the early 1990s during three trips to Europe. Del Carlo self-published his book under the title of A Walk in the Park . Arnold del Carlo is currently the photographer for the Saratoga Rotary Club and served for several years as the editor of the club's Bulletin, published bi-monthly.

From the guide to the Arnold Del Carlo Photograph Collection, 1948-1990, (Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History, )