Any time I saw Doug McCulloh, he wore a cap, T-shirt and blazer, jeans and sneakers, as if it were his uniform. And the colors were dark, usually black or gray.
Artists are more likely than most to dress in somber colors. But McCulloh, a longtime Riverside photographer and museum curator who died Jan. 5 at age 65, was a bright light, and anything but somber.
Imposing in height, he was disarmingly friendly, and one of the most upbeat, cheerful people I knew. I imagine anyone who knew Doug would say the same, that he was quick to smile, to joke, to laugh.
Cati Porter, executive director of the writing nonprofit Inlandia Institute, recalled a coffeehouse reading by a slew of authors, for which Doug served as timekeeper. He held up custom-made signs when authors went over their time limit, such as: “Two minutes over. Clearly you have a healthy ego.”
I first met him in fall 2021 at the Riverside Art Museum, when he and writer Susan Straight, a frequent collaborator, had a show together about the city’s Eastside, “More Dreamers of the Golden Dream.”
From then on, McCulloh and I saw each other every few months around downtown. He was senior curator of UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography on the Main Street mall and helped me on a couple of columns there.
But I also ran into him at The Cheech, and at an Inlandia talk in October, where we sat together in the audience and kibitzed. That turned out to be our last encounter.
He invariably offered me encouragement and praise. My guess is that most people in Doug’s orbit got similar treatment. It probably says less about our work than it does about McCulloh’s positive, sympathetic outlook.
His photography, which has been exhibited internationally, is in the collections of LACMA and the Huntington. A lot of his projects were delightfully crazy, involving random chance, geography or both.
In one, he gridded a map of L.A. County into 5,151 quarter-mile squares and spent a day in each, taking photos and chatting with people. This occupied seven years.
When he won a charity auction in 1999 to name a street in a new Bloomington subdivision, he chose the name Dream Street, then visited frequently to document the construction, sales and move-ins. He was there for the foreclosures too. The result was a 2009 book, “Dream Street,” published by Heyday.
On a related note, I was at the California Museum of Photography on Jan. 9 to catch up on the exhibits. “Digital Capture,” a Pacific Standard Time show, left me cold, to be honest, but the show upstairs, “Lost in the Wilderness: Ansel Adams in the 1960s,” is a hoot.
The great nature photographer was hired in the 1960s by the University of California to document the UC system. As the show lays out, Adams was unsuited to photograph people and buildings rather than rocks and trees, and campus protests made him apoplectic. The whole thing is hysterical.
And by golly if the show wasn’t curated by Doug McCulloh. I wish I could congratulate him.
McGee, McGuire
Tom McGuire of Claremont was quoted here Jan. 15 about discovering John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series in the 1970s via his Hemet Unified teaching colleagues Larry Mattox and Ted Smith. This prompted two surprised readers to contact me.
Elizabeth Kerr of Ontario says of McGuire: “He was my U.S. history teacher at Hemet High School 1966-1967. I learned a lot in his class that I later used when I taught English as a second language and the required curriculum included U.S. history and culture.”
The other was Reggie Mattox of Hemet, Larry Mattox’s widow.
“It was such a joy to read your column on Wednesday morning, which mentioned my husband, Larry Mattox, and the John D. McDonald/Travis McGee Fan Club,” Reggie writes. “This article brought back such great memories as it was published only two days prior to the eighth anniversary of Larry’s passing.”
It was an honor to have made two people’s day via a stray reference here.
And in the case of Reggie Mattox, it was a little amazing to learn that out in Hemet, as a matter of course while reading her newspaper, she’d seen my item in which a Claremont man mentioned her late husband.
That circumstance might have been routine in, say, 1975 but it’s pretty rare here in 2025, and a mildly astonishing thing for your columnist to experience this late in the game. It was as if everyone reads me.
Well, back to reality.
Me, talking
A reminder: I’m making two appearances this weekend, reading from my latest collection, “Waving at Strangers,” taking questions and selling copies.
I’m at the Chino Community Building, 5443 B St., Chino, at 10 a.m. Saturday (Jan. 25), courtesy of the Chino Valley Historical Society, and at the Chaffey Community Museum of Art, 217 S. Lemon Ave., Ontario, at 4 p.m. Sunday (Jan. 26), courtesy of Ontario Heritage.
Come see me!
brIEfly
Let’s note the passing of director David Lynch, who made a movie in 2006 named “Inland Empire.” Despite its title, it was not set in the IE and did not film in the IE. Lynch did like to confound expectations. Anyway, the movie was a flop — unlike the real IE, which is a big hit.
David Allen brings the popcorn Friday, Sunday and Wednesday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
