ABSTRACT This conversation with Rolfer™ and photographer David Kirk-Campbell shares insight into his iconic images of Dr. Ida P. Rolf in the 1970s. The discussion covers the context and motivation behind the three distinctive photos available to members of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®, Kirk-Campbell’s memories of Rolf’s teaching, insights from receiving three private sessions from Rolf, and building a practice in four different European cities in the 1980s. Key details include Kirk-Campbell’s relationship with Rolf and other influential figures in the Rolfing® community, and the necessity of crediting the photographer by inserting close to the Dr. Rolf image – Photo credit: David Kirk-Campbell.
Lina Amy Hack: Hello David, thank you for meeting with me to discuss your iconic images of Ida Rolf [PhD, (1896-1979)]. Members of the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®, Rolf’s original school, have access to three of your images of Rolf that we may use for our websites and promotional materials.
The most important thing I want our Rolfing® colleagues reading this article to remember is that they must credit you properly as the photographer when using these pictures by ensuring they have the following near your image:
Photo credit: David Kirk-Campbell.
As we learn about who you are as a Rolfer, a photographer, and your career, I know I’ll never forget the person who gave us these essential pictures of our beloved Dr. Rolf. Thank you for meeting with me so I can put a face to the name.
David Kirk-Campbell: Thank you, Lina. I feel good talking with you.
LAH: What motivated you to take these photos of Dr. Rolf?
DKC: The motivation came as a wave of appreciation. I was sitting in my 1975 Advanced Training, listening to Dr. Rolf’s morning lecture. My awareness wandered. I felt a wave of appreciation for what Rolfing [Structural Integration] had given me – purpose to my life and an enjoyable way to make money.
I asked myself, “Well, what can I give back?” I thought of different things—I could be a board member or teach with the institute. As a photographer, my specialty was portraits in life situations – people in their living rooms, working, relaxing – not studio portraits. So, I thought I’d take some photographs of Dr. Rolf and see what happens.
I asked Dr. Rolf, “Would it be okay to take some photographs while you are teaching? Will you give me permission?” She didn’t ask any questions. She quickly and sort of seriously, but also nonchalantly, said, “Yes.” Her “Yes,” provoked my ambition.
LAH: What was it like taking the photos? Where were the photos taken?
DKC: The training was in a room on the top floor of a large house in San Fransisco, California.. The wall behind Dr. Rolf was angled, and all the windows were on one side, which was, luckily, the south wall. After the first day of shooting, the people and angled beam in the background bothered me, so I hung several sheets behind Dr. Rolf to create a neutral background for the next day. I also brought in some lights for the shadow side. Then I waited for days when there was sunlight slightly softened by clouds.
LAH: Wow, an exercise in patience waiting for the lighting.
DKC: I took a front-row seat so I could easily move to the floor. I kept my Leica camera up to my eye most of the time watching – anticipating the ‘decisive moment’ in Cartier-Bresson’s tradition. I moved around to vary the angle by sliding on my ass. The other students ignored me. I only took one roll – thirty-six images.
LAH: When you look at these photographs now, do you remember what that felt like to photograph her? What do these images evoke for you now?
DKC: Since you approached me for this article, I have taken a fresh look at the photographs. When I look at them, I see her spirit, her essence.
Rolf's Working Elbow
LAH: Tell us of the one where Rolf is working with her elbow and leaning over her client. What is the context to this image?
DKC: Well, I guess the client is a young boy. And this is the third session. I see Dr. Rolf’s concentration in the photograph. Actually, I studied this particular photograph afterward. It kept coming back to me. It almost haunted me, thinking: What is Dr. Rolf doing, working with her elbow and fingers?
LAH: Yes, I have that same question when I look at that picture.
DKC: I don’t remember if anybody asked in the class. But what I do remember is that this particular photograph motivated me to want to receive sessions from Dr. Rolf.
I was living in New York City then, and knew Rosemary Feitis [(1937-2018), Certified Advance Rolfer], the secretary for Dr. Rolf. So, I asked Rosemary if I could have a session with Dr. Rolf “Oh, no, that’s not possible,” was the answer, “Dr. Rolf doesn’t give individual sessions anymore,” I asked a second time two weeks later and got the same answer. I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t give up. I continued asking Rosemary, and finally she said, “Why do you want sessions?” I referred to this photograph and explained.
Sometime after that, one day, Rosemary phoned me and said, “Dr. Rolf is coming to visit me tomorrow, and she agreed to give you a session.” I didn’t talk about the photograph with Rolf, I just walked in, stood there in my underwear, and laid down on the table. It was a very low table that Rosemary used at that time. Rolf started to work, she used her fingers, not her knuckles, only her fingertips. She was mostly sitting beside me, similar to this photo. My focus was on how she would work with the fingers of her hands in different ways.
She used one hand, usually her left hand, to contact the layer of connective tissue and hold it. And she would use her right hand to contact the same layer of connective tissue and invite it to become more resilient. She worked that way quite a bit. My interpretation is that she was doing the same thing with me as in this photograph. I think in the photograph, she’s holding a layer with her elbow and inviting the same layer with her fingertips.
LAH: I’m zooming in on the left elbow and right hand, perhaps revealing the nuance you’ve just described. She has four fingers sunk in between the same ribs, and her elbow appears to be placed at that same level, also interacting inferior to that rib, and right along the lateral line. Now I see that through your eyes, the two contact points are interacting.
DKC: Yes. And when she gave me those Rolfing sessions, she would anchor with her left hand and invite or move with her right hand. Those sessions were both beneficial for my own body, and I also learned a lot as a Rolfer. I would describe her pressure/force as firm, gentle, intentioned – not painful.
I eventually had three sessions with
Dr. Rolf. She spent a lot of time working with my knees and ankles. When I noticed her repeated attention to my knees, I smiled inside, remembering an episode during the morning lecture of my practitioner training.
As she often did, she asked for volunteers to stand in a line in their underwear. She would go down the line, talking about a particular joint or part of the body, comparing and teaching how to understand what we were looking at. When she came to me, she said, “Look at those knees. David, with those knees, you’ll never make a Rolfer.” My knees shook with trepidation.
LAH: Classic Rolf, lining up students so others could learn. Looking very closely at her hands, I can see that her knuckles look swollen, especially her right index finger knuckle. Her hands, in general, look swollen, making me wonder about her comfort and whether there were sensations she was dealing with in her hands while working. The alignment of her fingers and the force going through her hand doesn’t seem overwhelming.
DKC: Yes, and the force is moving through her back, shoulders, upper arm, and lower arm. Her fingers are just an extension of her body, as I see the picture. I watched her in three different classes; I watched her give thirty sessions. I noticed her knuckles then; now that you mention it, I remember she had these calluses or pads on her knuckles.
In the image where she is working with the foot, you can see she’s using her knuckles with her right hand. In class, watching her work, I thought about the anatomy of the finger. It seemed to me that if I worked with extended fingers, then I could transmit extension and lift more precisely to a layer of connective tissue. In class, I began experimenting, extending through my finger joints to the layer of contact.
Early in my Rolfing career, I decided to manage my career so that my hands and fingers could go the distance. In high school and college, I was a long-distance runner. I think of long distances. I’ve avoided using my knuckles.
Rolf Working with Client's Foot
LAH: What stands out to me when I look at this image has always been her brooch and the flower in her hair. Also, her clothes look so perfectly sewn for her form. The seam in her pants is crisply down the middle of her knee. I can’t help but impose meaning to these details and think about how she loved vertical lines, that’s why she has these pants with a beautiful midline down the front of the legs.
What stands out to you about Dr. Rolf in this picture where she is working with her client's foot?
DKC: What you’ve mentioned is interesting. Whenever she would teach, she always had the flower in her hair. That was like her trademark. And she very often wore this same brooch.
What I focus on is her face. I don’t exactly remember, but it looks to me as if she was speaking directly to one student, and answering a question. She has such focus, such concentration, and at the same time, she’s working effectively.
LAH: Yes, nice points. The contact with her client is maintained. She’s in contact with herself, with the ground, with that foot, and she’s talking with someone with her face and eyes. She does look to me to be mid-phrase.
Rolf's Profile Portrait
LAH: Let's talk about the photo of Dr. Rolf's portrait [see page 46], a very close view of her. I think it looks like she may be speaking in this photograph as well.
That’s a special thing to capture, to photograph when someone is speaking, the lens could capture an odd part of a verbal gesture. Here, you captured a natural presence of how her face looked when she was talking.
DKC: I can hear that you have really looked at this image. I still get moved when I see it. To me, it shows her vision. She was talking about something, I don’t remember what. I like the look in her eyes, the expression on her face, and the contact that she’s giving to the group.
As I see the picture now, she’s looking beyond the room that we were sitting in, to a much larger space. I feel her inspiration based on her knowledge of connective tissue, comes from a larger space beyond that room.
When I take a portrait, it is a little bit like fishing – waiting and watching. I was constantly looking through the lens of my Leica, which was just an extension of my nervous system. When I took this photo, I sensed I had taken the photograph. I do remember when I clicked this picture, I knew, “This is it.”
LAH: A profound image. The way each hair is perfectly captured, every line on her face telling the story of her life, is all there to be seen.
DKC: Yes, to be imagined.
LAH: It seems to show how open she was about sharing herself.
DKC: Very much so, sharing her wisdom and her knowledge. I see the energy from her eyes and mouth, she is a young, energetic, very bright person that’s talking from this older body. I am reminded of a story I heard. Ken Dychtwald [PhD, American psychologist and author] was privileged to be with Dr. Rolf not long before she died. He said, “I pumped her with questions about her life and the past. She pumped me with questions about what I thought would happen in the future.”
She seemed young and energetic when teaching. It was marvelous the way, in the space of forty-five minutes, she could just seamlessly change the subject. It all seemed to connect. She would talk about the properties of connective tissue, anatomy, human structure, and gravity. Also, she would refer to Alfred Korzybski [(1879-1950); Polish-American semanticist, linguist, scientist] and how his philosophy helped her to look at what’s really there in the client. To not deal with your expectations and what you think is there, look at what’s actually in front of you. Through it all, she would spice in these stories, these anecdotes that were both humorous and relevant to what she was saying. I didn’t experience her as an old lady.
One I remember is – “A traveler asks for directions on how to get to Pittsburgh. An old timer, sitting on his porch replies, ‘If I wanted to get to Pittsburgh, I would not start from here.’”
LAH: That all comes through in that picture. This is a vibrant human who lived a long life.
On page 274 of Rolf’s second edition of Rolfing: Reestablishing the Natural Alignment and Structural Integration of the Human Body for Vitality and Well-Being (1989), (I like saying the whole title to remind myself of the constructs Rolf used), there are a dozen eyes, each from a different client image. The caption reads:
“These pictures show clearly that what our forebears called the ‘windows of the soul’ referred not to the eye itself but to its myofascial framework. They are further evidence of the fashion in which consistent emotional set determines myofascial organization and, in turn, is determined by it.” (Rolf 1989, 274.)
DKC: She is so vivacious, and her voice was so animated.
LAH: Do you prefer working in black and white when taking photographs? And do you have a favorite image of Rolf, between these three?
DKC: This close-up portrait is my favorite. No question about it. When I was a professional photographer, I only worked in black and white. The essence of photography is light, how light reflects off the surfaces. If you’re doing color photography, then you’re really recording color, and the light is much more diluted and diffused. Whereas, with black and white photography, you can easily show the quality of the light, as it’s reflected. The whole grayscale becomes so dramatic. I like black and white films the same way, like The Great Escape. It is so beautiful and dramatic. The viewer can see what happens in the black areas, the shaded areas, and the lighter areas. The black, white, and gray have an impact on people’s unconscious. The gray is where the juice is.
LAH: I love that – the gray is where the juice is. You mentioned that these three photos came from a roll of thirty-six photographs. Do you still have the others? Perhaps they got put in the desk drawer?
DKC: You’re partially right with the desk drawer. In the late 1970s, I decided to give the negatives to the Rolf Institute® [now the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute®] – along with a contact sheet and prints of these three photographs.
Some years later, I was talking with people in the office, and I asked what they did with the negatives. They didn’t know where the negatives were and they couldn’t be found at that time. What happened in the meantime, I don’t know. That’s sort of like your desk drawer.
LAH: Wow, that’s interesting – a lost archive of photos.
I want to share more with our readers about the inspiration for this conversation and article, which came from a mistake I made in our November 2023 issue of Structure, Function, Integration. We put one of your photographs of Rolf on the cover, and I forgot to credit you as the photographer. This error was corrected promptly after you graciously and quickly reached out to inform us about the mistake. I apologize to you for my error.
This article is an essential note for all Rolfers who have benefited from your photography of Rolf. As you said, you have generously given these photos to the members of the Dr. Rolf Institute since the mid-1970s. You asked of us one thing, which we started talking about at the beginning of our chat – we must credit you as the artist for these three photos.
DKC: Yes. The way to credit the photographer is very simple. Just underneath or on either side of the photograph include the following words:
Photo credit: David Kirk-Campbell.
Those four words should be included in all uses in print, digital, and physical products like tee shirts or mugs. This is normal publishing procedure.
LAH: Absolutely. I can see now that I harbored a bias about these three images; they feel like family photos, and I see now that I took them for granted. It feels good to be talking with you, being accountable is learning. That’s why it is a pleasure to meet you! And now that I have this connection with you as a colleague and better understand the origin of these essential images of Rolf, I’m sure I’ll never forget to credit you appropriately now that we have this human connection. I hope it is the same for our readers.
Your email notifying us of the error was kind and straightforward. I’m so grateful for your grace. I love to learn from my mistakes; in this case, it is helpful to make sure Rolfers who also benefit from these images on their websites and print materials know about your role in our history with Dr. Rolf. There is a person behind the photo credit.
DKC's Start with Rolfing Structural Integration
LAH: How did you first encounter Rolfing work? How did you come into this profession?
DKC: In the early 1970s, my wife at the time was receiving psychotherapy, and we were living in a very small apartment in Manhattan, New York. I was teaching photography at Long Island University. My wife’s psychotherapist recommended to her to also have Rolfing sessions. I still remember clearly when she came home from her first Rolfing session. We were sitting on bar stools in the kitchen as she told me about her session. Her voice came more from her diaphragm, her voice was more connected to her body, and her words were more connected to her being. Her change was so obvious. I said to myself, “I want some of that.”
So, I called up Owen James, [trained by Dr. Rolf] and asked for a session. He was booked for six months. So I called Rosemary Feitis and received two sessions with her. When I went to Rosemary for my third session, the doorman told me she was out. Being young and a little bit brash, I called Owen back and told him what happened. He made room for me in his schedule the following week.
So, I was lying on my side. Owen was working with my ribs. A wave came over me, an awareness, ‘I can do this work’, not only do this work, I can do it well.
Ever since then, I’ve been focused on this work. I studied anatomy at the Columbia University Medical School, which had a course for people who weren’t becoming doctors. I was focused like a Samurai shooting a straight arrow, no distractions, no anxiety. Years later, I took the Johnson O’Connor aptitude test and was told I had an off the chart aptitude for seeing and understanding structures in three dimensions. Seeing rotations and compensations from the surface form is very easy for me. From the surface I can visualize restrictions in the connective tissue layers. This visualization of the connective tissue layers was facilitated, because the anatomy professor saw my interest during the group demonstrations with a cadaver. He discreetly said, “If you come in late Saturday afternoons, you can have a torso and thigh to examine/explore.” My career has been easy street.
From New York, to Germany, to Denmark
LAH: I know you’ve worked as a Rolfer in many places. Where did you start, and where did it take you after that? And how did you build a practice in different places?
DKC: First, I worked in New York City. My first few clients had cathartic reactions (overwhelming emotions, laughing, crying, shaking). So I trained as a psychotherapist to be more comfortable with client’s emotions.
A couple of years later, my second wife, who was an opera singer, signed contracts to sing in Europe for two years. So we moved to Frankfurt, Germany. I had to build a practice with absolutely no network.
So, I got the Frankfurt telephone book, looked for psychologists, and wrote a letter inviting 200 psychologists to a lecture/demonstration on two different evenings. I rented a room and moved my table over there. My wife came, as well as a translator, because I didn’t speak any German.
The first night, there were three people in the audience: my wife, the translator, and one other person. I gave the full lecture demonstration as if it were a full audience. Luckily, the one attendee volunteered for the demonstration. She didn’t ask any questions, and she left. Then, I said, “What do I do? Shall I cancel two weeks from now?” I said, “No, I’ll keep the reservation, see what happens.” Two weeks later, the room was full.
Soon, I had a full practice in Frankfurt.
LAH: You told me you also worked in Berlin. How did you build a practice in Berlin?
DKC: That is almost a magical story. The spring before moving to Frankfurt, a friend invited me to attend what turned out to be a large party. As an introvert, I was sitting on a sofa open to see who would sit beside me. A woman from Munich, Germany, sat down. When I mentioned that I was a Rolfer, she invited me to present Rolfing work at a TransActional Psychotherapy Conference in Seefeld, Austria, that summer. Little did I know that she was in charge of programming for the conference.
About sixty people squeezed into the presentation. That night, at dinner, the woman from the sofa said to me, “There’s so much talk about your presentation, will you give it a second time?” I was overwhelmed by the response. Groups from five different cities invited me to come on weekends to do Rolfing [Structural Integration]. I chose Berlin. Many adult clients in Berlin told me that as children they had lost trust in their parents, because their parents would not answer questions about what they were doing during the war.
LAH: That is profound. You have a deep well of experience as a Rolfer. That’s a great practice-building story. Where else have you offered your Rolfing work?
DKC: While living in Frankfurt, a psychoanalyst from Cremona, Italy, invited me to visit professionally. Working with patients from a psychiatric hospital with a translator was intriguing.
Of course, I have had a long connection to Denmark. The story of building my practice in Denmark, actually begins during my practitioner training when [somatics educator and author] Don Johnson was in the advanced class. On a day off, Don asked me to work on his forearms. Years later, Ken Dychtwald, author of Bodymind (1977), asked Don to do the Rolfing for a Body-Mind Scandinavia two-year training which was being organized in Denmark. Don declined giving priority to a book he was writing. Don recommended me to Ken. I said, “Yes.” This led me to travel to Denmark many times in the eighties teaching body reading to psychotherapists. I moved here in 1990 to live with my current wife.
Seek Two Mentors and Develop Your Intention
LAH: Would you have any advice for our structural integration readership from your fifty years as a Rolfer?
DKC: I hesitate with this word, advice. I know what you mean. I will share what has helped me.
After my practitioner class, I definitely wanted supervision, which is now called mentorship. I decided to have two supervisors at the same time. My thinking was, “If I have one, it’ll be easy for me to just try to duplicate what that person’s doing or what they’re telling me. If I have two, they’ll say different things, and then I have to think for myself.”
I had both Rosemary Feitis and Owen James as supervisors. That put me on a fast track to decide things for myself.
I remember a time when I was unsure how to work with the roof of a woman’s mouth. I phoned Owen’s private number. Owen told me what to do as if his fingers were inside the woman’s mouth.
For me, it was very important to train my intention. I realized that Dr. Rolf was using intention. Her intention had a great deal of focus. It wasn’t just her physical force. She seemed to know and project the result she wanted into the client’s tissue. So I wanted my intention to transmit more directly and clearly through my hands into the tissue of the client. There are many different ways to train intention. I chose to train with Dora Kunz in what later came to be called therapeutic touch (Kunz and Krieger 2004). And also learning and practicing the Gurdjieff movements. An unexpected benefit with Dora was that I began to see and understand auras.
A help to me was having access to a cadaver lab as part of the anatomy course I took.
To speak more personally, when I have indications that I am not at peace with my unconscious, I am quick to start psychotherapy again. Indications can include troubled sleep, my hair falling out, my teeth moving so close that dental floss will not pass between, and feces that have an unusual (for me) texture or smell.
LAH: Quite personal! All notes about embodiment – they are helpful recommendations and thoughtful.
Did Dr. Rolf ever talk with you about the images?
DKC: I don’t know if she ever saw them. I like to think she did. I communicated with the Rolf Institute office.
LAH: Here we are, in 2024, and those three photographs are treasures for all of us who do Rolf’s work. Thank you for capturing them for us. Thank you for meeting with me and discussing your photographs of Dr. Rolf. It’s lovely to put a face to the name, now I’ll certainly never forget to credit your photographs.
DKC: You are welcome. It’s been a pleasure talking.
David Kirk-Campbell, MFA has been a Rolfer™ for more than fifty years. He is also a Gestalt Psychotherapist and founder of Touching Dialogue – a body centered psychotherapy. He reads Rumi, makes Ikebana flower arrangements, and writes haiku. He lives and practices in Denmark.
Lina Amy Hack, BS, BA, SEP, became a Rolfer™ in 2004 and is now a Certified Advanced Rolfer (2016) practicing in Canada. She has an honors biochemistry degree from Simon Fraser University (2000) and a high-honors psychology degree from the University of Saskatchewan (2013), as well as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (2015) certification. Hack is the Editor-in-Chief of Structure, Function, Integration.
References
Dychtwald, Ken. 1977. Bodymind. New York: Penguin Publishing.
Kunz, Dora, and Dolores Krieger. 2004. The spiritual dimensions of therapeutic touch. Rochester, Vermont: Bear and Company.
Rolf, Ida P. 1989. Rolfing: Reestablishing the natural alignment and structural integration of the human body for vitality and well-being. Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press.
Keywords
Dr. Ida Rolf; Rolfing Structural Integration; photography; lighting; teacher-student connection; connection; focus; photo credit; practice building; body reading.
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