Fearless Genius. The Digital Revolution 1985-2000 by Doug Menuez

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Doug Menuez

For photographer Doug Menuez, the most creative period in the career of Steve Jobs, the man who gave the smartphone to 200 million Americans, was a noble cause that reset the trajectory of the human race. To illustrate, he recalls a moment as he ended a talk on the computer revolution in Silicon Valley during of the late-1980s and early-1990s.

I had one guy stand up at one of my lectures, Menuez says. He started crying and said he would go home, quit his job and start doing something important with his life.The Silicon Valley story is one of blood, guts and money. It’s about the future of the human race, and we have to have a voice.

Ivan Barnett, gallery director at Patina, created the photography exhibition as a complement to The Santa Fe Opera’s world premiere of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs on Saturday, July 22, 2017. The opera, which explores the life and work of Jobs, is the highly anticipated work of composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell.

The exhibition represents 15 years of work that led Menuez to publish the book Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley, 1985-2000 in 2014. The book, published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, presents an intimately revealing portrait of Jobs at the most critical time in his life.

When I arrived in Silicon Valley, the innovators were confident they would succeed at building something important, Menuez recalls. As I watched, I began to think, ‘Wow, there is a chance they could change everything.’ The power of ideas took over everything.

How did Menuez become a Silicon Valley expert and gain such bold insights? His journey began in 1985, when Menuez was in search of a project and Jobs was in search of outlet for his vision of technology. Jobs set Menuez up on the inside to watch the digital revolution unfold over the next 15 years.

Menuez’s project covered the critical years of Jobs’ exile from Apple and became the definitive treatment of the Silicon Valley boom. Menuez’s new Patina Gallery exhibition presents images and stories that are the day-to-day account of the Silicon Valley innovators who changed the world.

People know of Steve Jobs, Menuez says. Now with this exhibition they get to see inside his world. There is a romantic side: the sense of mission, a noble cause, the human side I think that’s missing in our culture today.