The Daisy Lady is still surrounded by flowers.
Paula Adrian was introduced to Columbian readers on May 19, 1974, in one of the most provocative photographs we’ve ever published.
The color photo on Page 1 of the Sunday paper showed her posing topless in a field of daisies; the flower petals covered just enough to leave readers wondering what exactly they could see in the image.
Many readers were incensed, and some canceled their subscriptions; other readers were amused.
And the woman in the photograph? “I’m still surrounded by daisies,” said Adrian, who’s 62 now.
These days, she is part of a family floral business — Flowers by Adrian — in Everett. When a reporter called the shop recently, Adrian was cutting stems off sunflowers, which was an interesting echo of the flowers on that Sunday cover.
Adrian and former Columbian photographer Geoff Borden, her then-boyfriend, were driving back to Vancouver when the field north of San Francisco inspired the portrait.
The photograph was just another image in Borden’s portfolio for a year or so. Then, as spring rolled around again, Borden showed it to another Columbian photographer and it came to the attention of Co-Publisher Jack Campbell. (Jack, who died in 1978, was the uncle of current Publisher Scott Campbell.)
Adrian gave Borden her OK to run the photograph, she said.
Steve Small was The Columbian’s photo editor back then. Now a Florida resident, Small recalled how the photograph made it into print.
“Geoff showed it around. I don’t remember who brought it to Jack’s attention,” Small said. “We had an editors’ meeting to talk about it. I voted against running it. I didn’t think it had news value.”
However …
“Jack Campbell loved it, and Jack won,” Small said. “Once we decided to run it, I picked the size, but that was it.”
There was another facet to the photo that offset (pun alert) its lack of newsiness.
“That was our first color picture on A1 with our Goss offset presses,” Small said. “I’m sure we ran bad AP color, but that was the first one that showed people how well we were going to reproduce color.”
When it appeared — on Mother’s Day — it was accompanied by an eight-word caption: “Cloudless sky, sun’s warmth, field of flowers. Spring.”
“As I said, there was very little news value to the shot,” Small said. “What could you say?”
Readers had a lot to say, which caught Borden and Adrian by surprise.
“Neither one of us had any idea of the ruckus” in store, Adrian said. “To us, it was just a nice spring picture: a pretty picture, and we didn’t think anything of it.”
When the photo appeared, “I was working at the Vancouver library,” Adrian said. “I was concerned I might lose my job.”
But her name wasn’t used, and nobody recognized her, Adrian said.
“I was pregnant with my daughter — who’s 41 now — and I looked totally different” than her year-old photograph.
As the public discussion of her image ensued, “It was like watching it from the outside,” with no personal role in the conversation, she said.
The Columbian printed 183 letters to the editor before we called a halt to the topic: 92 writers liked the photo, and 91 hated it. About 100 more letters arrived after the deadline.
People found other ways to voice their opinions, including phone calls and face-to-face encounters.
“I was still shooting, and every time I went out in public, I got comments,” said Small, who was our photo editor from 1964 to 1983. “I took some heat, and some thought we were very brave to run it.”
