Volkmar Wentzel

Volkmar Wentzel

Volkmar K. Wentzel (born 1915 - died May 10, 2006), was a German-born American photographer for 48 years for the National Geographic. He helped preserve the magazine's extensive photography collection.

Early life

Born in Dresden, Germany, he started taking photographs after he made a pinhole camera with the help of his father, a photo-chemist and amateur photographer. The family emigrated to the United States in 1926 to escape the burdens of post-World War I Germany.

Career

In 1935, Wentzel worked as a darkroom technician and news photographer at Underwood and Underwood.

In 1937, after taking a collection of night photographs of Washington, D.C., he was hired as a darkroom assistant at the National Geographic Society. His D.C. night photographs were later published in book form under the title "Washington by Night: Vintage Photographs from the 30's" (with Judith Waldrop Frank) (Starwood Publishing, 1992).

In 1941, Wentzel enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He helped to pioneer an aerial charting system for plotting military targets and served as a photo interpretation officer.

After the war, he traveled by freighter to India, where he used an old army ambulance as a darkroom and mobile headquarters for a 40,000-mile photo survey of the sub-continent. To reach western Tibet, he crossed the Himalayas on foot. His color photographs and motion pictures taken during the last days of the British Raj were among the first of little-known Nepal and the last of India’s feudal splendor.

Wentzel covered postwar Berlin and countries rimming the Atlantic Ocean from Spitsbergen to the Cape of Good Hope, and from Cape Horn to Newfoundland. He traveled in the Cameroons, Mali, Angola, Mozambique and Swaziland. He documented the last of the African kingdoms and of vanished tribal life. His photograph of a New Year’s Eve quadrille at the Spanish Embassy was awarded first prize in the color class by the White House News Photographers Association in 1958.

He was decorated by Austria and knighted by the Portuguese government. His photographs have been exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, U.S. Department of the Interior, Smithsonian Institution, Chicago Camera Club and the Embassies of Austria, Swaziland, Angola, and India in Washington, D.C.

Wentzel gave his own collection of more than 12,000 prints and his darkroom to the Aurora Project, an artists' colony in West Virginia.

External links

* [http://www.wentzelcollection.com/ Wentzel Photographs] This domain name expired. The link does not work.
* [http://www.mastersofphotography.com/directory/vwentzel/wentzel_bio.html More Wentzel Photographs]
* [http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0609/gallery.html National Geographic Magazine]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Wentzel — is a surname, and may refer to:*Gregor Wentzel (1898–1978), German physicist *Stan Wentzel (1917–1991), Major League Baseball player *Sune Wentzel (born 1971), Norwegian frisbeer *Volkmar Wentzel (1915–2006), American photographerWentzel may also …   Wikipedia

  • Volkmar — may refer to:* Volkmar the Grim, a fictional character in the tabletop game of Warhammer * Volkmar Andreae (5 July 1879 in Bern 19 June 1962 in Zürich), was a Swiss conductor and composer * Volkmar Wentzel (1915 10 May 2006), was a German born… …   Wikipedia

  • Night photography — The Night Sky Photographed facing north at 6600ft in the Mt Hood National Forest …   Wikipedia

  • Darlington Memorial Fountain — Artist C. Paul Jennewein Year 1922 Type Gilded Bronze Dimensions 150 cm × 91 cm × 91 cm …   Wikipedia

  • Friedrich Sarre — (* 22. Juni 1865 in Berlin; † 31. Mai 1945 in Babelsberg, Villenkolonie Neubabelsberg) war ein deutscher Orientalist, Archäologe, Kunsthistoriker sowie ein bedeutender deutscher Sammler islamischer Kunst. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Leben und Wirken 2 …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Short-term memory — Short term memory, sometimes referred to as primary, working, or active memory, is said to hold a small amount of information for about 20 to 30 seconds.Estimates of short term memory capacity vary – from about 3 or 4 elements (i.e., words,… …   Wikipedia

  • Deaths in May 2006 — Deaths in 2006 : ← January February March April May June July August September October November December → The following is a list of notable deaths in May 2006. May 2006 31 Carlos Alberto Dias Barreira, 63, Brazilian civilist lawyer and… …   Wikipedia

  • Otto Blumenthal (Mathematiker) — Ludwig Otto von Blumenthal (* 20. Juli 1876 in Frankfurt am Main; † 12. November 1944 in Theresienstadt) war ein deutscher Mathematiker. Leben Er wuchs in Frankfurt auf und war Schüler des Goethe Gymnasiums. Im Alter von 18 Jahren, beeinflusst… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Cutts-Madison House — The west side of the Cutts Madison House on Madison Place NW General information Architectural style American colonial …   Wikipedia

  • Cutts-Madison House — (Westseite) zum Madison Place NW hin Das Cutts Madison House (auch bekannt als Dolley Madison House) ist ein Wohnhaus im Kolonialstil[1] an 721 Madison Place NW in Washington, D.C …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”