- Volkmar Wentzel
Volkmar K. Wentzel (born 1915 - died
May 10 ,2006 ), was a German-born Americanphotographer for 48 years for theNational 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 theNational 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 westernTibet , he crossed theHimalayas on foot. His color photographs and motion pictures taken during the last days of theBritish Raj were among the first of little-knownNepal and the last of India’sfeudal splendor.Wentzel covered postwar
Berlin and countries rimming theAtlantic Ocean fromSpitsbergen to theCape of Good Hope , and fromCape Horn to Newfoundland. He traveled in the Cameroons,Mali ,Angola ,Mozambique andSwaziland . 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 theWhite House News Photographers Association in 1958.He was decorated by
Austria and knighted by the Portuguese government. His photographs have been exhibited in theMetropolitan Museum of Art , theCorcoran Gallery of Art , U.S.Department of the Interior ,Smithsonian Institution ,Chicago Camera Club and the Embassies of Austria, Swaziland, Angola, and India inWashington, 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]
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