Volkmar Wentzel
Encyclopedia
Volkmar Kurt Wentzel was a German American
photographer and cinematographer
. He worked for nearly 50 years for the National Geographic Society
as a darkroom technician and photographer, and his professional and personal work was highly acclaimed. He was one of the first people to take photographs of then-little known country of Nepal
, and was noted for documenting the final years of many of the traditional tribal kingdoms of Africa.
) and his wife, Verna Jatho Wentzel.
His father was an amateur photographer who sold photographic chemicals. Dr. Wentzel was also a friend of the photochemical pioneer Hinricus Lüppo-Cramer, and preserved much of Lüppo-Cramer's work after his death. Volkmar Wentzel later said his father would sometimes punish his sons by making them take a "time-out
" in his photographic darkroom
, but that Volkmar soon learned to love the space. "This was a terrifying, almost traumatic experience, until by accident, with the flick of the darkroom's amber-red inspection light switch, the magic world of photography, my lifetime love, was revealed," he later said. When Wentzel was nine years old, he and his father built a wooden pinhole camera
and his first photographs were of statues in the Grosser Garten
near their home.
Post-World War I Germany was ravaged by economic and political dislocation. Dr. Wentzel was offered a job as director at an Ansco
photographic paper manufacturing plant in Binghamton, New York
, so the family moved to the United States in 1926.
Wentzel's mother died in 1931, and his father (burdened with a demanding job, and writing books on photographic materials) became unable to adequately care for his four teenage sons. Wentzel and a friend, Bill Buckley, sold some personal items, pooled the money they had earned from their newspaper home delivery jobs, and decided to settle in South America. They dropped out of high school and departed Binghamton in February 1934, arriving in D.C. after three days of walking and hitchhiking. Naïvely intending to spend the night with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, they walked through the deserted grounds and to the north entrance of the White House only to find that the president was not in residence. They slept that night in a YMCA
at Farragut Square
. But when they awoke in the morning to find their bedroom full of cockroaches, the boys divided their money (each received $70) and parted. Although Buckley said he was returning to Binghamton, Wentzel rented a room in the Lafayette Square townhouse of Roosevelt aide Thomas Gardiner Corcoran
.
Wentzel soon moved to West Virginia
. While staying at Corcoran's home, he met German-born architect Eric Menke (who had come to D.C. to work on a proposed Municipal Center), who told Wentzel about a burgeoning artists' colony
in Aurora, West Virginia
. The colony offered to pay Wentzel $2.50 a week to care for the cabins and studios on the property; he accepted, and moved to Aurora in the summer of 1935.
, and a lodge and studios (of various sizes, and constructed of various kinds of materials) in the nearby woods. Among the artists, diplomats, philosophers, and writers staying at the colony were the painter Robert Gates and his wife, the physician David Lindsay Watson, the psychiatrist Sigurd Graven and his wife, and the former Latvia
n diplomat Arved Kundzin. Menke suggested that, to make ends meet, Wentzel use the Voigtländer
camera his father had given him to photograph the local area and make postcard
s for sale. Wentzel converted an old pump house
across Route 50 from the tavern into a darkroom, although light leaking through cracks in the walls, around the door, and from the ceiling forced Wentzel to primarily use it at night.
During his stay in Aurora, Wentzel finished high school. Local artist Tom Hood argued that Wentzel should abandon high school in order to help with a national puppetry tour being organized by some Aurora theater people. But an architect friend in Aurora encouraged Wentzel to stay in school, and he did.
At first, Wentzel bartered his photographs for food. But it was not until First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt
stopped at the tavern and bought three of Wentzel's postcards that Wentzel felt he had a career in photography. (Roosevelt was on her way to Arthurdale, West Virginia
. This was a newly built experimental community she had sponsored which taught destitute coal miners subsistence farming
. It also taught them local art, craft, and musical traditions so that these traditions might be preserved, the miners might sell crafts for sale, and to create a reason for tourists to come to the town.)
portraiture and news agency studio. (He later described the job as a "sweat shop
".) He was mentored by news photographer Clarence Jackson, and one of his first assignments (to take portraits of the wife of the French ambassador) was published in the Washington Star
newspaper. His superiors were so impressed that they gave him a Speed Graphic
camera for his own use.
His daytime job left Wentzel little opportunity to take photographs. However, he took courses in photography at the Corcoran School of Art
and had several mentors at Underwood & Underwood. His friend Eric Menke bought Wentzel a copy of Paris de Nuit (Paris By Night), a book of nighttime photographs of Paris
by the renowned Hungarian photographer Brassaï
. Inspired by Brassaï's work, Wentzel began taking photographs of Washington, D.C., by night, sometimes staying up until dawn to learn night photography techniques and find new ways to photograph well-known buildings and landmarks. Wentzel submitted some of these prints to the Royal Photographic Society
in early 1936, and over the next six months they were displayed in galleries throughout Europe—winning several prizes.
In late 1936, while passing the National Geographic Society, Wentzel decided on the spur of the moment to ask for a tour of their photographic facilities. The request was granted, and Wentzel toured the lab with his photographs of the city under his arm. The employee giving the tour told Wentzel he was quitting, and Wentzel applied for the position after the tour ended. The personnel director was initially dismissive of Wentzel's interest in the job, but was impressed with the awards his photographs had won. He was granted a job interview, and offered a position in the photography lab in late December 1936.
Only a darkroom technician, Wentzel did not have to wait long before he had the opportunity to become a photographer for the Society's magazine. In late 1937, a photographer working on an article on West Virginia was pulled from that assignment and sent to Europe. Due to his familiarity with the state, Wentzel was ordered to complete the photographic assignment. Several of his images appeared in the August 1940 issue of National Geographic. Over the next 48 years, Wentzel was the photographer for 35 stories in National Geographic, and photograph and author for another 10. Wentzel left the magazine at the outbreak of World War II and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps
, where he was assigned photo interpretation
duties. He served a portion of his service on the island of Okinawa.
Returning to his job after the war, Wentzel received a number of important assignments. One of his first assignments was to conduct a photographic survey of India. He transformed a U.S. Army ambulance into a mobile darkroom, and traveled more than 40000 miles (64,373.6 km) throughout the subcontinent. He crossed into Tibet
on foot and by animal. His photographs were some of the first of then-little known Nepal, and some of the last of feudal India. While in Nepal, he also shot a motion picture, "Exploration in Nepal," which was the first film to be taken in that region. He later traveled widely around the globe, photographing people and landscapes in Angola
, Cameroon
, Cape Horn
, Mali
, Mozambique
, Newfoundland
, Norway
, South Africa
, and Swaziland
. He was one of the last photographers to document the fast-vanishing African kingdoms and their still largely intact tribal life. By the time he retired, he was one of the magazine's most widely traveled photographers. Not all of his travels took him far from home, however. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Wentzel was one of a small number of photographers and reporters who realized that the president's body would arrive at the White House early in the morning of November 23. Wentzel photographed the arrival of Jacqueline Kennedy
and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy
at about 4:20 AM as they and a Marine honor guard escorted the president's coffin from the ambulance into the White House.
In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Wentzel became an advocate for saving, preserving, and archiving National Geographic's photographic negatives, plates, and prints, many of which were being lost due to damage (such as improper storage or pests) or because untrained staff didn't realize their value and destroyed them to obtain filing space. Wentzel was named Director of the National Geographic Society Photographic Archives, and put in charge of the preservation and archive effort—which helped save more than 10 million images and artworks.
Wentzel retired from National Geographic in 1985. In 1981, he and his wife purchased farm and farmhouse (built in 1868) near his original property in Aurora. He and his wife lived in their farm house as well as at a home at 3137 N Street NW in Washington. In 2001, he helped co-found the Aurora Project, an artist-in-residence program in West Virginia, where painters, writers and musicians are given time and space to work. The donation included his long-time darkroom on his original 13.5 acre property.
Wentzel produced photographs for himself as well as for the National Geographic. During his lifetime, he created more than 12,000 of his own images. Wentzel's photography was exhibited by the Corcoran Gallery of Art
, Metropolitan Museum of Art
, Royal Photographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution
, the Washington Center for Photography, and the West Virginia Cultural Center, among others. His prints have also been displayed in numerous private galleries around the world, and have sold for thousands of dollars each.
His photographic works also won awards. In 1950, the White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA) awarded one of his photos third place in the "Personalities" category. His 1958 photograph of a quadrille
on New Year's Eve
at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C., won first place from WHNPA. On August 16, 1960, an automatic camera of Wentzel’s captured Captain Joseph Kittinger
making a 102,800 foot (31,333 m) skydive
which set the record for the highest parachute jump of all time. WHNPA also gave this image a first prize. In 2003, the state of West Virginia named him one of 55 "History Heroes" for helping to document, preserve, and promote the state's history.
Wentzel's work is highly acclaimed. Fellow National Geographic photographer Thomas Y. Canby called him an innovative, brilliant, "great man". Jane Livingston, chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, said his career was a "prolonged, quiet unfolding of genius." Among his more notable photographic articles were:
His photographs were also featured in three books:
Wentzel was often asked how he managed to put his subjects at such ease while photographing them. He observed that he read as many ethnographic
studies of a region as possible, to avoid making culturally insensitive errors. He also tried to pick up a few words of the local language, and be as courteous as possible. He said that he often made friends with the people he was photographing. "After we got to be friends, I would just back up and take the picture. That was a good part of my technique," he said. He also brought a small musical box
along with him, which helped to ease suspicion and win friends (especially among children). His choice of equipment also influenced his style. Wentzel told an interviewer in 1999 that, while in Africa, he used only lightweight 35 mm
film cameras such as a Nikon
or an Olympus OM-2
. For more formal portraits, however, he used an 85mm portrait lens and Kodachrome
film. When printing his photographs, he preferred the Ilfochrome
process (which turned photographic slides into prints) and the gelatin silver print process
.
Wentzel married Viola Kiesinger, daughter of German Chancellor
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
. The couple had three children: Cecilia, Christina, and Peter. Wentzel died of a heart attack
on May 10, 2006, at Sibley Memorial Hospital
in Washington, D.C.
German American
German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...
photographer and cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
. He worked for nearly 50 years for the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
as a darkroom technician and photographer, and his professional and personal work was highly acclaimed. He was one of the first people to take photographs of then-little known country of Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, and was noted for documenting the final years of many of the traditional tribal kingdoms of Africa.
Early life
Wentzel was born February 8, 1915, in the city of Dresden in what was then the Kingdom of Saxony (now Freestate of Saxony) in Germany. He was one of four boys born to Dr. Fritz Gustav Wentzel (a chemistChemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
) and his wife, Verna Jatho Wentzel.
His father was an amateur photographer who sold photographic chemicals. Dr. Wentzel was also a friend of the photochemical pioneer Hinricus Lüppo-Cramer, and preserved much of Lüppo-Cramer's work after his death. Volkmar Wentzel later said his father would sometimes punish his sons by making them take a "time-out
Time-out (parenting)
A time-out involves temporarily separating a child from an environment where inappropriate behavior has occurred, and is intended to give an over-excited child time to calm down and thereby discouraging such behavior. It is an educational and parenting technique recommended by some pediatricians...
" in his photographic darkroom
Darkroom
A darkroom is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive photographic materials, including photographic film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been created and used since the inception of photography in the early 19th century...
, but that Volkmar soon learned to love the space. "This was a terrifying, almost traumatic experience, until by accident, with the flick of the darkroom's amber-red inspection light switch, the magic world of photography, my lifetime love, was revealed," he later said. When Wentzel was nine years old, he and his father built a wooden pinhole camera
Pinhole camera
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture – effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box...
and his first photographs were of statues in the Grosser Garten
Herrenhausen Gardens
The Herrenhausen Gardens , located in Lower Saxony's capital of Hanover are made up of the Great Garden , the Berggarten, the Georgengarten and the Welfengarten. The gardens are a heritage of the Kings of Hanover.The Great Garden has always been one of the most distinguished baroque formal gardens...
near their home.
Post-World War I Germany was ravaged by economic and political dislocation. Dr. Wentzel was offered a job as director at an Ansco
Ansco
Ansco was the name of a photographic company based in Binghamton, New York, which produced inexpensive cameras for most of the 20th century. It also sold rebadged versions of cameras made by other manufacturers, including Agfa and Chinon...
photographic paper manufacturing plant in Binghamton, New York
Binghamton, New York
Binghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers...
, so the family moved to the United States in 1926.
Wentzel's mother died in 1931, and his father (burdened with a demanding job, and writing books on photographic materials) became unable to adequately care for his four teenage sons. Wentzel and a friend, Bill Buckley, sold some personal items, pooled the money they had earned from their newspaper home delivery jobs, and decided to settle in South America. They dropped out of high school and departed Binghamton in February 1934, arriving in D.C. after three days of walking and hitchhiking. Naïvely intending to spend the night with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, they walked through the deserted grounds and to the north entrance of the White House only to find that the president was not in residence. They slept that night in a YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
at Farragut Square
Farragut Square
Farragut Square is a city square in Washington, D.C.'s Ward 2. It is bordered by K Street NW on the north, I Street NW to the south, and on the east and west by segments of 17th Street NW, and it interrupts Connecticut Avenue NW...
. But when they awoke in the morning to find their bedroom full of cockroaches, the boys divided their money (each received $70) and parted. Although Buckley said he was returning to Binghamton, Wentzel rented a room in the Lafayette Square townhouse of Roosevelt aide Thomas Gardiner Corcoran
Thomas Gardiner Corcoran
Thomas Gardiner Corcoran was one of several Irish American advisors in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's brain trust during the New Deal, and later, a close friend and advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson....
.
Wentzel soon moved to West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
. While staying at Corcoran's home, he met German-born architect Eric Menke (who had come to D.C. to work on a proposed Municipal Center), who told Wentzel about a burgeoning artists' colony
Art colony
right|300px|thumb|Artist houses in [[Montsalvat]] near [[Melbourne, Australia]].An art colony or artists' colony is a place where creative practitioners live and interact with one another. Artists are often invited or selected through a formal process, for a residency from a few weeks to over a year...
in Aurora, West Virginia
Aurora, West Virginia
Aurora is an unincorporated census-designated place in Preston County, West Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 201. Aurora was originally a German settlement. The town was originally called Salem and later Mount Carmel...
. The colony offered to pay Wentzel $2.50 a week to care for the cabins and studios on the property; he accepted, and moved to Aurora in the summer of 1935.
Beginnings in Aurora
The artists' colony in Aurora consisted of a log cabin tavern on U.S. Route 50U.S. Route 50 in West Virginia
U.S. Route 50 in West Virginia runs from the border with Ohio to Virginia, passing briefly through Garrett County, Maryland, and following the Northwestern Turnpike. Prior to the U.S. Highway System it was West Virginia Route 1 and in the 1930s, the road was not finished in Maryland...
, and a lodge and studios (of various sizes, and constructed of various kinds of materials) in the nearby woods. Among the artists, diplomats, philosophers, and writers staying at the colony were the painter Robert Gates and his wife, the physician David Lindsay Watson, the psychiatrist Sigurd Graven and his wife, and the former Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
n diplomat Arved Kundzin. Menke suggested that, to make ends meet, Wentzel use the Voigtländer
Voigtländer
Voigtländer is an optical company founded by Johann Christoph Voigtländer in Vienna in 1756 and is thus the oldest name in cameras. It produced the Petzval photographic lens in 1840, and the world's first all-metal daguerrotype camera in 1841, also bringing out plate cameras shortly afterwards...
camera his father had given him to photograph the local area and make postcard
Postcard
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope....
s for sale. Wentzel converted an old pump house
Pumping station
Pumping stations are facilities including pumps and equipment for pumping fluids from one place to another. They are used for a variety of infrastructure systems, such as the supply of water to canals, the drainage of low-lying land, and the removal of sewage to processing sites.A pumping station...
across Route 50 from the tavern into a darkroom, although light leaking through cracks in the walls, around the door, and from the ceiling forced Wentzel to primarily use it at night.
During his stay in Aurora, Wentzel finished high school. Local artist Tom Hood argued that Wentzel should abandon high school in order to help with a national puppetry tour being organized by some Aurora theater people. But an architect friend in Aurora encouraged Wentzel to stay in school, and he did.
At first, Wentzel bartered his photographs for food. But it was not until First Lady
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
stopped at the tavern and bought three of Wentzel's postcards that Wentzel felt he had a career in photography. (Roosevelt was on her way to Arthurdale, West Virginia
Arthurdale, West Virginia
Arthurdale is an unincorporated community in Preston County, West Virginia, United States. Arthurdale was named for Richard Arthur, former owner of the land on which it was built, who had sold the land to the federal government under a tax default....
. This was a newly built experimental community she had sponsored which taught destitute coal miners subsistence farming
Subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye...
. It also taught them local art, craft, and musical traditions so that these traditions might be preserved, the miners might sell crafts for sale, and to create a reason for tourists to come to the town.)
Washington, D.C.
Encouraged by Roosevelt's purchase, Wentzel moved back to Washington, D.C., in 1935. Once more, he rented a room in a townhouse on Lafayette Square. He received a job as a darkroom technician (at $12.50 a week) with the Underwood & UnderwoodUnderwood & Underwood
Underwood & Underwood was an early producer and distributor of stereoscopic and other photographic images, and later was a pioneer in the field of news-bureau photography....
portraiture and news agency studio. (He later described the job as a "sweat shop
Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...
".) He was mentored by news photographer Clarence Jackson, and one of his first assignments (to take portraits of the wife of the French ambassador) was published in the Washington Star
Washington Star
The Washington Star, previously known as the Washington Star-News and the Washington Evening Star, was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C. between 1852 and 1981. For most of that time, it was the city's newspaper of record, and the longtime home to columnist Mary McGrory and...
newspaper. His superiors were so impressed that they gave him a Speed Graphic
Speed Graphic
Produced by Graflex in Rochester, New York, the Speed Graphic is commonly called the most famous press camera. Although the first Speed Graphic cameras were produced in 1912, production of later versions continued until 1973; with the most significant improvements occurring in 1947 with the...
camera for his own use.
His daytime job left Wentzel little opportunity to take photographs. However, he took courses in photography at the Corcoran School of Art
Corcoran College of Art and Design
The Corcoran College of Art and Design, , founded in 1890, is the only professional college of art and design in Washington, DC, located in the Downtown area. The school is a private institution in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art.The Corcoran Gallery of Art is Washington's first and...
and had several mentors at Underwood & Underwood. His friend Eric Menke bought Wentzel a copy of Paris de Nuit (Paris By Night), a book of nighttime photographs of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
by the renowned Hungarian photographer Brassaï
Brassaï
Brassaï was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars...
. Inspired by Brassaï's work, Wentzel began taking photographs of Washington, D.C., by night, sometimes staying up until dawn to learn night photography techniques and find new ways to photograph well-known buildings and landmarks. Wentzel submitted some of these prints to the Royal Photographic Society
Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society is the world's oldest national photographic society. It was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the Art and Science of Photography...
in early 1936, and over the next six months they were displayed in galleries throughout Europe—winning several prizes.
In late 1936, while passing the National Geographic Society, Wentzel decided on the spur of the moment to ask for a tour of their photographic facilities. The request was granted, and Wentzel toured the lab with his photographs of the city under his arm. The employee giving the tour told Wentzel he was quitting, and Wentzel applied for the position after the tour ended. The personnel director was initially dismissive of Wentzel's interest in the job, but was impressed with the awards his photographs had won. He was granted a job interview, and offered a position in the photography lab in late December 1936.
Career at National Geographic
Wentzel's first day at National Geographic was January 2, 1937. Two months after he started at National Geographic and in celebration of Wentzel's high school diploma, Wentzel's father gave him $135 to buy 13.5 acres (5.5 ha) of land near Aurora. Wentzel built a home on the property in 1973, and lived there and in Washington, D.C., for the rest of his life.Only a darkroom technician, Wentzel did not have to wait long before he had the opportunity to become a photographer for the Society's magazine. In late 1937, a photographer working on an article on West Virginia was pulled from that assignment and sent to Europe. Due to his familiarity with the state, Wentzel was ordered to complete the photographic assignment. Several of his images appeared in the August 1940 issue of National Geographic. Over the next 48 years, Wentzel was the photographer for 35 stories in National Geographic, and photograph and author for another 10. Wentzel left the magazine at the outbreak of World War II and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
, where he was assigned photo interpretation
Aerial photographic and satellite image interpretation
Photographic interpretation can be defined as: “the act of examining photographic images for the purpose of identifying objects and judging their significance” ....
duties. He served a portion of his service on the island of Okinawa.
Returning to his job after the war, Wentzel received a number of important assignments. One of his first assignments was to conduct a photographic survey of India. He transformed a U.S. Army ambulance into a mobile darkroom, and traveled more than 40000 miles (64,373.6 km) throughout the subcontinent. He crossed into Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
on foot and by animal. His photographs were some of the first of then-little known Nepal, and some of the last of feudal India. While in Nepal, he also shot a motion picture, "Exploration in Nepal," which was the first film to be taken in that region. He later traveled widely around the globe, photographing people and landscapes in Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
, Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
, Cape Horn
Cape Horn
Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...
, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
, Mozambique
Mozambique
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
, Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, and Swaziland
Swaziland
Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...
. He was one of the last photographers to document the fast-vanishing African kingdoms and their still largely intact tribal life. By the time he retired, he was one of the magazine's most widely traveled photographers. Not all of his travels took him far from home, however. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Wentzel was one of a small number of photographers and reporters who realized that the president's body would arrive at the White House early in the morning of November 23. Wentzel photographed the arrival of Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
and Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
at about 4:20 AM as they and a Marine honor guard escorted the president's coffin from the ambulance into the White House.
In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Wentzel became an advocate for saving, preserving, and archiving National Geographic's photographic negatives, plates, and prints, many of which were being lost due to damage (such as improper storage or pests) or because untrained staff didn't realize their value and destroyed them to obtain filing space. Wentzel was named Director of the National Geographic Society Photographic Archives, and put in charge of the preservation and archive effort—which helped save more than 10 million images and artworks.
Wentzel retired from National Geographic in 1985. In 1981, he and his wife purchased farm and farmhouse (built in 1868) near his original property in Aurora. He and his wife lived in their farm house as well as at a home at 3137 N Street NW in Washington. In 2001, he helped co-found the Aurora Project, an artist-in-residence program in West Virginia, where painters, writers and musicians are given time and space to work. The donation included his long-time darkroom on his original 13.5 acre property.
Family, death, and legacy
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, Royal Photographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, the Washington Center for Photography, and the West Virginia Cultural Center, among others. His prints have also been displayed in numerous private galleries around the world, and have sold for thousands of dollars each.
His photographic works also won awards. In 1950, the White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA) awarded one of his photos third place in the "Personalities" category. His 1958 photograph of a quadrille
Quadrille
Quadrille is a historic dance performed by four couples in a square formation, a precursor to traditional square dancing. It is also a style of music...
on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C., won first place from WHNPA. On August 16, 1960, an automatic camera of Wentzel’s captured Captain Joseph Kittinger
Joseph Kittinger
Joseph William Kittinger II is a former Command Pilot and career military officer in the United States Air Force. He is most famous for his participation in Project Manhigh and Project Excelsior, holding the records for having the highest, fastest and longest skydive, from a height greater than...
making a 102,800 foot (31,333 m) skydive
Parachuting
Parachuting, also known as skydiving, is the action of exiting an aircraft and returning to earth with the aid of a parachute. It may or may not involve a certain amount of free-fall, a time during which the parachute has not been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal...
which set the record for the highest parachute jump of all time. WHNPA also gave this image a first prize. In 2003, the state of West Virginia named him one of 55 "History Heroes" for helping to document, preserve, and promote the state's history.
Wentzel's work is highly acclaimed. Fellow National Geographic photographer Thomas Y. Canby called him an innovative, brilliant, "great man". Jane Livingston, chief curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, said his career was a "prolonged, quiet unfolding of genius." Among his more notable photographic articles were:
- "Washington, D.C.: The Nation's Capital by Night" (National Geographic, April 1940).
- "Atlantic Odyssey: Iceland to Antarctica" (National Geographic, December 1955)
- "History Awakens at Harpers Ferry" (National Geographic, March 1957).
- "The White Horses of Vienna" (National Geographic, September 1958)
- "Life in Walled-Off Berlin" (National Geographic, June 1961)
- "Mozambique: Land of the Good People" (National Geographic, August 1964)
His photographs were also featured in three books:
- Washington By Night, (1992) edited by James Goode.
- Odysseys and Photographs: Four National Geographic Field Men: Maynard Owen Williams, Luis Marden, Volkmar Wentzel, Thomas Abercrombie, (2008) by Leah Bendavid-Val.
- In Focus: National Geographic Greatest Portraits, (2010) by the editors of National Geographic.
Wentzel was often asked how he managed to put his subjects at such ease while photographing them. He observed that he read as many ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
studies of a region as possible, to avoid making culturally insensitive errors. He also tried to pick up a few words of the local language, and be as courteous as possible. He said that he often made friends with the people he was photographing. "After we got to be friends, I would just back up and take the picture. That was a good part of my technique," he said. He also brought a small musical box
Musical box
A music box is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and called carillons à musique...
along with him, which helped to ease suspicion and win friends (especially among children). His choice of equipment also influenced his style. Wentzel told an interviewer in 1999 that, while in Africa, he used only lightweight 35 mm
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
film cameras such as a Nikon
Nikon
, also known as just Nikon, is a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include cameras, binoculars, microscopes, measurement instruments, and the steppers used in the photolithography steps of semiconductor fabrication, of which...
or an Olympus OM-2
Olympus OM-2
The Olympus OM-2 was a single-lens reflex system camera produced by Olympus of Japan.-Main Features:The Olympus OM-2 was an aperture priority automatic camera , based on the earlier, successful Olympus OM-1 body...
. For more formal portraits, however, he used an 85mm portrait lens and Kodachrome
Kodachrome
Kodachrome is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009.-Background:...
film. When printing his photographs, he preferred the Ilfochrome
Ilfochrome
Ilfochrome is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the reproduction of slides on photographic paper. The prints are made on a dimensionally stable polyester base, essentially a plastic base opposed to traditional paper base...
process (which turned photographic slides into prints) and the gelatin silver print process
Gelatin silver print
Gelatin silver prints were the dominant photographic process nearly from the period of their introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when they were eclipsed by consumer color photography. As such, the gelatin silver or black-and-white print represents a primary form of visual documentation in the...
.
Wentzel married Viola Kiesinger, daughter of German Chancellor
Chancellor of Germany
The Chancellor of Germany is, under the German 1949 constitution, the head of government of Germany...
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger was a German politician affiliated with the CDU and Chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 until 21 October 1969.-Early career and wartime activities:...
. The couple had three children: Cecilia, Christina, and Peter. Wentzel died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
on May 10, 2006, at Sibley Memorial Hospital
Sibley Memorial Hospital
Sibley Memorial Hospital is a non-profit hospital located in NW Washington D.C.. It is fully accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and is licensed by the District of Columbia Department of Health and Human Services. The hospital specializes in surgery,...
in Washington, D.C.
External links
- Volkmar Wentzel Collection - official Web site
- Aurora Project
- "Honoring Volkmar Wentzel." Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, United States House of Representatives, February 17, 2005 - video of a commemoration
- "Remembering Kurt." National Geographic Magazine. September 2006 – an online retrospective of some of his photographs
- "Volkmar Wentzel Papers, 1947-1994." Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution.