Henry Wessel Jr.

American photographer and educator (1942–2018)

Henry Wessel (July 28, 1942 – September 20, 2018) was an American photographer and educator. He made "obdurately spare and often wry black and white pictures of vernacular scenes in the American West". Wessel produced a number of books of photography. He was the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and three National Endowment for the Arts grants and his work is included in the permanent collections of major American, European, and Asian museums. His first solo exhibition was curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1972 and he was one of ten photographers included in the influential New Topographics: Photographs of a Man Altered Landscape exhibition at George Eastman House in 1975. His work has since been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Wessel was emeritus professor of art at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught from 1973 to 2014.

Wessel was born in Teaneck, New Jersey Throughout much of his career he used only one camera and one type of film: a Leica 35 mm camera with a 28 mm wide angle lens and Kodak Tri X film. His later work did incorporate color. Wessel was emeritus professor of art at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught from 1973 to 2014. Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art wrote, "Wessel's remarkable work, witty, evocative and inventive, is distinctive and at the same time a component part of the great development of photography which flourished in the 1970s. The pictures continue to grow and evolve and the work is now regarded as an individual important contribution to twentieth century American photography. Wessel died at the age of 76 in his home in Point Richmond, Richmond, California from pulmonary fibrosis on September 21, 2018. Under the Big Black Sun: California Art, 1974 1981, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2011. Edited by Elizabeth Hamilton. Here., San Francisco: Pier 24 Photography, 2011. Exhibition guide. About Face, San Francisco: Pier 24 Photography, 2012. Exhibition guide. About Face. San Francisco: Pier 24 Photography, 2014. Exhibition catalog. Edition of 1000 copies. With forewords by Christopher McCall, and Richard Avedon (from In The American West), an introduction by Philip Gefter, and texts by Sandra S. Phillips, and Ulrike Schneider.