Henry Wessel, Jr.

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 which helped to define the New Topographics genre. 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.

Life and work 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.

Exhibitions Solo 1972–1973: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 1987: International Museum of Photography, Osaka, Japan 1998: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. 2007: Henry Wessel: Photographs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA. 2007: Henry Wessel, Die Photographische Sammlung, SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, Germany. 2014–2015: Incidents, Tate Modern, London.

Group 1975: New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. 1983: Twentieth Century Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan. 1989: Picturing California: A Century of Photographic Genius, Oakland Museum, CA. 1991: Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 1993: Critical Landscape, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan. 1996: Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West 1849 to the Present, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA. 2000: Walker Evans & Company, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 2003: Looking at Photographs, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. 2005: Amerikanische Street Photography, Stadtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany. 2005: Garry Winogrand and American Street Photographers Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Joel Meyerowitz, and Henry Wessel, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2009: Into the Sunset Image of the American West, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2011–2012: Focus: Los Angeles, 1945–1980, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. 2011–2012: Under the Big Black Sun: California Art, 1974–1981, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA. 2011–2012: Here., Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA (May 2011 – January 2012) 2012–2013: About Face, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA (May 2012– April 2013)

Awards 1971: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1975: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. 1977: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. 1978: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California California Historical Society, San Francisco, California Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Museum of Modern Art, New York City National Gallery of Art, Washington DC National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California Oakland Museum of California, California Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington Tate Modern, London Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Victoria and Albert Museum, London