VOLKMAR WENTZEL

ABOUT THE WORK

Washington Monument is a photographic print taken by German American photographer Volkmar Wentzel in 1936 and published as a lithograph in 1996. Wentzel took this classical portrait of the Washington Monument between two columns of the Lincoln Memorial when he was twenty-one and only a year into his professional career. Around that time, a friend gave him a copy of Paris at Night, a book of nighttime photographs of Paris taken by the famous Hungarian photographer Bressaï. These works inspired Wentzel, so while working at the Washington Star newspaper and taking courses at Washington, DC's Corcoran School of Art, he roamed the capital at night, taking photos and honing his craft. Wentzel would repeatedly photograph the same landmarks, experimenting with different angles and exposures. He then submitted this portfolio, titled Washington by Night, to the Royal Photographic Society, which awarded Wentzel for the collection and exhibited the works in galleries throughout Europe. Wentzel parlayed this acclaim into a job at the prestigious National Geographic Society, which published the works in their April 1940 magazine. Later, in 1992, they were exhibited and published as a book by the Corcoran School of Art and printed in two series of lithographs, in 1996 and 2000.

Wentzel took this photograph of the Washington Monument with a 4x5 Speed Graphic camera, printing the original at the storied Underwood & Underwood in New York City. Under the photographer's auspices, this lithograph was printed with digital pigment on Arches Aquarelle watercolor paper and published in 1996 by David Adamson Editions in Lorton, Virginia.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Volkmar Wentzel (1915-2006) was born in Dresden, Germany, to a chemist father who also worked as an amateur photographer. Growing up, Wentzel would spend time in his father's dark room, playing with the various lights and photochemicals. This experience piqued his desire to become a professional photographer, but his family's relocation to the US in 1926 disrupted this trajectory. Seeking to escape the country's postwar turmoil, the family settled in Binghampton, New York, where Wentzel quickly became a disillusioned teenager. He dropped out of high school and hitchhiked to Washington, DC, before landing at an artist colony in West Virginia. He subsisted by taking photographs and selling them as postcards. However, when Eleanor Roosevelt visited the area and purchased three, Wentzel decided to turn his hobby into a career.

Wentzel returned to Washington, DC, in 1935 and achieved acclaim just a year later for his Washington at Night portfolio. He then became a photographer at the National Geographic Society, where he would work for the next 48 years. Wentzel photographed thirty-five stories for National Geographic and authored another ten photo essays. He also took assignments in places that had been little explored, such as Nepal, Newfoundland, and Swaziland. His only hiatus was during his WWII military service, which stationed him in the Pacific and where he assumed photographic duties for the Army. Upon returning to the Society, Wentzel also undertook numerous domestic assignments and was one of the few photographers permitted to capture the return of John F. Kennedy's casket to Washington, DC.

During his extensive career, Wentzel's photographs received numerous awards and were exhibited at The Met, the Royal Photographic Society, and the Smithsonian Institute. And after many of his negatives were recklessly destroyed at the National Geographic Society, Wentzel devoted his later years to advocating for and administering the preservation of over 10 million images in its photographic archives.