Volkmar Wentzel German-American, 1915-2006

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.