Wallace W. Kirkland

Background

Wallace was born on August 4, 1891, at Retreat Plantation, Orange Bay, Jamaica, nowadays British West Indies, Kirkland, United Kingdom.

Education

In 1923 Wallace received a degree in sociology from George Williams College in Chicago, Illinois, the United States.

Career

The young Kirkland was an apprentice for the Jamaican Government Railway in 1904, then worked in a hard-rubber factory in New Jersey in 1905. He worked for five years in a small-town grocery store and was in charge of the explosives department at DuPont in Pompton Lakes. Kirk land served for a time as a YMCA outpost secretary, traveling the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa uprising (World War I). After completing his schooling, he became Boys' Club Director for Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago (1921-36), during which time he became interested in photography. He freelanced for such publications as Field and Stream, Outdoor Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine, Country Beautiful, the New York Herald Tribune, and Life. He did school, farm, and industrial photography for Life from 1937 until he became a staff photographer for the magazine in 1942, where he remained until 1967 Kirkland also taught photography at a Saugatuck, Michigan, art school and at Fish Creek, Door County, Wisconsin.

Wallace was active in many press photography groups in Chicago and New York. Kirkland's photo of Jane Addams is at the U.S. Children's Bureau in Washington, D.C. Fourteen of his photographs of the poorhouse in Evansville, Indiana, won him an honorable mention for picture sequence at the Encyclopaedia contest in 1951 They were also shown by the Milwaukee Art Institute in its "Seven States Show" and purchased by the institute for its collection. As a World War II correspondent, he traveled throughout the South Pacific. Early in his career, he did photographs for private school catalogs, but his more artistic efforts were of nature.

Achievements

• Kirkland was known for his Life photographs of famous personages such as Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, General MacArthur, Harry Truman, and Paul Robeson.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A walk by the pond 1971
  • A walk in the woods 1971
  • A Walk by the Seashore 1978
  • The lure of the pond 1969
  • Shenshoo: The Story of a Moose 1954