Background

Willard Van Dyke was born on December 5, 1906, in Denver, Colorado, United States.

Education

In 1928, Willard Van Dyke apprenticed with Edward Weston and by 1932 co-founded Group f/64, with Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Weston. Van Dyke soon abandoned still photography, saying in a 1982 documentary based on his life that he did not want to compete with his closest friend, Weston.

Career

Willard Van Dyke employed as an adjunct professor at State University of New York College at Purchase, New York in 1980, he worked as a director for the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film, in New York City from 1965 to 1973.

Willard Van Dyke has been self-employed for most of his life, and also worked as a film director for the U.S. government during World War II. He served as president of International Film Seminars from 1965 to 1972, president of Screen Directors International Guild from 1960 to 1962, and president of the New York Film Council in 1947.

Van Dyke died on January 23, 1986, of a heart attack on his way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was named laureate artist in residence at Harvard. He was 79 years old. Van Dyke is survived by his second wife, the former Barbara Millikin, of New York; a daughter, Alison Van Dyke, of Ithaca, N.Y.; three sons, Peter of New York City; Murray of Santa Fe and Neil of Stowe, Vt., and six grandchildren.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Point of View

    (In this volume appears the best of Ralph Steiner's work o...)

    1978

Membership

In the 1930s, Van Dyke, Adams and Weston created a group they called f.64, after the lens opening providing the sharpest focus. The three developed a revolutionary photographic technique that depended on both sharp and deep focus, rather than on manipulation of a print to make it look like a painting.

Connections

Spouse:

Barbara Millikin

Daughter:

Alison Van Dyke

Son:

Peter Van Dyke

Son:

Murray Van Dyke

Friend:

Edward Weston

colleague:

Ralph Steiner

In 1939, in collaboration with Ralph Steiner, Van Dyke photographed and directed The City, a black- and-white film.

References

• Willard Van Dyke: Changing the World Through Photography and Film Willard Van Dyke worked his way through the twentieth century chasing two elusive muses - photography and film. They were elusive because their powers, reality, and abstraction, are morphic extremes that both exalt and mislead artists who believe that harnessing one will overcome the other. The setting for Van Dyke's life story is thus connected to the story of how these two muses changed the way the world was perceived. Willard Van Dyke stepped into the early twentieth century clamor asking for photography's recognition as an art form. He was among the few to bridge both photography and film in the 1920s. Through his broad-reaching vision, he provided history with significant achievements in both. His works are admired by the practitioners of both mediums, and he is acclaimed in the literature of both fields. He was driven by an insatiable desire to effect change and a compulsion to gain power over systems and ideas in art and society alike. Van Dyke's place in history is securely based largely on works created during the 1930s and 1940s in close association with colleagues like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston in photography, and Ralph Steiner and Pare Lorentz in film. Willard Van Dyke's story is about unrelenting devotion to social consciousness and artistic integrity, draped like thick veils over his own failings and emotional isolation.
• Willard Van Dyke Archive (Center for Creative Photography Guide Series, No. 14) A guide to the archives of Willard Van Dyke housed with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Includes a biographical chronology and the text of Group f/64 manifesto written by van Dyke, as well as lists of his various items of correspondence, writings, publications, etc.
  1992