Background
Wynn Bullock was born in 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Wynn Bullock was born in 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
He studied music and voice in New York City in preparation for a career as a concert singer, then attended Columbia University in New York City (1923) to further his general education. Bullock studied pre-law at West Virginia University, Morgantown, from 1933 to 1936 and enrolled as a law student at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 1938. He left law school to study photography formally at Art Center in Los Angeles.
A freelance photographer from 1967 until his death, Bullock taught at Institute of Design in Chicago (1967), Monterey Peninsula College (1959-60), and San Francisco State College, where he headed the Photography Department from 1945 to 1958. He ran photo concessions at Ford Ord, California (1943-44), and at Camp Cooke, California (1942-43), and worked for Lockheed and then Connors-Joyce until the end of World War II. Bullock ran a commercial and portrait photography studio in Los Angeles in 1941.
Between 1946 and 1948 he received patents in the United States, Canada and Great Britain for his "Photographic Process for Producing Line Image," a method of controlling the line effect of solarization. He also earned a second U.S. patent for "Methods and Means for Matching Opposing Densities in Film."
Bullock was one of the subjects of the Fred Padula film, Two Photographers - Wynn Bullock and Imogen Cunningham (1966).
He believed that, though an image is recorded for its own qualities, ultimately it "evokes a stream of consciousness about something that is not directly related to that thing. . . ." He further stated, "I think we have to evoke new symbols . . . that expand our minds so that we may be more at home in this scientific and terrifying age we live in."
PUBLICATIONS Monographs: Wynn Bullock, intro, by David Fuess, 1976; Wynn Bullock; Photography, A Way of Life, Barbara Bullock-Wilson, 1973; Wynn Bullock, Barbara Bullock, 1971. Books: Dialogue with Photography, Paul Hill & Thomas Cooper, 1979; Darkroom 1, Eleanor Lewis, ed., 1976; The Photograph as Symbol, 1976; Photographers on Photography, Nathan Lyons, ed., 1966; The Widening Stream, Richard Mack, 1965; This is the American Earth, Ansel Adams & Nancy Newhall, I960; The Big Sur- Highway One from Monterey to Mono Bay, Emil White, ed., 1954. Anthologies: The Photograph Collector's Guide, Lee D. Witkm & Barbara London, 1979.
Bullock belonged to ASMP, Carmel Camera Society, Professional Photographers of Northern California, Monterey Arts and Humanities Council, Masons, Camera Craftsmen and was a trustee and exhibition chairperson of Friends of Photography.
Wynn Bullock studied photography at Art Center in Los Angeles, where he was greatly influenced by Edward Kaminski.
In 1940-41, Bullock studied briefly with semanticist Alfred Korzybski and was deeply impressed by the man's basic principle that "the word as symbol is not the thing symbolized."
Bullock was also strongly influenced by Edward Weston, whom he met in the late 1940s.
