HENRY WESSEL, THE INTERNATION-
ally acclaimed photographer long associated with San Francisco's vibrant photography scene, died at his home in Point Richmond on September 20th from complications associated with lung cancer. He was 76.
Hank, as everyone called him, meant a tremendous amount to me. In 1975, when I moved to San Francisco, I carried a small Leica camera which had been lent to me by a friend. I took up residence with my brother and a few other students from the San Francisco Art Institute at 2205A Pine Street in San Francisco.
There I met Larry Bair, another aspiring photographer who had studied with Gary Winogrand in Austin, Texas. Winogrand had told him, when he came to San Francisco, to look up Henry Wessel. Larry had been sitting in on Hank‘s classes at the San Francisco Art Institute ever since.
I was relatively new to photography but I was very enthusiastic. Larry took me under his wing and we frequently roamed the city exploring different neighborhoods with our cameras. Before long I was churning out prints in a rudimentary dark room in the basement of 2205A Pine.
When Larry thought I was ready he took me to SFAI and introduced me to Hank. He was very welcoming and happy to have me sit in on his class. I was very shy at first but, after a time, Hank convinced me to bring in some off my photographs for critique.
I was learning so much, so fast. Hank was instrumental not just in teaching me how to process Tri-X film (overexpose it two stops and underdevelop it, to reduce the contrast and preserve the highlights), but how to see and react to the outside world in an unobtrusive way by pre-focusing and raising a rangefinder camera to take a picture all in one stroke.
Taking pictures was all about observation. “Where you stand and when you decide to click the shutter were the only decisions you had to make," Hank would say. All that was required was an eye, an index finger and a camera.
Hank’s advice was staggeringly important to my development, as well as to dozens of other photographers. He encouraged me to photograph, photograph, photograph and then carefully look at the pictures The never-ending fascination was seeing how three dimensional reality turned itself into a two dimensional image.
Talking about pictures was also one of Hank's great fortes, I would marvel how he could make me understand things I had been totally unaware of.
When Gary Winogrand came to town, Hank invited me to put up photographs for Gary’s critique and attend a brunch at his house. He was beyond generous. Who was I—a nobody?—the rest of the crowd were largely graduate students and accomplished photographers.
A few years later Hank suggested I apply to the MFA program in photography at the Art Institute. I was very surprised and didn’t think it was possible, I had never enrolled in college before but Hank convinced me I could do it. Amazingly I was accepted and Hank, of course, became my official advisor.
I also began working for Hank, developing his negatives and making contact sheets. In exchange he gave me copies of his photographs, which I still cherish. Hank was always very, very generous and always offered more pictures than I was expecting.
For financial reasons I was once forced to sell one of his photographs to a collector I met. She chose the famous image of the ice sign in the middle of a rocky desert. A few days later, however, she came back with a complaint.
“Hank was very sloppy,” she said, pointing out that there was a rather large hair that had not been spotted on the print. Not thinking much of it, I went ahead and spotted out the hair, or at least what I thought was a hair. She was happy.
Later when I related the story to Hank, he informed me that it was not a hair at all but a piece of bent iron rebar discarded in the desert. He found this hysterically funny and we both had a good laugh (see "hair" in top photo extreme lower right).
A week ago, I emailed Hank to tell him how much I appreciated his advice and guidance as a teacher, and how I often thought of him while editing my photographs. When I had last seen him, a few years before, he was extolling the virtues of scanners as a great way to look at contact sheets, and I had finally gotten around to getting one.
A few days later I heard he had died in his sleep.
Hank was a fantastic human being, an extremely generous and supportive person, a Zen master with a camera, a great mentor and teacher. He will be deeply mourned.
Nicholas Blair is a New York-based cinematographer, photographer and filmmaker, who does everything from high-end television to indie docs and can be reached .Posted on Sep 25, 2018 - 04:47 PM