John Wimberley

John Wimberley was born in Bermuda in 1945 and moved to Alameda, California in 1948, where he lived until he enlisted in the United States Navy in 1963. In the Navy, John was trained and served as an Aviation Electronics Technician. He first began to explore photography using color film on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier during his tours in the Vietnam War. After his discharge from the Navy, Wimberley returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as an electronics technician for Smith-Kline Instruments in Palo Alto, pursuing his photography during lunch hours on nearby Coyote Hill (1975)..

Coyote Hill, 1975

As a photographer, Wimberley is self-taught, never having had instruction in camera use or photographic processing. He used books, experimentation, and persistence to teach himself to expose and develop negatives and print photographs. His first darkroom was in the closet of his studio apartment in East Palo Alto, California, where he processed sheets of film in trays on the floor.

In 1969, while photographing in Canyon Del Puerto, California, Wimberley "saw that physical objects, such as trees, also have a tangible and real spiritual dimension that can be perceived." After this experience, he began working exclusively with black-and-white film. At that time he felt that "black and white photography had the potential to embody and communicate the spiritual aspect of things."

In support of the spiritual dimension in his photography, Wimberley has studied actively and continuously. His interests and influences are in the areas of metaphysics and shamanism, including the works of Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda. Wimberley’s method includes active and deep meditation, and his studies and expertise have qualified him as a Tarot reader and yoga instructor in addition to his life as an artist and photographer.  

Starting in 1969, Wimberley spent more than fifty years away from color photography. He resigned from Smith-Kline Instruments at the beginning of 1981 and has made his living as an artist ever since.

Crater Lake, 1977

With his emphasis on clarity, his use of large-format negatives, and his focus on the grandeur of the American West, Wimberley’s landscapes can be viewed as a continuation of the tradition of Group f/64 from a generation before. Indeed, Wimberley knew and interacted with Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and others associated with that tradition, even to the point of having two two-person shows with Adams in the 1980s, but Wimberley was not an adherent or follower of any group. He has continued to produce iconic landscape images throughout his career, from Crater Lake, 1977 and Racetrack Valley, 1981 to Casa Diablo #1767, 2019. In many of these, clouds above a sharp horizon serve to suggest a scene that extends well beyond the scenery.

In the early 1980s, in an abrupt departure from landscape, Wimberley made a series of images of a friend of his in an acquaintance’s swimming pool. These photographs, made both under water and looking down from above the surface, form a distinct portfolio. By far the most famous of these, and the most famous and most sought-after of his entire catalog, is Descending Angel, 1981 .

Owens Valley #39, 1996

In 1985 and 1986, Wimberley traveled to New Zealand and Ireland. The portfolios from these trips are small, including such images as Wreck of the Ranga, 1986 , but the impact of his travels was significant. Impressed by the expanded sense of time and human habitation—the standing stones and ancient rock walls—Wimberley returned with newfound interest in the impact of past cultures on his native land. From the late 1980s, Wimberley began to explore abandoned mining camps and ghost towns, such as Owens Valley #39, 1996 , then in 1999 transitioned to photographing Native American rock art sites, a subject he has not turned from since.

Camping for weeks at time in his VW van, Wimberley ranged across Eastern Oregon, the Great Basin, and Owens Valley. He continued to make images of the surrounding landscape, but an increasingly prolific body of work focused on the rock art itself. Into the early 2000s he continued his devotion to black and white large format negatives, such as Bitter Ridge #7, 2002, but in 2018 closed up his darkroom and pivoted entirely to digital color images (Lone Grave Butte #2258, 2018).

Bitter Ridge #7, 2002

In pursuit of the clarity and tonal characteristics Wimberley demanded of his black and white work, from the beginning of his career he undertook research and experimentation with the chemistry of film developing. His inquiry focused on Pyrogallol or “pyro,” a compound popularized a century prior, but which had fallen out of favor as unreliable. In 1977, the first fruit of Wimberley’s research was published by Petersen Photographic Magazine in his formula for WD2D, a new pyrogallol-based film developer. WD2D is similar to earlier formulas in the way it promotes high sharpness and smooth tonalities. However, WD2D differs from older pyro developers like that used by Edward Weston because WD2D is formulated to work well with modern single-emulsion black-and-white films.

Wimberley continued to push the limits of the medium, and in 1987, Wimberley licensed the formula for his WD2D+ developer to Photographer's Formulary. WD2D+ is a specialized version of his WD2D. Photographer's Formulary continues to sell both of Wimberley’s pyrogallol formulas.

Wimberley’s extensive work photographing petroglyphs and other rock art across the American West challenged the limits of film developing even more. Because many petroglyphs consist of extremely faint images on the surface of rocks, the tonal range must be expanded to represent the petroglyph in a satisfactory way. To accomplish this, Wimberley modified his WD2D formula to function better when greatly expanding the contrast range of his negatives. The result of this work was WD2H+. In 2009, the formula for Wimberley's WD2H+ film developer was published in the third edition of The Darkroom Cookbook.

Lone Grave Butte #2258, 2018

In the decades before and after 2000, Wimberley developed and taught more than two dozen sessions of his workshop titled “Sight & Insight”. Each workshop consisted of two full days of guided exercises, explorations, and discussions intended to help photographers expand and deepen their selections of and relationships with their photographic subjects. Exercises included field trips and experiments with point of view and scale. The goal was to relax intention and foster radical presence and the ability to follow “flirts” or inclinations to look elsewhere. Technical expertise and the equipment itself were not topics of discussion; Wimberley insisted the technology not interfere with the photographer’s absolute presence and sense of having permission from the subject. In the workshops after 2000, Wimberley was helped by his assistant, the photographer Ann Quinn.

• San Francisco from Mt. Tamalpais, 1977
• Crater Lake, 1977
• Dunes and Horizontal Ripples, 1979
• Racetrack Valley, 1981
• Descending Angel, 1981
• Lough Bunny, 1986
• Wreck of the Ranga, 1986
• Carmel Valley from Hall’s Ridge, 1993
• Landscape for Two Ravens, 1995
• Owens Valley #39, 1996
• Bitter Ridge #7, 2002
• Lone Grave Butte #2258, 2018
• Casa Diablo #1767, 2019

Evidence of Magic: Photographs 1999-2008: Petroglyphs of the Great Basin

A Metaphysic of Light: Photographs 1970-1988

Dreaming at the Edge: Photographs 1989-2013

Gestures to the Spirit: Photography and Beyond (extended interview conducted by writer Stephen Quinn)

My Home is a Place of Light (photographs by John Wimberley; poems by Stephen Quinn)

John Wimberley, American Master: A Metaphysic of Light. A Robert L Burrill Film (60 min.)

Camerawork Gallery, Portland, Oregon

WBB Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland

LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, Oregon

Bullivant Gallery, St. Louis, MO

LightBox Photographic Gallery, Astoria, Oregon

Viewpoint Gallery, Sacramento, California

Bullivant Gallery, St. Louis, MO

Joel B. Garzoli Fine Art, San Francisco, California

Harvey Milk Photography Center, San Francisco, California

Foothill College, Cupertino, California

Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon

Gallery of Classical Photography, Moscow, Russia

Carnegie Museum of Art, Oxnard, California

Point Light Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Joel B. Garzoli Fine Art, San Francisco, CA

LightBox Gallery, Astoria, OR

Point Light Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Seattle Municipal Tower Gallery, Seattle, WA

PhotoCentral, Hayward, CA

Benham Gallery, Seattle, WA (two-person show with Ann Quinn)

Viewpoint Gallery, Sacramento, CA

Rogue Gallery, Medford, OR

The Creativity Center, Bainbridge Island, WA

422 Gallery, Phoenix, AZ

Hackettstown Art Museum, Hackettstown, NJ

Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR

University of Portland, Portland, OR

Camerawork Gallery, Portland, OR

Paul Paletti Gallery, Louisville, KY

Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

Soulcatcherstudio.com, Santa Fe, NM

John Cleary Gallery, Houston, TX

Rare Images, Mount Shasta, CA

Silver State Gallery, Reno, NV

LensWork Gallery, Anacortes, WA

The Ansel Adams Gallery, Yosemite, CA

David Ashcraft Gallery, Oakhurst, CA

Lightworks Gallery, Sacramento, CA

The Ansel Adams Gallery, Pebble Beach, CA

Mumm Gallery, Napa Valley, CA

Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Monterey, CA

Julia's Gallery of Photography, Lexington, KY

Shapiro Gallery, San Francisco, CA

The Silver Image Gallery, Seattle, WA

Seipp Gallery, Palo Alto, CA 1990

Shapiro Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, GA

Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Zurich, Switzerland

J. J. Brookings Gallery, San Jose, CA (2-person show with Ansel Adams)

De Anza College, Cupertino, CA

The Photographer's Gallery, Palo Alto, CA (2-person show with Ansel Adams)

Galerie Tabula, Tübingen, Germany

Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA

Fitzgerald Gallery, San Francisco, CA

University of Alabama, University, AL

Photography West Gallery, Carmel, CA

Mancini Gallery, Houston, TX

The Photographers' Gallery, Palo Alto, CA

Boston Visual Artists Union, Boston, MA

Museum of Contemporary Arts, Houston, TX

Collector's Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA

Utah State University, Logan, UT

Markham Gallery, San Jose, CA

Pacific Light Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA

Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID

Markham Gallery, San Jose, CA

Collector's Gallery, Pacific Grove, CA

Studio/Performance Gallery, Palo Alto, CA

Image Photo, New York, NY

University of Arizona, Tempe, AZ

Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR

Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA

Darkroom Workshop/Gallery, Berkeley, CA

Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR

Shado' Gallery, Oregon City, OR

New Roses Gallery, Palo Alto, CA

Camerawork Gallery, Saratoga, CA

Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA