Walter Chappell

Walter Landon Chappell (June 8, 1925 – August 8, 2000) was an American photographer and poet, primarily known for his black and white photography of landscapes, nature, and the human body.

Early life

Chappell was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1925, the son of a contralto mother who was a singer with the Portland Symphony Choir. His father was a train engineer, and was of part-Native American descent, descending from the Umatilla people. Chappell spent his early life on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeastern Oregon, until the family returned to Portland when he was three years old. Chappell attended Benson Polytechnic High School, and studied musical composition at the Ellison-White Conservatory of Music.

Career

Chappell was a constant presence in American black and white imagery among other noted photographers Minor White, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston, with whom he studied. Chappell was curator of prints and exhibitions at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, from 1957 to 1961 and was affiliated with Aperture Magazine founded by Minor White in 1952.

Chappell left the George Eastman House in 1961, to settle in Wingdale, New York, with noted painter and artist, Nancy Chappell (then Nancy Barrett Dickinson). Soon after building their home, a fire destroyed their house and nearly all of Chappell's photographic work to date, including photographic negatives and their corresponding prints. In the early 1960s, he was a co-founder of a group of seven photographers who called themselves "The Heliographers": Chappell, Paul Caponigro, Carl Chiarenza, William Clift, Marie Cosindas, Nicholas Dean, Paul Petricone.