Bradford Washburn

Ansel Adams called him a "roving genius of mind and mountains." Traveling the world for eight decades, mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer, Bradford Washburn has documented the landscape from, the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest.

Born in 1910, Brad had an early interest in photography, and by the time he was sixteen he was serious about taking pictures. As a child he suffered from hay fever, and while on a trip to Europe, with his family to do some climbing he found that the symptoms disappeared at high altitudes. Climbing and hiking became the relief from hay fever and combined with his interest in photography he began the focus of an extraordinary career in mountain photography.

Bradford Washburn served as director of the Boston Museum of Science for nearly forty years. He has produced numerous award-winning maps, including those of Mount Everest, Mount McKinley, the Grand Canyon, Mount Washington, and New Hampshire's Presidential Range. He performed pioneering research in the areas of aerial film, wireless communications, cold-weather search and rescue procedures for the United States Army Air Forces, and cold-weather survival techniques.

In 1999, a traveling exhibit of Washburn's photographs was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Clifford Ackley, curator of Prints Drawings and Photographs at the Museum, says this about Washburn's photographs. "While retaining their historical documentary value, they can nevertheless be appreciated for their surprising, sometimes dizzying, spaces; for the intricate interplay of light and shadow over pristine blankets of snow; for their revelation of natural textures and patterns of startlingly abstract beauty. Some of his photographs with their exhilarating, godlike overview of vast spaces convey a sense of infinity, while others, lacking a horizon, are tantalizingly disorienting, the actual scale of the subject or even its identity not being immediately apparent."

Bradford Washburn is exclusively represented by Panopticon Gallery, recently moved to 435 Moody Street, Waltham Massachusetts 02453. For information please call 781-647-0100.

This exhibit was arranged with the cooperation of Anthony Decaneas, Panopticon Gallery.
All images copyright © Bradford Washburn 1999.