Walter Sheffer
| Walter S. Sheffer | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 7, 1918 Youngsville, Pennsylvania |
| Died | July 14, 2002 |
| Known for | Photography |
| Awards | National Council on Aging 1985 |
Walter S. Sheffer (August 7, 1918 - July 14, 2002) was an American photographer and teacher, born in Youngsville, Pennsylvania. He moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1945 to work at the studio of John Platz, Milwaukee's main society photographer. When Platz retired, Sheffer inherited his clientele and was able to establish his own "look" and very successful portrait studio by 1953. He also taught advanced portraiture at the Layton School of Art from 1952 to 1970.
After attending Houghton College, where he studied history with plans to be a lawyer, Sheffer returned to his hometown of Youngsville, Pennsylvania to teach high school history. He often lectured against war in his class room as World War II escalated. Working for the college year book at Houghton College exposed him to photography and lead him to leave teaching to work as a photographer for a department store in Pittsburgh. He later answered a newspaper ad for a photographer in Wisconsin because he admired the work of Wisconsin architect Frank Lloyd Wright and respected that Capital punishment in Wisconsin was abolished in 1853. He moved to Milwaukee in 1945 without "knowing a soul" to work for the prominent society portraitist John Platz. Inspired by the artistic achievements of Yousuf Karsh, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Emily Dickinson, Sheffer approached portraiture in a poetic and artistic manner working to get close in order to isolate the subject. Using a handheld 35 mm camera, natural side lighting and dramatic darkroom techniques, the portraits he generated out of his own Jefferson Street studio were known as having the "Sheffer look". His portraits of Milwaukee's mid-century social elite, artists and architecture earned him the title "Photographer of Photographers" from the Wisconsin Professional Photographers Association in 1955. His clients included actor Jimmy Stewart, comedian Tallulah Bankhead, and politician Joseph McCarthy who he photographed for Life (magazine). He created the "Portraits of Men" series in the mid-1950s for DuPont, a manufacturer of photographic film and paper, which was destroyed in a fire at his studio. He was president of the Milwaukee Photo Pictorialists and the "Darlot Club" which he once described as the "self-appointed ten best photographers in Wisconsin." The groups favored pictorial style soft focus lenses, and deep shadows in prints. He photographed theater productions extensively for Marquette University from 1955-1968 where many of his works are preserved in a photographic archive. Several of his portraits are also held in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
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