My Hand, Scotland, 2005 salt print of a wet-plate photo image 4 x 5
A born experimenter, Bill Westheimer was
raised in Cincinnati and began playing with photographic processes at
age 14. He was introduced to the magic of the darkroom in the mid
1960s and has never looked back at the conventional, average, normal,
and routine approaches to image making.
Beginning with a darkroom in a 3rd floor bathroom, Bill mastered
developing and printing black and white photographs in his teens.
He experimented with making 3-D holograms before he could drive.
Bill also explored high contrast image making, solarization, and other
alternative processes in those early years.
Recent work includes photograms made on collodion glass plates,
Ilfochrome and gelatin silver media. He collaborated on a camera
obscura project with Charles Schwartz documenting the city of New York,
and has recently published several books: Momento, Oddyssey – The Billiad, Manual – The Personalities of Hands and Crickets,
a collaboration with Leonard Seastone of Tideline Press. Bill’s
works are exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and his artists
books are in numerous library collections.
salt print of a wet-plate photo
image 4 x 5
Beginning with a darkroom in a 3rd floor bathroom, Bill mastered developing and printing black and white photographs in his teens. He experimented with making 3-D holograms before he could drive. Bill also explored high contrast image making, solarization, and other alternative processes in those early years.
Recent work includes photograms made on collodion glass plates, Ilfochrome and gelatin silver media. He collaborated on a camera obscura project with Charles Schwartz documenting the city of New York, and has recently published several books: Momento, Oddyssey – The Billiad, Manual – The Personalities of Hands and Crickets, a collaboration with Leonard Seastone of Tideline Press. Bill’s works are exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and his artists books are in numerous library collections.
Bill Westheimer web site