Photographer Captured California Life in the 1980s From Behind the Wheel

Henry Wessel, Incidents No 5, no date, gelatin silver print. © The Estate of Henry Wessel

A photographer whose fascinating images of everyday life in California — taken from behind the wheel of his car on his daily drive to work — are the focus of a new exhibition.

The Grolier Club, a museum and private club in New York, is presenting a spotlight exhibition of images by acclaimed American photographer Henry Wessel, who passed away in 2018. The exhibit Henry Wessel: Photographs and Books brings together Wessel’s photo series Incidents as well as Traffic series in their entirety, alongside work from several other projects. The exhibition will be on view from September 8 through November 14 in The Grolier Club’s Second Floor Gallery.

Henry Wessel, Traffic No 24, no date, gelatin silver print. © The Estate of Henry Wessel

Wessel’s photographs often focused on ordinary moments rather than staged scenes. His Incidents and Traffic series capture people commuting, socializing, relaxing, and simply going about their day as he explored California. He worked largely on instinct, sometimes photographing through the open window of his car.

‘A Glance was Enough’

Traffic, a series of 28 black-and-white photographs made in the 1980s and issued as a portfolio in 2017, focuses entirely on people in cars, photographed from another car. Wessel commuted from his East Bay home to his teaching job in San Francisco and realized that the morning and evening light gave him an opportunity to photograph while on the road. He adapted his camera for one-handed use because “a glance was enough,” allowing him to photograph from behind the wheel.

Henry Wessel, San Francisco, 1973, gelatin silver print. © The Estate of Henry Wessel

Wessel soon began looking forward to his daily commute, where he found opportunities to photograph the people and scenes around him. For Wessel, photography was an immediate way to capture whatever caught his eye.

“I don’t have an attitude of going out to take pictures. I simply take pictures. If there’s light out and my eyes are open, it’s usually reason enough to be able to work,” Weessel said, according to a press release by The Grolier Club. “It’s the facility that the camera provides that makes photography to me a very vital medium, a very challenging medium and in a sense, a very indulgent medium. The preparation to work is almost nonexistent.”

Meanwhile Wessel’s Incidents portfolio was assembled in 2012 from 27 black and white photographs he made over several decades. None have been published or exhibited before. The images capture brief moments in everyday California life, often in bright sunlight. In Incidents No 5 (undated), for example, passengers in a car appear to emerge from the shadows with each closer look.

As the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation notes, Wessel’s images in Incidents often feel spontaneous but strangely cinematic. Wessel rarely photographed his subjects looking directly at the camera. Instead, he observed them from behind or at close range, often without being noticed. The photographs can resemble scenes from a film, suggesting that something has just happened or might happen next and leaving viewers to imagine what lies beyond the frame.

Henry Wessel, Night Walk, Los Angeles 1995, No.28, gelatin silver print. © The Estate of Henry Wessel

Henry Wessel, Real Estate No 90467, no date, C-print. © The Estate of Henry Wessel

The exhibition also includes photographs from Wessel’s Real Estate and Night Walk projects. Real Estate was his first sustained project in color. He returned to a subject and approach that had interested him from the first roll of film he shot: photographing houses from a car window.

Night Walk began in 1995, when Wessel was walking his dog at night in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He became fascinated by the way artificial light changed the appearance of the surrounding world and began exploring the effect in his photographs.

“The spot lighting of particular areas, the lack of ambient light, the unnatural way that shadows are cast, all take us to an unfamiliar place, a world that is stage-like with its implied drama.”

The exhibition is curated by Grolier Club member Jack Gray from his collection. Gray first met Wessel in 1976, when he was one of the photographer’s undergraduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Gray began collecting Wessel’s work while still a student and a chance meeting 20 years later led to a close friendship between the pair.

Henry Wessel: Photographs and Books will be on view from September 8 through November 14 in The Grolier Club’s Second Floor Gallery.