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Date Cluster About Leo Walmsley Society Resource Page

Maybe the best place to begin if one wanted to know about my father Leo would be to read Shells & Bright Stones: A biography of Leo Walmsley edited by the late Nona Stead in 1988. For my recollections of my father, there’s an essay I wrote  in 2006, and an interview I gave to the Walmsley Society in 2010 (to be uploaded shortly).

And you can explore all of the books that Leo wrote, in a formidable writing career that stretched from 1912 to 1965. Sherry Bishko, my partner and I compiled a complete listing while during the lockdown period of COVID. It’s called the Leo Walmsley Books Resource, and it contains descriptions of each of the books, summaries of their content, reviews, and where you can find copies both from the Walmsley Society as well as online.

 One might reasonably ask why I’ve included my father as an artistic forebear in a website devoted primarily to my abstract photography. I think an easier case could be made for the genes he passed on for my writing, which have been numerous scholarly articles and eight books about the teaching of literacy to schoolchildren (co-written or sole authored) but no novels (yet).  I think what I inherited from him that is germane to my photography was his remarkable ability to paint pictures and narratives in words, and a recent re-reading of all of his books led me to see how important it is for abstract photography to create narratives that intrigue and tell stories that transcend the actual images, and resonate with viewers. Leo had an ‘eye’ for translating his experiences into beautiful images. I have a similar ‘eye’ for translating what I see—in nature especially—into abstract photographic images, although my eyes frequently fail to resonate in completed abstracts with viewers and especially jurors in art competitions, just as they did with my scholarly manuscripts with professional journal reviewers. Resilience eventually paid off in academe, and I’m hoping it’s paying off in photography, too.

What I inherited from my Father