Walter Chappell; Pioneer in Art Photography

Walter Chappell, 75, a maverick and pioneer in the world of art photography who focused his attention--and his camera--on the wonders of plant life, natural forms and the human body. Born in Portland, Ore., Chappell led something of a nomadic life, moving more than 10 times, building 25 darkrooms and three homes along the way. After serving as a paratrooper in the Army during World War II, Chappell landed in San Francisco where he became associated with some of the great photographers of the day including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston. In the mid-1950s, he followed photographer Minor White to the Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., where he studied printmaking with White and eventually became the center’s curator of prints after White left to pursue his photography. He also became affiliated with Aperture, a photography magazine and publisher. Chappell was the driving force behind the Assn. of Heliographers, a group named after a sun-imagery process developed in the early 1800s by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. The group, which included Paul Caponigro and William Clift, offered primarily abstract studies of nature. Their work was well received in New York galleries in the 1960s. After leaving Eastman House, Chappell returned to the West Coast where he lived in Los Angeles, Big Sur, San Francisco and finally settled in New Mexico. A three-time recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chappell’s nude photography generated the same type of controversy that would later be stirred by Robert Mapplethorpe. In 1990, a federal prosecutor in Maine tried to prosecute Chappell, saying his photograph of a nude father and his son was obscene. The image, which was exhibited in many galleries and reprinted in a book on American nude photography, was seized by federal officials from a woman in Barnet, Vt. The case was later dropped. The iconoclastic Chappell, a poet, painter and musician, revered the darkroom process and, as a result, produced stunning black and white images. On Tuesday in Santa Fe of complications from lung cancer and a lung infection.