page_title: Herman V. Wall
section_title: Photography career
hierarchical_section_title: Herman V. Wall / Photography career
caption_attribution_description: English: Lilies at the Bulb Farm
context_page_description: Herman V. Wall was a World War II combat photographer and photographic illustrator. During the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, France, Captain Wall was Commanding Officer of the United States Army's 165th Signal Photo Company. Of the conspicuous heroism Wall displayed to provide much of the Army's initial photographic intelligence in the Omaha Beach landing sector, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote "...a salute to a man whose gallantry, on D-Day, was outstanding on a field when gallantry was the rule."
  During the pre- and post-World War II periods, Wall was a well-known freelance photographic illustrator and a late member of "Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles." His photographs covered six decades, and could be found in international photo salons and well-known magazines such as Time and Life. Notable among his associates were Charles Kerlee and Trevor Goodman.
context_section_description: He’s had his work featured in various magazines throughout his career, including Collier’s, Life, American, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, and Time. Alongside these publications, his photographs were displayed and honored at international photographic salons from Amsterdam to Zagreb.
  After WWII, he moved back to Los Angeles and kept busy with advertising photography and story illustration. He reassumed his association with Charles Kerlee until 1947, when Kerlee moved his business to New York City. Wall then decided to pen his own studio in Los Angeles where he specialized in advertising, industrial and story illustration. In 1946, he was sent to photograph Jan DeGraff’s world-famous Oregon Bulb Farm on assignment for Life Magazine. The magazine published a spectacular double page spread the following April of a field of approximately six million daffodils. This developed into a 35-year friendship with DeGraff, in which he returned each spring to photograph the famous hybrid lilies. This led him to other horticultural assignments and eventually becoming distinguished in this area. Wall gives the rare impression of three dimensions in his photography by blending qualities of light and camera angles.
  In 1958, the International Communications Foundation sent him to the Middle East to shoot illustrations for a series of informational brochures aimed at “Peace Through Education.” He traveled for six months through Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, notably spending time with the Nomadic Bakhtiari tribespeople. The photographs from this assignment are still used worldwide. 
  In 1964, Eastman Kodak honored Wall’s photographs of the hybrid lilies in particular with an exhibition at the New York World’s Fair with a “Special Award for Photographic Excellence,” making him one of the Top 10 Photographers in the United States, according to Kodak. He was highlighted in a professional journal called “Applied Photography” and continued his relationship with Kodak and the editor, William A. Reedy.
  Wall has a way of gripping the senses with an invisible hand and drawing you to them. He relished in the various seasons and the different stories they told. In fact, he shot the landscapes of the Sierra Nevadas for over forty years, in each of the different seasons. Wall believed that the impact of pictures was not accidental and in fact stated, “You make up the rules after you shoot the picture. You just know when it’s right and you shoot it and then you make up the reasons why it works.”
  In 1978, he joined with artist Trevor Goodman, who built scale models of barns and buildings of the Old West. Each year, Wall photographed these models and put out a Christmas card. Over the course of his prolific sixty-year career, Wall never left the house without a camera. He has a knack for capturing moments before they are recognized. His photographs from D-Day can now be seen on display with name credit at The Omaha Beach Museum. After all his time on the battlefield and the many years he spent off of it, it certainly can be said that he’s “Got a good shot.”
  Throughout his career, Wall has worked with many famous people in the industry. Among them was William A. Reedy, senior editor of advertising publications for Kodak’s Professional and Finishing Markets Division and editor of the Kodak quarterly publication, Applied Photography. Reedy and Wall shared a special a special love of the desert and the High Sierras, making these assignments especially fruitful for the pair.
caption: Lilies at the Bulb Farm as featured at the New York World's Fair
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