BULLOCK, WYNN

born April 18, 1902, Chicago died Nov. 16, 1975, Monterey, Calif., U.S. U.S. photographer, influential in portraying a psychological reality beneath the fastidious realism of his photographs. Bullock's early work, mainly solarizations, in which the image is partly negative and partly positive, was strongly influenced by the avant-garde experiments of Moholy-Nagy (18951946). In 1948, however, Bullock met Edward Weston, a photographer who persuaded him that realism and tonal beauty were photography's most valuable assets. Bullock followed Weston's teachings strictly, and much of his work closely resembles Weston's. Often, however, Bullock's realistic images are meant to be viewed as equivalents, photographic images that serve as visual metaphors. In Bullock's work, the metaphors usually refer to the passing of time and the inevitability of death. Occasionally, those themes are treated surrealistically in such prints as Child in the Forest (1954), one of two of Bullock's photographs that introduced The Family of Man exhibition.