Herman V. Wall

Wall resided in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter until his death on January 13, 1997. He has been commemorated by the Major Herman V. Wall Memorial Award, which was most recently presented to Matt Hecht via the Eddie Adams Workshop. UC Riverside Museum of California Photography will be working on an archive project to obtain and maintain his photography in a collection.

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.

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 met his future wife, Ruth Hawks, at Percy Jones Hospital during the year he spent there in rehabilitation. He was told he’d never walk again, but eventually he overcame it with the help of a prosthetic leg. Wall moved back to Los Angeles and re-established his partnership with Charles Kerlee. Wall and his wife welcomed their daughter, Katherine Panatone (nee Wall), in 1951.

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 open 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.

Wall was offered a commission to be an officer at the beginning of World War II. He entered into the United States Army as commanding officer of the 165th Signal Photo Company. While stationed in Chipping Sadbury, England, prior to D-Day, Wall, as commanding officer, had the honor of meeting the Queen Mother, as she reviewed the troops. Three months later, when Captain Wall heard news of the impending invasion of Normandy, he volunteered to go in with one of the first waves. The result of the 165th Signal Corp going into Omaha Beach on the first wave eventually lead to the first photos made public of the landing. Wall retired with the rank of major in 1945.

Wall was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Purple Heart for his services during the Second World War. He retired as a major in 1945.

On June 6, 1944, the Allied Forces came ashore on Omaha Beach. Wall arranged to be one of the first off the boat carrying his 35 mm camera. After snapping a few shots, Captain Wall climbed to higher ground. A shell fell close to him. Shrapnel flew, hitting parts of Wall's body and destroying his left leg. His company sustained heavy casualties, with forty-eight percent of all Signal Corps personnel participating in the invasion being killed, wounded or captured.

In 1936, he was awarded a special Gold plaque in Zagreb, Yugoslavia for his famous print “Weater Beaten” and several Bronze plaques in Amsterdam in 1936, 1937, and 1938. In 1942, Wall won an award at the Art Directors Club of New York's 21st Annual Exhibition for Color Photography in Advertising. General Eisenhower honored Wall with a copy of the book Crusade in Europe, in which he inscribed, “To Captain Herman Wall—With a salute to a man whose gallantry, on D-Day, was outstanding on a field when gallantry was the rule." - Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Wall was one of the late members of the “Camera Picotrialists of Los Angeles” in the 1930s. This pioneer photo group was the first to have international salon exhibits in Los Angeles. Due to his connection with this organization, Wall's prints were honored at the following national and international photographic salons: Internationale Focus Fotosalon, Amsterdam; International Salon Fotografije, Yugoslavia; Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum; Fotosalon van Fotoclub Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium; Philadelphia National, Art Alliance; Toronto Salon of Photography, Toronto, Canada; International Salon, Frankfurt, Germany.

Wall was born the third of five children to Dorly Wall (née Burkhardt) and Wilhelm Wall. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a 1st generation German, alongside his four siblings: Arnold, Dorly, William, and Irma. From a young age, Wall had a propensity for the outdoors; he was especially interested in hunting and fishing. Wall attended Washington High School and played the trumpet in the marching band. In the 1926, he moved to Los Angeles with his family, where he worked at the Hollywood YMCA handing out towels and locker keys.

Herman V. Wall (April 21, 1905 – January 13, 1997) was an American 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 (Supreme Commander of Allied forces in the European Theater of Operations) wrote "...a salute to a man whose gallantry, on D-Day, was outstanding on a field when gallantry was the rule."