John Wimberley

Wimberley's photographs have appeared in over 70 exhibitions, multiple publications, and over 500 collections. He received the 2010 Oliver Rock Art Photography Award for his self-published book of American Indian rock art titled Evidence of Magic.

Because many petroglyphs are very faint images on the surface of rock, the contrast range of photographs of these petroglyphs must be expanded in order to show the petroglyph image in a satisfactory way. To accommodate this requirement, Wimberley modified his WD2D+ film developer formula to function better when expanding the contrast range of negatives. The result of this work was WD2H+. In 2009, Wimberley's WD2H+ film developer formula was published in the third edition of The Darkroom Cookbook.

In 2005, Wimberley moved to Ashland, OR where he currently resides.

In 2000, Wimberley began photographing rock art in the desert area known as the Pahranagat Valley, near Ash Springs, Nevada. He made photographs in this region until 2007. Wimberley has also photographed rock art in the area surrounding Moapa, Nevada, in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California and in the Warner Uplands of eastern Oregon. To date, he has made more than 6,000 photographs of petroglyphs in these four regions.

Brooks Jensen, Interview With John Wimberley, Lenswork, November - December, 2000, 53 - 66.

Wimberley has a longstanding interest in American Indian shamanism. This interest, combined with a chance encounter with an American Indian petroglyph, or rock art, in Nevada in 1999 led him to focus almost exclusively on photographing American Indian rock art.

In 1987, Wimberley licensed the formula for his WD2D+ film developer to Photographer's Formulary. WD2D+ is an improved version of his WD2D film developer. Photographer's Formulary sells a pre-mixed version of this film developer.

To reach the remote sites where Wimberley makes rock art photographs, he has modified a 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon Syncro with off-road tires, upgraded suspension and brakes, a bed, a kitchen, and a 24-gallon water tank. This equipment enables him to spend 10 to 14 days in a remote area, with little or no contact with other humans. This method of working is an important part of Wimberley's approach to photography.

In November 1985, Wimberley photographed on the North and South islands of New Zealand. In June 1986, he spent a month photographing counties Clare and Galway in Ireland.

In 1985, and again in 1987, Wimberley was invited to exhibit his photographs alongside those of Ansel Adams in two-man shows. Wimberley is the only photographer who has shared two exhibits with Adams.

Wimberley has continued to create black-and-white landscape photographs, but after 1980 he also explored other genres of photography.

In 1969, while photographing in Canyon Del Puerto, California, Wimberley "saw that physical objects, such as trees, also have a tangible and real spiritual dimension that can be perceived." After this experience, he began working exclusively with black-and-white film because he felt that, "black and white photography had the potential to embody and communicate the spiritual aspect of things."

A significant part of Wimberley's experimentation was in the area of film developers. In 1969, he began experimenting with the forgotten photographic developing agent Pyrogallol. In 1977, Petersen Photographic published Wimberley's formula for WD2D, a pyrogallol-based film developer. He says, "When I first made black and white prints I could not attain the tonal characteristics I could see in my mind. WD2D gave me the tonal characteristics I needed to best communicate what I needed to communicate." WD2D is similar to other pyrogallol-based film developers because it promotes high sharpness and granularity while smoothing grain using a dye mask. However, WD2D differs from older pyrogallol-based film developers like the ABC Pyro formula used by Edward Weston because WD2D is designed to work well with modern, single-emulsion black-and-white films.

In 1966, Wimberley completed his service to the Navy and began to work as an electronics technician in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was part of the engineering team that developed the Smith-Kline Instruments Ekoline 20 which was the first diagnostic ultrasound machine used for medicine. He continued to devote large amounts of time to photography.

From 1966 to 1969, Wimberley used color transparency film and a handheld camera to photograph in San Francisco. In particular, he photographed the hippie culture that was concentrated in the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco at that time.

In August 1963 he enlisted in the United States Navy.

John Wimberley was born in Paget, Bermuda and then moved to Alameda, CA in 1948 where he lived until 1963. At age 13, Wimberley had a boundary-dissolving experience while sitting in a bathtub. Regarding this experience, he says, "I found myself to be the entire universe. After that experience, I realized very deeply that in this life I wanted to examine, if you will, the nature of reality."

John M. Wimberley (born July 1945) is an American photographer and artist. He has photographed extensively in the American west. His body of work also includes figurative work of women underwater, and a large number of photographs of American Indian rock art.