Willard Van Dyke (December 5, 1906 – January 23, 1986) was an American filmmaker and photographer who believed that photography could have a major influence on the world.
Willard Van Dyke apprenticed with Edward Weston in 1928 and co-founded the Group f/64 in 1932 with Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Weston. The group believed in sharp-focus, "straight photography."
In 1935, Van Dyke moved to New York City and began making documentary films with the belief that films "could change the world." His name soon became synonymous with social documentary in the U.S. His images of cotton fields, steel mills and industrial towns, and his portraits of unemployed factory workers and their families, provide an invaluable chronicle of those years and have become timeless examples of cinematic art. He was a cinematographer on Pare Lorentz's The River (1938).
The City, his 1938 collaboration with Ralph Steiner, ran for two years at the 1939 New York World's Fair. During World War II, he produced propaganda movies for the government. In 1948, Van Dyke made the documentary film The Photographer about Edward Weston.
He successfully fought attempts to blacklist him during the 1950s. Van Dyke was director of the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art from 1965 to 1974.
In 1967 he was a member of the jury at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1960 he was nominated for an Academy Award in the Category of Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects for: Skyscraper (1960); shared with Shirley Clarke and Irving Jacoby.
In 1978, Van Dyke was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
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“The legend of Felix is ended, the toiling of Felix is done;
The Master has paid him his wages, the goal of his journey is won;
He rests, but he never is idle; a thousand years pass like a day,
In the glad surprise of Paradise where work is sweeter than play.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)
“We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Rocked in the cradle of the deep
I lay me down in peace to sleep;
Secure I rest upon the wave,
For Thou, O Lord! hast power to save.”
—Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)
“Don’t you hear his cannons roar?
We’ll be Orangemen no more
Says the Shan Van Vocht.”
—Unknown. The Shan Van Vocht (l. 10–12)
“Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plow the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)