Willard Van Dyke

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Willard Van Dyke (5 December 1906 - 23 January 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 cottonfields, steelmills 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.