Ken Whitmore poses for a portrait in his studio on Feb. 25, 2015.
Ken Whitmire, the widely known Yakima photographer who brought his style of large wall portraiture to prominence and for decades taught his colleagues to elevate their craft, died Saturday in a traffic crash.
He was 86.
Condolences came from across the industry as photographers learned Saturday of his death.
“He absolutely had an international reputation. He is considered an icon in our industry,” said Rob Behm, of Spokane, the incoming president of the Professional Photographers of America.
In January, Whitmire accepted a rare Lifetime Achievement Award from the PPA. He was only the 14th recipient, and the first from Washington state.
Whitmire, who considered the award the pinnacle of his six-decade career, said at the time that photography was more than taking pictures, and he encouraged other photographers to recognize the value of gaining a solid reputation worthy of notice in their communities.
“What makes a professional photographer is like a typewriter to Hemingway,” Whitmire said. “The typewriter puts out exactly what you put in it, just like a camera.”
Whitmire had considered retiring on occasion, but he remained active in the field until his death. His family said he was driving to an art gallery in Ocean Shores that he helped run when he was killed.
“His family will miss him dearly but know that he was doing what he loved up to the last minute. Photography was his passion and he continued working and teaching at the top of his profession,” the family said in a brief statement issued by his daughter, Linda Sellsted of Yakima.
State troopers said Whitmire died at the scene when his Dodge Durango left the road and hit a tree on U.S. Highway 12 about 30 miles east of Morton. The crash happened about 12:30 a.m. Saturday, and the cause remained under investigation.
A native of Oklahoma, Whitmire grew up in several states. He attended Naches Valley High School, where he took photography classes for two years, shot photos for the yearbook and played varsity football. The family moved again before he graduated from high school in 1948.
Whitmire headed off to the University of Washington to major in engineering, but when money became tight, he joined the military in December 1948. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Schools of Photography in 1949, specializing in aerial work.
Following his Navy service, after a stint in carpentry and work in Alaska, he decided to take the plunge into professional photography, realizing that he was spending any spare money on camera gear. He opened his first studio in Yakima in 1956.
He became an early advocate of transferring photos to large pieces of canvas material instead of paper and would go on to make portraiture in that medium his signature style.
As he perfected the craft, he began teaching the method to students who traveled to Yakima for an annual conference that he held starting several decades ago. The most recent Wall Art Conference took place in June.
“Photographers across America are selling wall portraiture because of Ken Whitmire,” said Lance Johnson, a commercial photographer in Yakima.
Whitmire often said that his form of photography harkened back to a time when painters would create large portraits. He taught that the framed photo canvases should be treated as even more valuable than a piece of prized furniture in a family’s living room.
“To me, a successful portrait is one where a total stranger will stop and take a look at it without knowing anyone in it. Something about it has impact,” Whitmire told the Herald-Republic in 2015.
Whitmire’s talent first attracted widespread attention when he shot a series of striking black and white photographs chronicling the building of White Pass Ski Area in the early 1950s. Those pictures have hung for years at the ski lodge, and Whitmire also had pieces prominently displayed at the Yakima Air Terminal and the Black Angus restaurant.
Many also recognized his photos from a regular vendor booth at the Central Washington State Fair and other regional fairs.
Stephen K. Wolfe, a commercial photographer in Yakima, said Whitmire was passionate about both his own photography and teaching others. Wolfe and Whitmire worked together for more than a decade before Wolfe decided to open his own business again in 1999.
“I admired Ken from the beginning, and I could see that what he was doing was not only successful, but it was respected in the community,” Wolfe said.
Whitmire had recently agreed to speak about photography to Wolfe’s students at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Yakima.
Behm, the PPA representative, said Whitmire could often be seen at professional conferences taking notes, even though he was much more experienced than others in the audience. He believed that photographers should never stop learning.
“He just had this love and passion for photography that went far beyond his own work and his own success,” Behm said.
Whitmire’s survivors include his wife, Viola, and three children, Brent Whitmire, of Seattle, and Ward Whitmire and Linda Sellsted, both of Yakima. Both of his sons worked with him in the photography business.
No information has been released about services.
