Turning Back the WPPI Clock 30 - 50 years!

Bottom row: David Bentley and Terry Deglau - Top row: Monte Zucker, Don Blair, Tibor Horvath, David Ziser, Ed Pierce, Steve Sheanin, and Ernst Wildi.

by Skip Cohen

I almost missed Throwback Thursday. I knew the general area of where to look for images, but after going through three backup drives, I'd almost given up. Then I struck gold!

There are too many of you who didn't know Monte Zucker, but it's thanks to the trails he blazed in the industry that shows like WPPI (WPI when it started) exist today. And the standards he set for classic portraiture is responsible for so many of our greatest portrait artists today.

Monte passed away in 2007, but somewhere before a slide show was put together, most likely by Clay Blackmore. Well, I found a bunch of those images in a folder a few minutes ago. 

​While I always write about the fun of the hunt - there's a much greater reason related to searching for throwbacks - it's the pure joy the memories bring back. I know the image above was at WPPI and it was all the "Lifetime Achievement" recipients attending that year. It would have been in the early 90s. 

The rest below go back a whole lot of years more...if you were there or can share anything about them, feel free to comment.

I've used it dozens of times, but Jodi Picoult's quote is still the very best...

“This is what I like about photographs.
They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.”