Renowned Photographer Still Shooting, Seven Decades Later

Photographer Ray Wallman has been capturing award-winning images for seven decades and counting. (Courtesy photo via JewishJournal.org)

Story Location

Peabody, MA

United States

See map: Google Maps

Even now, Ray Wallman is an imposing presence. Standing 6'3" with a "been there, done that" demeanor, the lifelong photographer has witnessed and documented the great sweep of human existence - from wartime to peace, from big city crime to the serenity of the countryside.

Raised in Peabody [Massachusetts] where he still lives, Wallman was present with his cameras and multiple lenses capturing robberies in progress, tornadoes, heads of state including Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President John F. Kennedy, fires great and small, and Boston's forced busing in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the process, he garnered some prestigious awards.

"I got some of the big stories over the years," he said simply.

For photographer Stanley Forman, Wallman was a mentor.

"When I began at the Record American in 1966, Ray was one of my heroes, a terrific photographer," said Forman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his still photography.

"People of that generation will remember Ray for the woman jumping out of that window in Roxbury," said Forman, now a cameraman for Channel 5 television. "There were others, such as the Easter Sunday photograph of the police horse nuzzling a woman's bonnet."

Wallman had seen the woman's bonnet and the mounted police officer. Anticipating the shot, he asked the woman's permission to place candy inside her bonnet.

"Back then, we could get away with those shots," Forman said. "If a hockey puck wasn't in the net in the right corner, we would put it in the right corner. We called it ‘air brushing,'" Forman said.

"Ray shot the Vietnam anti-war demonstrations of the sixties, welfare riots and Martin Luther King in Boston. He did it all and is still doing it. I only hope to be able to do what he's doing, and better, at his age," said Forman, who is 62.

Ray Wallman, age 81, began taking photographs while a student at Peabody High School, so when he entered the Army Signal Corps in 1943, he did so as a photographer.

Assigned to a Signal Corps combat team attached to the First French Army, Private Wallman was on the Southern Front, just south of where the greatest action of World War II unfolded, the Battle of the Bulge, during the winter of 1944 through 1945 when the war ended in Europe.

In the Voges Mountains between France and Switzerland with his army issue Speed Graphic, Wallman was with an Army intelligence group photographing special assignments and captured equipment.

"I was happy to be there," Wallman said.

Discharged from the army in 1946, he reaped the benefits of the G.I. Bill and graduated from Boston University.

Although his degree is in business administration, Wallman followed his passion and landed a job with the Record American Advertiser when the paper had morning, evening and a Sunday edition.

He later worked for the Associated Press, covering the epic Boston busing strike and other special assignments over five years. Finally, he has worked for The Salem Evening News, the Lynn Item, Peabody papers and the Jewish Journal.

About his Boston experiences, he said, "I went all over New England, wherever they had a story. I learned the ropes the hard way, under editor Samuel Bornstein. I'd cruise the city from midnight until 8 a.m. That's when I made my prize-winning pictures."

For his dramatic Roxbury fire rescue photograph, Wallman won the Boston Press Photographers Association's first prize for 1965 in the picture story class. It shows 18-year-old Latanya Bailey leaping for her life from a burning brick building as Patrolman James Donovan waits with outstretched arms below her, where he broke her fall.

The policeman had arrived seconds before the fire trucks. The following year Wallman again garnered a top award from the Boston Press Photographers Association; this time he won Best of Show for "Easter Bonnet Connoisseur" of a horse burrowing for candy in a woman's straw bonnet.

Changing equipment with the times, Wallman switched to 35 mm cameras, and now uses Nikon digital cameras. The quality "gets better all the time," he said, and yet, one still needs to have news and composition sense.

"Everybody can take pictures, but not everyone can take photographs," Wallman said.

Wallman was co-owner of Century Studios in Peabody Square, which merged with Photo Associates. He is now a senior photographer with the firm, working throughout the North Shore and beyond. He continues to go on a variety of assignments.

Although Wallman has donated camera equipment to the Peabody Veterans Memorial High School for a photography course, and also donated decades of photographs to the Peabody Historical Society, he waves away any mention of retirement.

In 2006, the city of Peabody gave him a Hall of Fame award for his distinguished career.

"I've been in the forefront of everything I'm interested in," Wallman said.

The last thing he wants is for anyone to think that he has retired.

Wallman and his wife Dorothy are 30-year members of Peabody's Temple Ner Tamid. Their three children are Mitchell, Sharon and Scott. The Wallmans have seven grandchildren.

Source: JewishJournal.org

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Ray Wallman's photos have spanned more than seven decades, including Boston-area Vietnam War protests in the 1960s. (Photo: Ray Wallman via JewishJournal.org)