William Lesch, Photographer, January Speaker Series

William Lesch, Photographer, January Speaker Series

Bill Lesch was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up in the Midwest. His childhood summers were spent on Lake Wawasee in Northern Indiana and it was at Wawasee that he began forming an intimacy with the natural world.  Lesch discovered photography and met his future wife, his two life-long loves, in the same year at the age of 21.  He took photography as an elective course while in a pre-med program. Lesch had found his calling, he dropped out of pre-med and switched to art school the following semester.

Lesch earned a BFA in photography from the University of Arizona in 1976.  He was the first Staff Photographer at the Center for Creative Photography from 1976-78.  It was at this time that he began work on many of his signature series: his first time exposures of clouds, his early color work in the desert, and the beginning of his timelapse light painting series. 

Bill had his first one-person show at the small front gallery in the newly opened Center for Creative Photography in 1976, and since that time, Lesch has shown his work world-wide in over 100 group and one-person shows.  He has work in prestigious private, corporate, and museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Snell and Wilmer Collection.  He has received numerous grants and awards and had a book of his photographs published in Japan in the 90’s.

Bill Lesch still resides in Tucson, Arizona.  He lives and works in an adobe house and darkroom that he built himself, by hand, making the adobes in his backyard.  Lesch has always felt that life and art are about weaving together complex threads, be those threads colors, light and time, or experiences and skills.

He taught himself to kayak so he could get to some of the remote places where he needed to work, and in 2008 he kayaked the entire 240 miles of the Grand Canyon, and also began work on his current series of Grand Canyon photographs.  His youngest son got his pilot’s license in 2001, and the following week Lesch went up in a small plane with him and began work on his series of Aerial photographs of the Arizona landscape.

Bill is a meticulous craftsman and has always made his own prints, from his years of film and silver prints to the digital darkroom.  Photography is the language BIll Lesch speaks, it is his way of interacting with the world.  He finds this world a miraculous place, and photography a means to explore it.