Don Worth

Who was Don Worth?

Don Worth is an American photographer. His childhood on an Iowa farm inspired an abiding love of exotic horticulture, which later became the primary focus of his photography. He attended Juilliard as well as the Manhattan School of Music, receiving a graduate degree in piano and composition in 1951. During college, he began photographing and eventually became Ansel Adams' first full-time assistant in 1956. He taught photography at San Francisco State University for thirty years becoming a Professor Emeritus of Art.

In 1974, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and an appointment from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1980. His photographs are included in countless major museums including the Getty, MOMA and Chicago Art Institute. He was one of the last surviving members of the West Coast school of photography, which included Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ruth Bernhard and many others.

Worth's large format photographs are marked by an incisive clarity and quiet meditative aura. His images of plants invoke a spiritual iconography while his landscapes often reflect the transformative powers of fog and mist.