About
Photograph by Ken McGagh / MetroWest Daily News (©2017, All Rights Reserved)
On board the Collings Foundation's B-25J Mitchell medium bomber Tondelayo in the bombardier's greenhouse en route to Beverly Municipal Airport, Beverly, MA, 2008
"Whoever uses the spirit within him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal." - Henry Miller
David Watts, Jr. has been behind cameras for virtually his whole life, as a still photographer and as a film-video producer-director-writer-cinematographer-editor. He was initially taught still photography from an early age by his father. By his early teens, he had developed an interest in filmmaking. He took advantage of opportunities for "hands on" learning experiences in all aspects of the filmaking craft, as well as working on his own with Super-8 and 16-mm equipment.
As a still photographer, he has done work in portraiture, photojournalism, documentary, commercial, and fine art photography. He has worked in a variety of formats from 35-mm to 8" x 10" and digital; black-and-white and color. He has taught weekend workshops on basic digital photography and visual journalism.
Over the course of his career, he has worked in 35-mm and 16-mm film and in analogue and digital video. He has made local market television commercials and corporate-industrial films/videos of all types. Multi-camera live productions on digital video and documentary pieces are amongst other productions. He has extensive experience both in the studio and on location.
Historical research, writing, and talks also mark his life and career. It has been reflected in his work, in particular, working with and documenting the Collings Foundation. While his focus is primarily on the period 1918 through 1949 - the end of World War I, the interwar period, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War - he has also researched and written about other historical subjects. Some of these have included The Hiker statue (the most reproduced public statue in the U.S.), a brief history of human rights, avigation, and fountain pens and writing culture. All of these have resulted in public talks before live audiences. He is currently working on long term research on the Downeaster ship Cyrus Wakefield and, with Richard Binder, an upcoming tag team talk on American combat cameramen during World War II. (For upcoming talks, see below.)
He has photographed and written about a variety of subjects that have been published in newspapers and magazines. See the Publications page for examples of most recent work.
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Upcoming Talks ...
Saturday, December 7, 2024 @ 1.00 pm - 2.30 pm
American Heritage Museum
568 Main Street, Hudson, MA T
The attack on Pearl Harbor, Sunday, December 7th, 1941, plunged the United States into a world-wide war that stretched across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, North Africa, India, China, Australia, and islands across the vast Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, some 16 million men and women joined the armed services over the course of the 42 months of the conflict. Among the most important means of keeping up morale of all service personnel was, in these pre-Internet days, sending and, most importantly, receiving letters and packages from home. However, transporting tons of mail by ship – the primary means of overseas transport then – could take weeks and, sometimes, months to reach destinations. However, one means had been devised, based on something the British had come up with months before Pearl Harbor, that a joint effort by the Department of War (Army/Army Air Forces), Navy Department (Navy/Marines/Coast Guard), and the Post Office Department began planning for in the months before Pearl Harbor … V-Mail.
Photographer-filmmaker-historian David Watts, Jr. will tell the story of V-Mail from the earliest photographic experiments that made it possible, to how it worked, and the great efforts applied, by the government and businesses, to getting people to use it.
As part of the presentation, the exhibition of World War II writing materials, put together by Richard Binder and David Watts, Jr. will be on display in the museum for the afternoon.
NOTE: Free with standard museum admission.
