Photography by Will McBride
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1931, Will McBride was an American photographer, book illustrator and painter who grew up in Chicago. He studied painting under Norman Rockwell and later attended the National Academy of 
Design in New York. McBride studied drawing and painting at Syracuse University in New York, earning his BA in Fine Arts in 1953. After serving from 1953 to 1955 in the US Army at its base in Wùrzburg, Germany, he remained in Germany until his death in 2015.
Largely remembered as a celebrated documentarian of the new generation of postwar youth and the sexual revolution in Berlin in the 1950s and 1960s, McBride regularly photographed for a number of European periodicals, including most notably the German youth magazine “Twen.” Working in a documentary style for the purpose of telling a multi-faceted story, McBride would shoot literally hundreds of negatives while on assignment.
In 1963, the magazine “Twen” commissioned Will McBride to shoot a photo-essay on the School of Salem Castle, long considered one of the most elite boarding schools in Europe. McBride’s images chronicle many aspects of the students’ lives from meals and lessons 
to athletics. “Twen” published a number of photographs from the shoot at the School of Salem Castle, the most famous being “Mike Wäscht mit Anderen Schule, Salem”, a photograph shot in the communal showers.
Exhibitions of Will McBride’s photography have included those at the Galleria d’Art Moderne in Bologna, Italy; the Dany Keller Galerie in Munich; and the Galerie Argus Fotokunst and the Haus am Waldsee, both in Berlin. In 2004, Will McBride recieved the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize, a lifetime achievement award, from the German Society of Photography.
In 2014 New York’s ClampArt Gallery held a first-time-seen exhibition entitled “Salem Suite”, which included sixteen related photographs from the Salem shoot that were personally selected by McBride.
Insert Image: Will McBride, “Morning at Salem College, Germany (Mike Wäscht)”, 1963, Gelatin Silver Print
Bottom Insert Image: Will McBride, “Mike Wäscht mit Anderen Schule, Salem”, 1963, Gelatin Silver Print2