BILL WITTLIFF
Founding donor of Texas State’s Southwestern Writers Collection and the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography, Bill Wittliff was born in Taft, a small town in south Texas, in 1940. In 1963, after graduating from the University of Texas, Wittliff, with his wife Sally, founded the Encino Press, specializing in non-fiction Texana. Wittliff has been a screenwriter, producer, and director since the late 1970s, and has written such scripts as the Black Stallion, Barbarosa, Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall and The Perfect Storm. An accomplished photographer, Wittliff photographed the Mexican vaqueros of Rancho Tule from 1969 to 1971. Since then, these images have been exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout this country and in Mexico and Japan, including the Institute of Texan Cultures, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and the Texas capitol. The photographs were published in Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy (UT Press, 2004). His most recent monograph is La Vida Brinca / Life Jumps (UT Press, 2006) which includes his “tragaluz” or pinhole photographs taken in Mexico and Texas. Wittliff’s series of photographs taken on the set of Lonesome Dove in 1988 are a popular exhibit. Lonesome Dove fans, take note, a publication is forthcoming from UT Press this fall. Wittliff lives and works in Austin, Texas.
PHOTO by Ted Albracht, 2000