The Antic Humor of Richard Watherwax
Richard Watherwax has more than 40 years’ experience in commercial, editorial, advertising and wedding photography. He spent years in New York City, first as a journalism and photography major in college who when settled into commercial photography, living what he described as a ‘Mad Men’ lifestyle. High profile clients included Coca Cola, Buick, TWA, Revlon and AT&T. In 1985, Watherwax found his home in Key West where he took to the island’s free-spirited, artistic, and intellectual vibe. Freed from the Manhattan ad agency lifestyle and its pressures, he cultivated a notably droll signature style that many have called ‘Watherwax Whimsy’.
During the course of his Key West career, Watherwax photographed scores of ‘shaker, makers, and characters,’ some depicted in character portraits, others, such as his ‘Saturday Night Baby Fights’ classic, in over-the-top storytelling scenes or tableaux cooked up in his singularly quirky cinematographic imagination. In the years before digital cameras made professional caliber photography accessible to the wider public, with his unmistakable personal style, he stood out as a luminary among a very few top tier Key West-based photographers.
Watherwax is perhaps known best for his triptych ‘Fat Cat Capsizing’ which has been reproduced worldwide in the form of prints, t-shirts, tote bags, towels, and coffee mugs. Among his other accomplishments are authoring several books including Cat Tales (1978), The Cat Who Drank Too Much (1979), and Tales of Old Key West (1989), a farcical history of the island. In true Watherwax whimsy, he entered his cat Willoughby in the 1989 Key West mayoral race where she received an impressive 37 votes!
This retrospective, in honor of his 90th birthday later this year, features a mixture of Watherwax’s Key West works including his witty cat series, amusing postcards, portraits of the island’s unique characters, his profound artist series, and his posed works that will tickle visitors as they gain a deeper understanding of the photographer’s satire and farcicality.
This exhibit was co-curated by Erika Biddle and is supported by the Florida Keys Council of the Arts