Jack Warren Welpott grew up in Bloomington where he would swim in the limestone quarries and hang out at the Potter Billiard Room (across the street from Nick’s English Hut). His father, Ray, worked for the Home Loan and Finance Company, and his mother, Delores, ran a rooming house for IU students. Jack began shooting photographs at age 13, and in 1942 he graduated from University School where he was a member of the Dramatics Club, Cliocrat Club, Bowling League, Stage Staff and the Senior Convocation. In September 1942, he matriculated at Indiana University where his brothers Ray Jr. and Forrest had graduated with degrees in business in 1937 and 1939, respectively. Ray Jr. would go on to become President of NBC‘s Owned Stations Division. In 1943, Jack was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps and served in the South Pacific theater of operations where he monitored Japanese radio transmissions. After the war he used his G. I. Bill to return to IU where he completed a BS in Business in 1949. He continued his education at Indiana University and received an MS in Education in 1954, and an MFA in 1959. While a graduate student he studied photography under Henry Holmes Smith and painting under Harry Engle – one of Jack’s classmates was future photographer and photomontagist Jerry Uelsmann. Jack was the first student at IU to receive an MFA with a concentration in photographry, Uelsmann was the second. After leaving Bloomington, Jack began teaching at San Francisco State University where he instructed such students as Judy Dater and John Spence Weir. From 1949-1959, while working on his graduate degrees, Jack worked for Indiana University’s Audio-Visual Center as a photographer. The photographs in this exhibit are from those years, the years before he became an internationally known photographer and respected teacher who was “best known for his nude studies of women” some of which were published in a joint venture with Judy Dater in a book titled “Women and other Visions”.