Cary Wolinsky

Cary Wolinsky (October 1947 - June 2023) was a photojournalist and art photographer. He was best known for his photographic stories published regularly in National Geographic magazine starting in 1972.^[1]

Wolinsky grew up in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, a glass-manufacturing town. His father was a photographer in Europe throughout World War II. At age twelve, Cary Wolinsky was making photographs of his hometown and creating prints in his basement darkroom.^[2]

In 1965, Wolinsky entered the photojournalism program at Boston University.^[2]

Wolinsky began working as a news photographer for The Boston Globe in 1968.^[3]

In 1972, he was a freelance photo-story provider to several magazines and became a contract photographer for National Geographic magazine in the mid 1980s.^[4][5]

For a 1988 story on wool published in National Geographic, he wanted to show what a season’s growth of wool on a sheep looked like. He commissioned a professional sheep shearer in Australia to carefully clip one side of a sheep to create a profile view to make the point. The first half-sheared, lopsided sheep toppled over. The 30th sheep shearing worked well and the photograph was used as the lead shot in the article.^[1]

Wolinsky's fine art prints have been acquired and exhibited by many museums including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts,^[6] the Cleveland Museum of Art,^[7] and the Fogg Museum.^[8]

Cary Wolinsky Photographs

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