FLASHBACK: Photographer Bill Burke: Pictures in His Own Words

(PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Photography Bill Burke resides in Silver Springs, Maryland, and he’s worked his entire career as a photographer for organized labor throughout the country. BUT, Bill started snapping those photos while a Wheeling College student and last year launched an exhibit of his work at the Ohio County Public Library that extended through August. That is why we decided to publish this piece a second time – it features so many of Bill’s fantastic photos of a time in Wheeling long gone but never forgotten.)

He used the city of Wheeling as his blank canvas and the people of the 1970s as the actors for his show, so when Bill Burke began posting these black and white photos on the Memories of Wheeling Facebook page, it reminded those social media members of a better, different time in the Upper Ohio Valley.

The black-and-white presentation was suitable, too, since most of the photographed subjects wore solids except for those children who didn’t seem to know any better or care any less in their handed-down plaid. Burke captured a colorless version of Wheeling and trapped it in a 50-year time capsule only to suddenly release a choppy-moving monster in January 2021.

The reaction, at least from what he could tell from his Maryland home, was unexpected bliss, and it left Burke feeling as if it all happened a little bit by accident.

“Probably more than a little bit,” Burke said. “I started posting some pictures on that Memories of Wheeling Facebook page. Someone had told me about it, and I liked it, and I thought I would post some of my own stuff on there. The response was overwhelming.

“I would get 800 ‘Likes’ on a photo, and usually when I would post something to Facebook, it might get 20 or 30 ‘Likes,’ and I’d be thrilled. So, I hit a nerve, and I realized for a lot of Wheeling people it was the nostalgia from when they grew up and the photos reminded them of their parents, their relatives, and their friends. And I thought it was great. And some people liked the photography part and the creative aspect, and that was great.”

A Borrowed Nikon

Burke was an English major at Wheeling College. He had no idea what he would do with the degree once returning to his native Silver Spring, Md., but he was on schedule to be graduated in 1971.

During his senior year, though, he discovered photography but didn’t think it was for him because, well, it seemed “too test-tubey” because of the chemicals utilized in dark rooms. But clickety-click it was for Burke, especially after he decided to return to Wheeling with some classmates post-commencement.

“When I started out, I didn’t really have a plan. I just walked around with my camera a lot, and if I saw something interesting, I would shoot it,” Burke recalled. “I was 21, 22, and right out of college in 1971. I was always interested in photography because what I saw in newspapers and magazines was always interesting to me, but I didn’t know if it was for me based on the others I saw who were into photography. They were the scientific-math types, and that’s the opposite of me. But someone had a really nice Nikon camera, and they let me use it, and when I saw the prints, I thought to myself, ‘This is it. This is me.’ That’s when I started taking it seriously.”

“I think a lot of people went for the photographic art of my pictures, if I may say that, but in some cases, it wasn’t on purpose at all,” Burke said. “I’ve been asked if the lighting and motion in one photo were on purpose, and it really wasn’t. I was also asked about the ages of the people in the photos, and that was something I had just recently noticed. That’s all true.”

A One-Window World

Before Burke decided to return to Silver Spring in 1975, he was hired by local unions to photograph interviews taking place, workplace conditions, and a number of aspects of organized labor on the job.

And after he did return to his native Maryland, Burke continued working with national union chapters. Outside of his photojournalism, he found his style, his angles, and what he thought he saw, and Burke’s work won several photographic awards, and a plethora of his pictures have been featured in national and international publications and other media.

He stopped accepting assignments in 2016, but even now, at 73 years young, Burke doesn’t shy from a shoot.

He certainly didn’t when he was 22 and living above the drug store on the corner of Carmel Road and Edgington Lane. 

“One of the guys I lived with, Tim Cogan, had his room on the second floor above the store, so me and my best friend to this day, Richard Pellarin, made our room up in the attic, and I soon realized that the attic window looked onto the Alpha, the state (liquor) store, and the Minute Market, and there was a whole scene all day long of people coming and going,” Burke explained. “I would park myself there and just take pictures. There were always so many visual possibilities to me. Kids riding bikes. Kids coming home from school. Old people, young people, everybody.

“There was everything. It seemed as if every time I poked my head out, there was something going on,” he recalled. “It was a great way to practice timing in photography, and framing, and all that. And when you shoot down from the third floor, there was no horizon, so it’s a whole different perspective from ground level. Plus, Terry Gurley was the guy who let me have my darkroom in the basement.”

The Picture Show

Burke was on hand at the Ohio County Library on May 19 to welcome local residents who attended the opening of “Wheeling in the 1970s: Exhibition and Talk”. The show, according to the OCPL website, will remain in place in the library’s basement auditorium through the month of August.

The facility is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Fridays, and 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Saturdays.

“The people from the library saw it on the Memories page, and they asked me to do a presentation, and originally I said no. I didn’t think it was my thing, I guess,” Burke said. “I’ve never been a good self-promoter, but then they asked a second time, and that time I said yes because I thought the pictures should be seen. That’s what they are for, so I gave it a shot.

“Everything seemed to go very well with the show, and it will be at the library through August, I’m told, so I hope people continue to go to the Ohio County Public Library so they can check it out,” he said. “It’s put together very well, I think.”