He did not know it at the time, but his next career had unofficially begun. Two months later, Slemp said he received a phone call saying that he had won first place in the people category. After returning to his station in Germany, he was encouraged to enter his photos into the U.S. Slemp, an armor officer in the Army, first tried his hand at photography with a Canon camera while on a bus tour of Italy. “I like jobs that are challenging in a visual sense,” said Slemp explaining that the challenge is “trying to make a visual sense out of something that’s presented to you, so to speak… trying to make it something pleasing visually within the context of an overall scene.” Airplane portrait in black and white Porsche 919 Hybrid race car,on display at the Porsche Experience Center Atlanta.įor approximately ten years, Slemp was a generalist photographer before he really became interested in shooting aviation photography. Aerographs targets specifically his love for aviation, while his primary website expands his offerings as a photographer to a broader audience. His work can be seen on his two websites and in a variety of private and public collections which he actively exhibits. His clients include but are not limited to some of the following organizations and companies: Air & Space/Smithsonian Magazine Home Depot, Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association The Wall Street Journal General Aviation News Phillips 66 Goodyear and Yale University. Over the past 20-plus years, Slemp has built a successful career as a commercial photographer. Harold Brown.įrom Slemp’s initial conception of Bomber Boys, the book has developed into yet another highlight of Slemp’s award-winning and storied career in photography. HIllard Pouncy, Bridadier General Charles McGee, and LTC.
Six original Tuskegee Airmen, photographed during the Atlanta Warbird Weekend, on 6 October, 2017. “We want to go beyond the military veneer using the jackets as an appropriate vehicle to share individual stories about their wartime experiences, and how this important period in their lives shaped their eventual destinies,” Slemp said. Bomber Boys will tell the stories of men and women who wore the jackets Slemp has photographed-the stories of people who fought, served, and faced death on an almost daily basis. Through that hard work-and a couple of fortuitous coincidences-Slemp has developed what will be a definitive collection of images and stories titled Bomber Boys. However, as of April 2021, he has photographed more than 130 and interviewed multiple veterans. He originally intended to photograph 50 jackets. Over the past six years, Slemp has traversed the country on a quest to photograph and document the lightweight jackets worn by servicemen and women in World War II.
What started as a journey to photograph a small number of original World War II A-2 bomber jackets for 65-year-old John Slemp may well have turned into one of the most defining endeavors in his illustrious career as a professional photographer. Caron, the tail gunner on the B-29 “Enola Gay,” that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.