Photographer Jack Weatherington (1933-2008)

Professional photographer Jack Weatherington, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 12 October 1933, moved to Ajijic in 1988 and resided there, continuing to take magnificent photographs, until his death in Guadalajara on 20 Feb 2008.

Soon after relocating to Ajijic, he became fascinated with Mexican masks, “especially the hauntingly beautiful, and sometimes simply haunting centuries-old masks native to the indigenous peoples of Mexico.” (Mexconnect.com).

Jack Weatherington: Burro carrying firewood, Ajijic. Photo reproduced by kind permission of Mexconnect.com

Weatherington is quoted as saying, “I know the power of the mask. When I am preparing to photograph them, often it is as though the person who created it is there with me. Sometimes, for the briefest of moments, the veil of time lifts and I can see and feel the power of the centuries old moment of its creation. It is this power. This passion. Indeed, the majesty, I have tried to capture in my photographs.”

Jack Weatherington: Huichol mask. Photo reproduced by kind permission of Mexconnect.com

On leaving high school in the U.S., Weatherington joined the U.S. Navy, and served as a medical corpsman. After his military service, he worked as a professional photographer most of his career.

Postcard photograph, “Street Decorations” (Ajijic) by Jack Weatherington and José Hinojosa

During his twenty years in Ajijic, he was an active member of the Ajijic Society of the Arts, and his photographs, especially those of floral and woodland scenes, regularly won awards in local shows. He also took exquisite portraits of some of the Lake Chapala region’s most famous residents, including the travel writer-entrepreneur Neil James. (James bequeathed her property, including its extensive gardens, to the Lake Chapala Society).

Weatherington also held a solo show of his photographs at the Mio Cardio Gallery in the Chapalita district of Guadalajara.

Other photographers associated with Lake Chapala:

• Ernest Alexander (ca 1916-ca 1970), artist and photographer
• Toni Beatty (?-)
• Esther Born (1902-1987)
• Hugo Brehme (1882-1954)
• Horace Bristol (1908-1997)
• Frederick W. Butterlin (ca 1905-?), photographer
• Marcella Crump (1926-2017)
• Janet M. Cummings (?-?)
• John Frost (1923-2015), artist and photographer
• Michael Heinichen (ca 1944-)
• Dorothy Hosmer (1910-2008)
• Beverly Johnson (1933-1976)
• Ernest Walter Knee (1907-1982)
• Leo Matiz (1917-1998)
• Anne McKeever (1928-2002)
• Bert Miller (1915-2005)
• Sylvia Salmi (1909-1977)
• Winfield Scott (1863–1942)
• Jacques Van Belle (ca 1924-2012)

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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