Will Tenney lives and works in Medford, Massachusetts as a photographer when he isn't being a graphic designer or a bassoonist. When he is not working with his wife, book designer Susan Gerould, he keeps busy as a member of a woodwind quintet, as an active volunteer with the Medford Historical Society, the Medford Arts Center, the Medford Arts Council, the Friends of the Mystic River, the Society of Printers, and does a fair amount of his own historical research. Recently he has rekindled his interest in sound recording.
Will Tenney grew up in Berkeley, California, and as a child of 7 was given a Kodak Brownie camera (see photo) by his father, well-known San Francisco Bay Area photographer Thos Tenney. In high school he was given an old Leica camera by his father, and even though it scratched every frame on every roll, having a 35mm camera was a real breakthrough for him. It's been downhill ever since, having gone through Pentax cameras, Minoltas, Nikons, Canons, even a classic Mickey-Matic -- but he has now gone completely digital, no longer keeping a darkroom.
Graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Graphic Design, Tenney entered the educational publishing industry as a book designer, a trade he maintained until 2008 when most of the design and production of educational materials work he had been doing was off-shored to India, Singapore, and the Philippines.
Over the years, Will Tenney has traveled many times to Europe and lived for a while in Trinidad. In the summer of 2006 he and his wife spent two weeks in southern Spain, resulting in some wonderful images and sounds. In 2000 he visited Cuba on a cultural exchange, and in 2002 spent two wonderful weeks in Tuscany and Cinque Terra in Italy. In the autumn of 2008, he joined with some friends hiking in Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyons. He has been to France many times, most recently in September and October, 2009 on a bicycle trip around the Dordogne in the southwest. With family on the West Coast (California and Oregon), he tries to get there at least once a year.