Perhaps it’s his love for astrology, and mellow dramatic ways of capturing the original point of the birth of an idea before it becomes a Fashion– the moment of thinking ?you’re loosing yourself and feeling stupid, but getting over it quickly, not knowing really how to feel?, that brings your insides out when seeing his work. Because after all searching, ?you’ll end up in a far away century anyway.?
His work symbolizes to me, that you shouldn’t do anything harmful, alone.
He gave off a lot of scenario and feelings in his Photography, and left the model hypnotized, while he caught her looking nothing like how she felt she did when posing. Because she still lived in the emotions she picked up on before the shoot, and the energy is entirely up to her. Him, as a Photographer, already put the energy in the lens, curious about the real results. Almost as if he lets you believe in all the risk you can take, and when he snaps the photo, he captures the last thing you wanted anybody to know about you, which oddly is what becomes something ?mainstream? in the future.
He started as a web designer in New York City, and became a L.A Photographer when 35. He Photographed names like Donna Mitchell in the sixties.
Even though he earned up to15.000 for each photoghraph at the beginning of his career, he became unwated for being difficult to work with, and ended up on the streets of L.A and S.F. His love for raw imagery of Rock Stars and drug addicted women is what brought him down to homeless. His friend helped him back to New York City, and got him in to Visual Arts at a top Photography school.
Back on his feet ? he got gigs for Italian Vogue and British GQ. He mainly sold his images to Harper’s bazaar during his career. He was at one point diagnosed with schizophrenia, and passed away in his sleep December 5th, 2005 while watching the TV. He spent his last days living in Venice Beach, California.
?He didn’t keep anything from the past, all the work he and my mother did was ahead of their time?, his son and big time Fashion Photographer Terry Richardson quotes. Terry’s mother gave up on her Acting career, and decided to work with Bob, and they eventually had Terry.
A lot of his pictures disappeard when he was homeless, but he was still identified as a Cult Photographer as well as a Fashion Photographer, who according to himself, wanted to capture womens ?true complex emotions and stripping away all the artifice to banish the cult of the idealized woman?. His Photography is either scary or assuring, depending on who is looking. Alsmot as if, if you found these pictures, you better keept the thoughts you’re thinking as a secret to take to the grave; either until the day you die, or the day you know how you want to die.
Here is some of his work and quotes that ran through my mind as I looked them through:
The pictures provokes thoughts such as: ?Does the camera love you, or the person you ?thought? you were in love with that still lives inside your most ?beautiful? thoughts?. It is all poetic, and symbolizes the choices that always were entirely up to yourself. Very prideful, just like he described himself to be. But he was prideful because he knew he captured good pictures for the future.
He got the emotional source behind it all to fall in to the Model. Like the most confident picture out of all is somebody who isn’t confident in life at all, and the least confident is the one everybody looks at and thinks: ?she’s confident? – ?The biggest problems become the smallest problems?, or ?denying you ever met the right people, just so you can feel like the day you started searching forever, or at least, make it look that way to others.?
That there is a person who lives to create the pose, while the model is the ?receiver?, and to know exactly who is your muse, and how you deserve every style there is when you know how to share or carry it, until the competitor finds you again. That the Photographer is the middle man of visions – The more the Photographer experiences, the stronger the style of vision becomes.
Aileen N 11/11/11
