In the 1980s and 90s, I was passionate about black and white film photography, and spent many hours in my darkroom. I greatly admired the work of photographers such as George Hurrell (the glamour photography of the golden age of Hollywood) and Alfred Stieglitz, who was instrumental in advancing photography to an art form. Both photographers painted with light, and that’s what I aspired to do with my work.
In 1991, a close friend, Lavinia Wohlfarth (owner of Wohlfarth Galleries in Provincetown and Washington, DC), generously offered me a solo show at her gallery in DC. It was a small exhibition with the focus on a series of nudes I had done of a friend. I learned after the opening night that Washington Post art critic Michael Welzenbach had stopped by to review my work. I remember the morning I read the review at my kitchen table (25 years ago today) – I couldn’t have been more thrilled! Michael’s review (shown below) was beyond my expectations, “…Bober has a special talent for portraying the nude female figure…a natural sculptural quality…largely missing from photographic nude studies since Stieglitz’s portraits of O’Keeffe…Just great pictures.”
