PhotograPhs byrobert fischer

m a r ksubj ect /ob j ec t /col l a bor ator

PhotograPhs byrobert fischer

m a r ksubj ect /ob j ec t /col l a bor ator

Copyright 2010 by Robert A. Fischer

Cover photos by Robert A. Fischer

Book design by slimgim designs

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright holders.

Above: Kitty LiterAtAi

contentsNot just a Bobs Potted Plant 7

Richness of Uncertainty 21

Revealing Us To Ourselves 39

Guardian At the Gates of Taste 64

Comments 116

1 vAriAtions on A theme

Not just a bobs Potted Plant

After about five years of modeling for Bob I know that a lot of my job was to show up, shut up

and do as Bob asked. That I did this is why Bob refers to me as his potted plant.

But even potted plants move in response to air currents and the direction of the light. And

so do I. Bob might be adjusting his camera, and I would take that opportunity to adjust my

body, the tilt of my head, the direction of my gaze, to something that I thought he would like.

Sometimes his response was no, no, no, and hed tell me what he wanted, and other times

it was yes, thats it hold it, and he began shooting. This was my small way of being Bobs

collaborator a participant beyond the malleable model.

There have been times when my participation as collaborator was more significant usually

driven by my moods. I am manic-depressive (bipolar disorder) and have mild dementia. The

drugs that I take to control my moods do an imperfect job of it, so it is not unusual for me to be

a little bit manic or moderately depressed on any given day. Like the day I was just a tad manic

and showed up at my front door in a black slip and dark sun glasses. I intended to greet Bob

in that outfit, but any of the neighbors could have walked by. Bob however arrived on time and

got the picture. Another day I was in a very dark mood and we were at a place where there was

a memorial to the Sheriffs Office, complete with a huge six point sheriffs badge. Bob told me

to go stand by it, but I went up to it and crucified myself on the six point star. It made a great

picture. These and one or two others stand out for the level of collaboration and represent rare

instances of unusually high levels of collaboration between us.

For the most part, my collaboration with Bob was around the edges of his work. Especially

when I was doing some character or was in a mask or Id been painted for the occasion. As

an object, there is little opportunity for collaboration and I come closest to being that human

version of the potted plant. But when Bob trains his camera on me, as I am, for a portrait, then

I become a subject , a person portrayed by Bob, not a potted plant. Bob must then deal with

me and my moods, my eccentricities, even the weirdness of my speech (I have a Tourettes-like

speech impediment) to get his picture.

So being Bobs model is mostly showing up and doing what Im told with some almost

subversive collaboration thrown in along the way. Those times when Ive acted out in bigger

ways that resulted in photographs that were mood driven manic or depressed I was driven to

bigger expression than what Bob expected. And finally, being Bobs model when the subject

was just me. But being Bobs model over these years has allowed me to participate in the

creation of a catalogue of truly excellent art.

Then we collaborated the most. I allowed him into me as a subject and didnt hold anything

back. He shot the unvarnished truth as he saw it, unflattering though it may be.

m.r.

This may be a relationship that only a mood disturbed person could withstand.

2 first PortrAit

3 frAmed

4 metroPoLis is LooKing UP

5 hAdes

6 A boo gArb

7 sPectre

8 migeLito

9 the screAm

10 dArK shAdows / green wAter

11 hAhAhAhAhAhA!

12 i stAnd ALone

13 herr richters LAPdog

richness of uncertainty

Robert Fischers world is on no map to be found. When I first saw these images, I remember thinking I had

never seen anything like them before. They provoked strong feelings of attraction and repulsion at the

same time, like when you enter a completely unknown culture with rules and habits you dont understand

and even fear.

Underneath his vision is a dark and threatening incomprehensible power, the power of someone who has

seen it all, who has peered behind the faades of Happyland and who tries honestly and uncompromisingly

to define real values of his own. Bob builds on the ruins of an empty, void, crude world, without any

illusions or aspirations except for the fundamental believe in human tenderness. Seemingly anarchistic, not

hindered by any formal religion, by esthetic rules or by bourgeois moral restrictions.

The quest Robert undertakes is courageous and not without danger. It implies questioning not only whats

normal or acceptable in society, but also his own position. Without accepting any authority, subversive and

dissident, he searches heaven and earth he even descends into the Styx to detect and depict the

elements of his universe.

In his portraits and studioworks, Bob displays a true mastership in graphical arts. Moreover, he knows

the classics through and through, and he plays with their codes in order to create new meanings and

perspectives. The consequence is that Bob will never find a definitive identity. The new reality he presents

to us implies that identities and values are constantly shifting and evolving, uncontrolled and uncontrollable,

like the butterflies that so regularly reappear in his pictures. You can try to chain them to the bars of a bed

but theyll always escape, leaving the hunter with an empty net like what happens to all of us in our quest

for meaning. And exactly like this uncertainty, this unpredictability is part of the richness of our lives.

bArt rAmAKers, docUmentAry PhotogrAPher, brUsseLs

14 mirror, mirror crAcKed

15 mALoqUio

16 m-i-c-K-y -- m-o-U-s-e

17 godheAd

18 bombAy beAch with wiLLiAm bUrroUghs LooKALiKe

19 toss off

20 my hoUse hitchcocK styLe

21 Jitter

22 wAiting for the robert e. cocKring

23 sUcK the monster!

24 AmAzoniAn cone heAd

25 PicK one UP todAy

26 dUst bowL

27 sentry

28 dervish

29 LoULoU fALAis

30 bLocK heAd

revealing us to ourselves

In 2009, the photography world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of

the publication of Robert Franks groundbreaking book, The Americans.

When The Americans was published, critics assailed its selection of 83

now-classic photos as a sad poem for sick people, denouncing the

photographer as a joyless man who hates the country. Five decades

later, after the massive social changes of the Sixties, we know better.

Despite his cool lack of sentimentality, Frank is the link between the

democratic vision of America shared by Frank Whitman and Walker

Evans and later photographic and anthropological adventurers like Diane

Arbus, Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, and Nan Goldin.

Robert Fischer follows in that humanist tradition. Coming of age during

the Sixties, he followed a circuitous path to photography that may

explain his works unusual combination of visual authority, cultural

richness, and psychological depth. Born in Chicago in 1949, he earned

a psychology degree there but gravitated instead toward the artistic

hippie counterculture. Discovering almost accidentally a talent for

painting, he avidly studied Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Velasquez,

Picasso, Hopper, Avery, Magritte and Matisse, whose sinuous forms

and sumptuous patterns fused the spiritual tension of the German

Expressionists with the sensuality that Fischer admired in pop culture

phenomena like Busby Berkeley films and George Hurrells Hollywood

celebrity portraits. Working from photographs, Fischer painted portraits

that combined and juxtaposed cultural icons from different periods I

did my share of Marilyn Monroes and incorporated, for additional

visual punch, fabric, rhinestones and glitter, all meticulously glued by

hand.

Fischer was successful as an artist and, occasionally, even a dealer.

His talent for empathy, and for deep listening related to his interest

in psychology, led to a career as producer of neo-vaudevillian theater

events that assembled an incredible soup of unusual people punks,

freaks, wealthy business people, leather and rubber queens, leashed

slaves and suburban housewives from all walks of life. Fischer:

People who would never talk to one another, . . . [who] would walk on the opposite side of the street, . . . would have great conversations and . . . realize that there was no reason to be afraid, brought together under the umbrella of art.

In the 1990s, Fischer began using photography instead of painting

to continue exploring gender, identity, and personality. His curiosity

about and rapport with people, his artistic assimilation of Avedon,

Bellocq, Brassai, Gilles + Gilles, Mapplethorpe, Newton, Penn, Sherman,

Weegee, and Witkin, and a prodigious work ethic produced over the

ensuing two decades a huge trove of ironic, absurd, romantic, erotic

and tragic images in five major series of work, Mark, My World, USA,

Heads, and Odalisque. The Bay Areas diversity and tolerance and

Californias tradition of reinvention provided a congenial climate for

these explorations; collaborations between artist and model, director

and actor (assisted by props, body paint, and digital manipulation), they

constitute Fischers psychological theater. In five major series of work

MArk, My WOrld, USA, HeAdS, and OdAliSqUe he plumbs the

psychology of color to reveal us to ourselves.

James Mann, former curator of the Las Vegas Museum of Art, describes

what he calls Robert Fischers Human Comedy as a gross, if not

grotesque, frank, free, full, forthright presentation of human ripeness,

as opposed to the fat-free austerity of slick magazine photography

enslaved to fashion. That dream worlds airbrushed artificiality and

pinned-down perfection are at the farthest remove from Fischers in-

your-face physicality of imperfection.

In a digitally connected global economy of increasing diversity and

complexity, with geographical and cultural borders diminished, were

increasingly asked to reconsider our provincial or insular values. Robert

Fischers humanistic but unsentimental photographs force us to be

both more truthful and more tolerant, as Franks The Americans did.

Its an idea that seems to be finally achieving widespread acceptance,

particularly among the young, who seem less troubled by the diversity of

the human animal. Fischer notes: Im sixty and I can still relate to people

who are twenty; they look at my work and say: Awesome! You are really

radical.

dewitt cheng

31 Pride

32 emPress of the Universe

33 shes LeAving home, bye bye

34 AngUish

35 veLveteen rAbbit

36 i reALLy LiKe to smoKe

37 grAnde soy LAtte

38 moUse in the stUdio

39 cUmbersome Addiction

40 Antoine And me

41 oreo Love minUs one cooKie

42 i Love the nightLife

43 ode to degAs

44 steeLed

45 contemPLAting my fUtUre

46 first dAte

47 Lion witch wArdrobe

48 in my bedroom

49 in my bright shiny Kitchen

50 bedAzzLed

51 mAmA ALwAys Loved yoU best

52 dAzed And confUsed

53 the coLLector And the sLAve

Guardian at the Gates of taste

Bob Fischers images burn brightest at the edge of oblivion.

I have seen Bobs photography joyously wrestle with its own physicality over the last decade and his graphic, synthetic pictures are dizzying, confounding and uniquely moving.

Fischers elliptical narratives in which the protagonist forever shifts between disarming candour and veiled, grotesque theatrics has a fascinating cumulative effect and leaves a most pungent residue. This oscillation between the mask and a seemingly more intimate identity lets you absorb the characters in Fischers universe in amorphous, lovingly adorned fragments, yet it is quite often the obscured face on the verge of dissolving that is most emotionally arresting.

Lovingly hurled into the void, Bobs imagery is restless, garish, nightmarish and relentless inner flesh coaxed into the light.

AmieL coUrtin-wiLson fiLm-mAKer, meLboUrne, AUstrALiA

overLeAf: 54 rePULsion

55 smeLL my toes

56 mAgritte schPin

57 LostUtterer

58 Kitty LiterAtAi

59 the fAt bLAcK womAn inside me

60 JoKers wiLd

61 Left oUt on the inside

62 conversAtion

63 sUb

64 A PortrAit in bLAcK

65 fAcing PArAdise

66 A beAUtifUL PALm sPrings sUndAy morning

oPPosite, toP: 67 PArAnoiAbottom: 68 wAiting for godot

69 deAth At the trAin stAtion

70 im on my deAthbed . . . !

71 Psychobitch

72 two LAdies

73 the fLUffer

74 striPed torso

75 Used friend

76 its rAining ALL over the worLd

77 cAsAbLAncA

78 mAndingo PArty PLAtter

79 down on me

80 fridAesqUe

81 didgeridoodAh dAy

82 in seArch of the bLUe mAn groUP

83 bUddAhs Pot-beLLied bLUes

84 iLL fLy AwAy

85 girLs on the Loose

86 nUde descending A stAircAse

87 deAd ringAh

88 iPhigeniA At AULis

89 bUtterfLy

90 PUcK

91 mePhistoPheLes

92 hAtchet Job

93 cLown

94 im fAding AwAy, mAmA!

95 soLitAry confinement

96 Another sAtUrdAy night And im ALone

97 JAcK in the box, 4 A.m.

98 mArK in front of the moteL (wintertime, PALm sPrings)

99 scAred shitLess

100 PAeAn to Ken

101 deAth of cAndi-o

102 red bAAAAAAAAAAAAcK

103 schism

1vAriAtions on A theme

6

A boo gArb

11

hAhAhAhAhAhA!

2

first PortrAit

7

sPectre

12

i stAnd ALone

3

frAmed

8

migUeLito

13

herr richters LAPdog

4

metroPoLis is LooKing UP

9

the screAm

14

mirror, mirror, crAcKed

5

hAdes

10

dArK shAdows / green wAter

15

mALoqUio

16

m-i-c-K-y -- m-o-U-s-e

21

Jitter

26

dUst bowL

17

godheAd

22

wAiting for the robert e. cocKring

27

sentry

18

bombAy beAch with wiLLiAm bUrroUghs LooKALiKe

23

sUcK the monster!

28

dervish

19

toss off

24

AmAzoniAn cone heAd

29

LoULoU fALAis

20

my hoUse hitchcocK styLe

25

PicK one UP todAy

30

bLocK heAd

31

Pride

36

i reALLy LiKe to smoKe

41

oreo Love minUs one cooKie

32

emPress of the Universe

37

grAnde soy LAtte

42

i Love the nightLife

33

shes LeAving home, bye bye

38

moUse in the stUdio

43

ode to degAs

34

AngUish

39

cUmbersome Addiction

44

steeLed

35

veLveteen rAbbit

40

Antoine And me

45

contemPLAting my fUtUre

46

first dAte

51

mAmA ALwAys Loved yoU best

56

mAgritte schPin

47

Lion witch wArdrobe

52

dAzed And confUsed

57

LostUtterer

48

in my bedroom

53

the coLLector And the sLAve

58

Kitty LiterAtAi

49

in my bright shiny Kitchen

54

rePULsion

59

the fAt bLAcK womAn inside me

50

bedAzzLed

55

smeLL my toes

60

JoKers wiLd

61

Left oUt on the inside

66

A beAUtifUL PALm sPrings sUndAy morning

71

Psychobitch

62

conversAtion

67

PArAnoiA

72

two LAdies

63

sUb

68

wAiting for godot

73

the fLUffer

64

A PortrAit in bLAcK

69

deAth At the trAin stAtion

74

striPed torso

65

fAcing PArAdise

70

im on my deAthbed . . . !

75

Used friend

76

its rAining ALL over the worLd

81

didgeridoodAh dAy

86

nUde descending A stAircAse

77

cAsAbLAncA

82

in seArch of the bLUe mAn groUP

87

deAd ringAh

78

mAndingo PArty PLAtter

83

bUddAhs Pot-beLLied bLUes

88

iPhigeniA At AULis

79

down on me

84

iLL fLy AwAy

89

bUtterfLy

80

fridAesqUe

85

girLs on the Loose

90

PUcK

91

mePhistoPheLes

96

Another sAtUrdAy night And im ALone

101

deAth of cAndi-o

92

hAtchet Job

97

JAcK in the box, 4 A.m.

102

red bAAAAAAAAAAAAcK

93

cLown

98

mArK in front of the moteL (wintertime, PALm sPrings)

103

schism

94

im fAding AwAy, mAmA!

99

scAred shitLess

95

soLitAry confinement

100

PAeAn to Ken