Bob Day • Manhattan Bridge, NYC, 1980

Todd Weinstein • Taxi, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC

…………………………..

Bob Day, Photographer

1948-2015

Bob’s creative life started as a painter in NYC hanging out with many of the famous artists of the mid-twentieth century at the Cedar Tavern in the West Village. His paintings were expressionistic, big, bold and full of color much like the man himself. Bob’s first love was painting but when he discovered photography he preferred the immediacy of the medium and never looked back. He got his start as second assistant to Harvey Lloyd, a travel photographer in NYC. He worked for Lloyd, learning the craft and working all over the world. At 25 he started his own photo business. Bob shot editorial, advertising and corporate annual reports, using for the most part a 35mm Leica rangefinder. The biggest influence on his art was perhaps Henri Cartier-Bresson, who coincidentally started out as a painter himself.  His book The Decisive Moment resonated with Bob’s philosophy and artistic intentions.

"Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

These photographs were taken in the 70s and 80s when Bob was creating his signature style. He was fascinated with the character of a place and the people who inhabited it. Capturing that Moment of life and expression was what drove him then and gave him great joy throughout his illustrious life. His award-winning career spanned well over 30 years until he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age 50. He continued to shoot and returned to painting until he developed Lewy Body Dementia which ultimate took him in the end at age 66.