Robert Farber is an American photographer and lecturer known for his work with nudes, fashion, landscapes and still lives. He has published eleven books of original collections that have sold over half-a-million copies, four of them revised into later editions. He continues to exhibit classic and new work worldwide.
Early life
Farber was born on February 29, 1944 Leap Year day, in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in Maplewood-South Orange. He was interested in art from an early age and his mother, a painter, encouraged him to make his own "art studio" in the basement where he worked in oils, drawings and watercolors. He later attended the University of Miami to study marketing and business. While in school Farber kept his ambition to one day work in the arts and described how he was initially inspired to take up photography: "One day I was walking on Miami Beach and saw a very large woman wearing the tiniest string bikini I had ever seen, sitting on the beach, knitting. I thought to myself, 'I wish I had a camera.' I suddenly saw photography as a way to capture a moment for storytelling. I kept this thought in my mind, and after college I bought my first camera, a Petri 35mm SLR. I was not a technical person, I often made mistakes like color shifts and grainy pictures. But I realized the mistakes made my photographs look a lot like paintings."
Career
In 1970 Farber moved to New York City and began experimenting with photography. He entered his early photographs into outdoor art shows around Manhattan in the "graphics" category because photography was not widely recognized as a legitimate art form in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At one show a woman approached him and asked if his entries were paintings or photographs and he replied that yes, they were indeed photographs. She revealed herself to be the show's director and informed him that photography was not allowed and he would have to leave immediately. "She actually stood there while I packed up everything and took it away," he recalled in an interview with the magazine Photographer's Forum.
At a different show he was approached by the creative director from a major advertising agency who was taken by his painterly style of an interior image, and said to him, "If you can capture that mood placing a model in that environment with that lighting, I will commission you to do a fashion ad." This led to his first national ad with Cotton, Inc. and further assignments that jumpstarted Farber's career in fashion and commercial work.
1970s and 80s
Farber's first book Images of Woman, published in 1976, was a series of delicate, painterly, and sensual female nudes in naturally-lit interiors and impressionistic landscapes that outlined an aesthetic vision that evolved in parallel with his fashion/commercial career. The book caught the eyes of publishers, advertising art directors and gallerists that led to new commercial assignments and fine art exhibitions. When working with more erotic publications, such as Playboy and Penthouse, Farber often chose to publish under different names to not to affect his growing reputation as a fine art photographer.
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s he was shooting with major fashion clients such as Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Bill Blass, Anne Taylor, Christian Dior, Geoffrey Beene, Loden Frey, L'Oreal, Gillette, Revlon, Wrangler, ABC, Paramount Pictures, amongst others; with magazines GQ, Vogue, Elle, Esquire, Playboy, Viva, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair; and with top supermodels Beverly Johnson, Gia Carangi, Linda Evangelista, Carol Alt, Christie Brinkley, Janice Dickinson, and Iman.
Farber's experiences in fashion resulted in the publication of his next two books, Professional Fashion Photography (1978) and The Fashion Photographer (1982). Both explored the creative process by going behind the scenes at fashion shoots and documenting how to work with clients. These large format books served Farber well, helping to escalate his reputation in fashion photography as well as enable him to publish an atmospheric collection of new works, Moods (1980), his first book to combine still lives, landscapes, and nudes.
In the early 1980s Farber was approached by musicians and video producers to adapt his visual style to motion pictures. In 1985 he directed his first music video, "Rumours of You" by Aldo Nova that led to his own experiments with long-form film. He went on to direct national and international television commercials for clients such as Wrangler, Toyota, Loden Frey, and Neutrogena, and later signed with The Gersh Agency.