Bob Sadler
Bob Sadler has been creating art through photography for over 50 years. Recently, his fine art portraits of homeless men have been shown at the Weston Gallery in Carmel, CA and Art Intersection’s Gallery 4 in Gilbert, AZ. Another exhibit, Transcendent Landscapes, is hanging in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula in Carmel, CA. In January 2014, he delivered a lecture at the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, CA.
He began shooting photographs in 1965 while serving in the US Army in Vietnam. On R&R from Vietnam, he stayed with the Hubble family in the Philippines. William Hubble was a photo/journalist who taught Bob the basics before he returned to Vietnam.
Through the 80’s, Bob traveled a great deal to the Caribbean, Europe and Asia as a Management Consultant. He worked with his camera to capture the essence of each place. On a trip to Shandong Province, China, he stayed in a village for a week and photographed village life. His photo essay was shown in many corporate lobbies.
Bob relocated to Pacific Grove, CA in 2007 and joined Imagemakers and the Center for Photographic Arts. During the past decade, he has attended workshops with Eddie Soloway, Cole Weston and Kim Weston, Dan Westegren, and Richard Newman. He’s also studied studio lighting with Barbara and Fernando Moon Batista.
He also studied with George De Wolfe and adopted his digital workflow for producing fine prints.
Artist’s Statement
I imagine cameras, not so much as technical equipment, but more as the liquid that Shakespeare’s mischievous Puck carries with him in Mid-Summer Night’s Dream.
Oberon instructs Puck to fetch the
“…. little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And, maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make a man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.”
The liquid has a powerful effect. Puck sprinkles the liquid on the eyelids of sleeping characters, and when they wake up, they fall in love with the first thing they see.
Photography opens sleepy eye-lids. When I have a camera in my hands and bring it near my eyes, the liquid is sprinkled on my sleeping eyelids, and I madly dote on the most ordinary things. When I represent those ordinary things in print, things that are at the bottom, unnoticed, and put them in a different light, I am transformed. I’ll never see that ordinary thing as ordinary again. If I can create a print that opens the eyes of others as well, we all slow down and see better…hear better…feel better…and dote madly on life.
