BIOGRAPHY

Bob didn’t set out to create Oceanart; Oceanart pretty much found him. It was a natural evolution from a career in photography and a lifelong passion for the ocean.

Bob began work as a general commercial studio photographer in the 1970s, quickly shifting his focus to fashion. At the time, family-owned department stores and boutiques in Denver were transitioning from illustration to photography in newspaper, catalogue and billboard advertising.

His work earned him a Best of Show award at the Denver Art Museum’s annual juried art competition when his career was still in its infancy. Soon he was Denver’s leading fashion photographer, but Bob was looking to expand his horizons. Enticed by the avant-garde fashion photography featured in European magazines at that time, Bob closed his studio, packed up his portfolio and relocated to Milan, Italy.

While studying Italian (the language), Bob became a student of modern Italian art and design as well. He was especially drawn to Italian Futurism, a precursor to modern graphic design, with its focus on perspective and movement in time and space. Bob incorporated these various design elements into his photography.

Bob spent several years working from his base in Milan. His editorial and advertising work appeared in fashion magazines in Paris, Munich and Madrid, as well as Milan.

When he returned to the U.S., Bob continued to work as a photographer, this time for graphic designers, applying the art forms that had influenced him in Europe.

Bob’s romance with the ocean started even earlier in life than his interest in photography, when his parents took him to Martha’s Vineyard on a summer vacation as a child. He spent his school vacations sailing the Vineyard Sound and body surfing with his high-school friends on the New Jersey shore.

As an adult, his passion took him to Maui for windsurfing and Mexico’s Baja for kite boarding. He was well into his fifties when took up surfing in Southern California.

For Bob, the sound and motion of the waves, and the energy force that propels them from thousands of miles away, were intoxicating.

He never thought of melding his gift for photography with his passion for the ocean until 2012. During a six-month recovery from a tennis injury, Bob bought his first digital camera. Once he learned the technical aspects of digital photography, he was able to integrate all the elements of a technique developed over a lifetime into a new style: one that imbues still photographs with a sense of motion. Whether it’s the tranquility of the ocean at first light or the sound and fury of the waves barreling toward the coastline at sunset, Bob’s photographs capture and convey the emotions generated by the ocean’s mystique.

Bob Fader Oceanart is an integration of light, sound and motion as seen through a unique photographer’s eye.