about
Born in 1953, Robert Welsh grew up in Brighton, a
working-class neighborhood in Boston during the 1960s. As a
young man, he traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East and it
was during that time that his passion for photography was ignited. A
self-taught photographer, Robert uses an early 1950’s twin lens Yashica
camera with a 2-1/4” square negative and is a master of traditional
black-and-white and color printing.
In 1989 Robert moved to San Francisco. He is best
known for his
photographic essays of San Francisco’s Chinatown and China, which
capture the spirit of these communities and convey a sense of
universalism. Robert continues to document urban neighborhoods as they
are reminders of his own childhood growing up in the inner city of
Boston. He is influenced by the work of Robert Frank and Harry
Callahan, who also used the camera to tell intimate stories about the
American experience.
Robert’s experiences as a truck driver, special
education teacher and
stay-at-home dad have informed his art as well. He has garnered
numerous prizes as well as exhibitions around the country, in galleries
from New York to Los Angeles. His photographs appear in the permanent
collections of major museums, including the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard
University, Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, Denver Art Museum,
Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Griffin Museum of Photography in
Winchester, Massachusetts.
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