For over 40 years Robert Kalman has been making formal, large format portraits of people he meets on streets across the globe.
In addition to his large format portraiture, he has worked as a freelance editorial photographer for regional newspapers and magazines in the U.S. His first job after university was as news assistant to the managing editor of the New York Times.
Robert is a frequent exhibitor in galleries across the U.S. Notable among his exhibitions: a collection of portraits of Nicaraguan villagers taken twenty years apart, wetplate collodion images of Confederate monuments, a series of ambrotypes of gay and lesbian bi-racial couples, dual portraits of dogs and their owners, transgender Israelis and transgender Panamanians.
He is a Critical Mass Top 50 recipient, and he has published more than a dozen books of portraits. A special book arts edition of his latest book, a collection of American portraits entitled, ‘What’s it like for you to be an American?’ is touring three cities in 2026. This work is currently on view at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and will be shown later this summer at Montgomery Row Gallery in Rhinebeck, and in the Fall at Chroma Gallery in Katonah.
Robert and his wife, Linda, live in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley.
In Tompkins Square: A Fleeting Intimacy
35 Wet Plate Collodian prints
Stopping and photographing a stranger in New York City fulfills an essential need for both of us: the need to experience intimacy.
It is a kind of intimate relationship that holds us together for a brief moment and then vanishes, only to be held forever in an artifact of pure silver.
When I made these portraits in Tompkins Square Park, I used the timeless, 19th century wetplate collodion method. With each person, it required a full encounter of nearly twenty minutes. When completed, as our intimacy closed, I hope that each of us parted feeling seen, and both of us left feeling important.
