I was thinking of an old friend yesterday. Hardly a day goes by I don’t think of him. A sip of a certain something, a song on the radio... things like that. We haven’t talked in some time, and I couldn’t possibly remember where I put his number or email address, so naturally I was compelled to “Google search” him. What I ended up finding, to my great sadness, was his obituary. He died only this past June, at the age of fifty-nine.
I met Rob Beecher twenty six years ago. I was only six months out of high school. I found myself a job as a photo assistant in the same studio where he worked as a photographer. There were three photographers then, and one other assistant. It was a pretty busy place in those days. The studio was in the heart of the giftware district of NYC. We photographed ads and catalogs for dinnerware companies, glassware companies, and just about anything else you might see in a home furnishing catalog or Brides Magazine.
Rob was considered the “hot shot” guy who got to photograph the fun stuff— the stuff that called for special effects, live models (sometimes pretty ones), or what we all liked to refer to as “mood.” I learned a lot from the other guys, but as a nineteen year old photo assistant I really only wanted to learn how to do that stuff. Not an easy thing to do when three photographers require a piece of you. Rob, could be at times, a real prima-donna, and after a while he saw to it that I got to assist him as often as possible. It was, as he would put it, a real gas!
After a year or two of assisting, Rob insisted that I start shooting for clients on my own. This was met with a little resistance from the company’s owner, so Rob was compelled to devise a little conspiracy. He had me photograph a few pages of a catalog in “his style” and passed them off as his own. After a glowing review from the art director and client, it was revealed the work was mine. You can only imagine how the owner took the fact he had been played. Nonetheless, the point had been made and it eventually turned out to be the real beginning of my photography career. For that I will always be grateful.
This was the time in my life when I was just coming of age, a victim of “late bloomer syndrome.”
To think about it now, Rob had quite an influence on my life far beyond my professional career. I experienced with him many of the firsts in my life. He was an existentialist bohemian and a first rate liberal intellectual who introduced me to a whole new literary world— Kafka, Kazantzakis, Hemingway, Steinbeck (who happened to be his father’s best friend and his godfather) to name a few. Not to mention a host of less lofty detective novelists, like Chandler, Parker, and Westlake.
And it wasn’t just my bookshelves that benefited from Rob’s influence. Much of my musical taste was informed by him as well. I can remember the very first time I heard Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, or True Stories by Talking Heads, or most importantly Frank’s Wild Years by Tom Waits.
I listen to these albums all the time, and naturally think of him.
Rob Beecher was a sensualist of Falstaffian proportions in a skinny man’s body. We’d wax poetic over my my first bottle of Guiness Extra Stout, my first glass of Maker’s Mark, my first snifter of Courvoisier. The first time I tasted a serious bottle of California Cabernet was with Rob. It was a 1990 Caymus Vineyard “Special Selection” drunk with a pan seared filet mignon which was purchased from the Union Square Farmer’s Market and prepared in a cast-iron skillet on a hotplate in our makeshift kitchen in the darkroom.
He was a fellow food lover who had a passion for baking bread. He had once shared with me his sourdough mother. Sorry to say it didn’t survive long, but I still have the crock it came in.
He made for me the first homemade english muffins I ever had, and they were nothing short of amazing! He was a proud cook who loved to share his knowledge and enthusiasm. He gave me my first cast-iron pan, which he pre-seasoned for me. (I made my dinner in that pan just last night.) As a wedding present he gave to my wife and me the same ceramic bread bowl he himself used . (I made pizza dough in that bowl just last weekend.) I was glad to learn from his obituary that, after leaving the photography game, he turned to artisinal baking during the last few years of his life.
Rob was, from my experience, not a very sentimental man. The one thing I know
made him beam, however, was his daughter Delaney. I knew her only as a very young child (she is now seventeen!) and by all accounts, appeared to be a daddy’s girl. She had him wrapped around her little finger. I hope that never changed. In the years after I left NY, Rob and I talked only sporadically, but anytime I asked about Delaney, he’d say “she’s fine” in a way that sounded like he was the proudest man alive.
As I write these words, I’m listening to the bittersweet moan of Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing Your Latest Trick. I can close my eyes and imagine the studio as it was all those years ago— with Polaroids pinned to a wall and Molly the cat curled up under a desk lamp next to a large glass ashtray, in which the butt of Rob’s Camel still smoldered (It was a time when smoking at the office wasn’t quite yet unacceptable). This is the time in my life I still think of the most.
Tonight I plan to pour two glasses of Courvoisier, and drink to the memory of my departed friend.
Cheers Mon!
Rob Beecher was a sensualist of Falstaffian proportions in a skinny man’s body. We’d wax poetic over my my first bottle of Guiness Extra Stout, my first glass of Maker’s Mark, my first snifter of Courvoisier. The first time I tasted a serious bottle of California Cabernet was with Rob. It was a 1990 Caymus Vineyard “Special Selection” drunk with a pan seared filet mignon which was purchased from the Union Square Farmer’s Market and prepared in a cast-iron skillet on a hotplate in our makeshift kitchen in the darkroom.
He was a fellow food lover who had a passion for baking bread. He had once shared with me his sourdough mother. Sorry to say it didn’t survive long, but I still have the crock it came in.
He made for me the first homemade english muffins I ever had, and they were nothing short of amazing! He was a proud cook who loved to share his knowledge and enthusiasm. He gave me my first cast-iron pan, which he pre-seasoned for me. (I made my dinner in that pan just last night.) As a wedding present he gave to my wife and me the same ceramic bread bowl he himself used . (I made pizza dough in that bowl just last weekend.) I was glad to learn from his obituary that, after leaving the photography game, he turned to artisinal baking during the last few years of his life.
Rob was, from my experience, not a very sentimental man. The one thing I know
made him beam, however, was his daughter Delaney. I knew her only as a very young child (she is now seventeen!) and by all accounts, appeared to be a daddy’s girl. She had him wrapped around her little finger. I hope that never changed. In the years after I left NY, Rob and I talked only sporadically, but anytime I asked about Delaney, he’d say “she’s fine” in a way that sounded like he was the proudest man alive.
As I write these words, I’m listening to the bittersweet moan of Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing Your Latest Trick. I can close my eyes and imagine the studio as it was all those years ago— with Polaroids pinned to a wall and Molly the cat curled up under a desk lamp next to a large glass ashtray, in which the butt of Rob’s Camel still smoldered (It was a time when smoking at the office wasn’t quite yet unacceptable). This is the time in my life I still think of the most.
Tonight I plan to pour two glasses of Courvoisier, and drink to the memory of my departed friend.
Cheers Mon!
