Financial whiz becomes celebrated photographer.
By Kim Devore/Staff Writer
He’s a serious player in international finance, chairman of one of Los Angeles’ leading cultural institutions and a mover in major circles, but these days Bob Weingarten is the toast of the photographic world-a serious shutterbug who’s getting a lot of exposure.
His popularity was in evidence last week as dozens of friends and fans streamed into the Mclean Gallery at the Malibu Country Mart where Weingarten’s latest landscapes are on display.
His images have an impressionistic, painterly quality about them. There is a field of soft lavender dancing beneath a cotton candy sky in Provence, a blanket of morning mist rising from the emerald green hills of Napa, a fluffy, snow-covered lane worthy of Walt Whitman.
The scenes are exquisite in their composition, use of shadow, light and-especially-color. His brilliant reds, yellows, pinks and greens pop across the room. The electrifying blue in his shot of the Malibu Lagoon borders on psychedelic. But capturing that perfect picture takes time and patience.
“I drove by the lagoon for years,” Weingarten says. “I went at day break, I went at predawn, I went a dusk. I went at different times of the year. I shot it vertically, I shot it horizontally, I shot it with birds, I shot it without birds. You have to wait until the conditions are just right.”
Although Weingarten is devoting more time to his interest, the undertaking is not a new one. He’s been looking at life behind the lens ever since he was a child. A native of Brooklyn, he started with abstracts and city rooftops. He dabbled in a variety of subjects before making a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where he fell in love with nature.
“My objective was to get away from the inner-city and photograph something more pastoral, more bucolic, more peaceful.”
Although he went on to pursue a successful career in international finance, his passion for photography continued to build and so did his love of landscapes.
“I’d lived in big cities for so long that the idea of being alone in nature, in quiet, is very appealing,” he says. “It is something I try to convey in my work.”
In recent years, Weingarten has grown even more devoted and has studied with some of the top specialists in the field. His travels took him to England, France and Italy. When he was persuaded to exhibit his pictures, the response was overwhelming.
To his absolute surprise and delight, galleries started showing his works, collectors started buying and major museums clamored for more.
This week, Weingarten is off to Ohio where he’s exploring the beauty and simplicity of Amish country life. Although the hectic world of finance beckons back home, he’s likely to lose himself in the middle of a wheat field at dusk or walking a mist-covered wood at dawn. It’s in those moments of quiet solitude that Weingarten finds the perfect escape and his greatest sense of achievement.
“I have other responsibilities,” he explains. “I am still the chairman of companies, there are a lot of other things. But if you said what is my first priority in terms of what is most important and what makes me the happiest-it’s this.”