Robert Herman photographer death: A 64 year old NYC street photographer who jumped from the 16th floor of his luxury Tribeca apartment left suicide note.
‘How do you enjoy life?’ These are the words a 64 year old city photographer asked in a suicide note before he leapt to his death on Friday from the 16th floor of his luxury Tribeca Park apartment.
Police and friends identified the man as 64-year-old Robert Herman, a street photographer respected among his peers for his work capturing everyday New Yorkers.
Herman had published two books of his photography — “The New Yorkers” in 2013 and “The Phone Book” in 2015.
‘He was a very well-known fella, a very good photographer,’ said former nypost photographer Lawrence Schwartzwald according to the tabloid.
‘Quintessential New York work. It’s such a shame.’
Herman moved to the city in 1976 to study filmmaking before falling in love with photography, according to a 2015 profile of him in the nytimes. At some point, Herman moved away from Kodachrome film to shooting photos with an iPhone along with accompanying apps.
Shooting on an iPhone ‘had a way of slowing me down because you couldn’t shoot a burst of pictures,’ Herman, told via the Times. ‘It was more like photographing on film. The iPhone also allowed him to be more invisible,’ he said.
Capturing the world in brilliant spontaneity:
An Amazon description for “The Phone Book” — a collection of photos Herman took with his iPhone — calls him an ‘award-winning international photographer.’
With the book, the blurb adds, Herman ‘elevates the practice of street photography’ and ‘captures the world in brilliant spontaneity.’
A worker at Terry’s deli, which is across the street from Herman’s apartment and where he would often shop, called the photographer as ‘a very quiet guy.’
‘Very polite but not outgoing,’ the employee told via the Post. ‘I just can’t imagine. Why would he do that?’
Police say Herman jumped from his 16th floor apartment at the Tribeca Park building on Chambers Street near North End Avenue, just on 11pm, Friday night.
He landed in the courtyard of the high-end building, where he was pronounced dead by EMS, cops said.
Of intrigue, a regard of Herman’s Facebook page revealed him posting, ‘Len was my first photography teacher…he made an indelible impression,’ following the March, 2017 suicide of Len Speier, 89 year old photographer of the human condition.
It remained unclear if the ‘successful’ photographer had been suffering depression or experienced personal setbacks or as some speculated suffered from the confines of recent self isolation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic enveloping the US and world.
