Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr., who took iconic photographs of presidents
Hyfler/Rosner
presidents, dies
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/louis_fabian_ba.html
Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr., behind camera, sets up a photo of
President George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office. With Mr.
Bachrach are his sons Robert (center) and Chip.
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff
John F. Kennedy was a US senator the first time Louis Fabian
Bachrach Jr. photographed him. The session satisfied neither
man; and Kennedy looks visibly uncomfortable in the photos.
"I worked like hell for an hour, but I didn't get anything;
I bombed out," he told the Globe in 1985. "He had a bad
back, you know. I realized afterwards that it must've hurt
him when he stood, and it showed in his face."
After Kennedy was elected president, Mr. Bachrach went to
the White House for a second try and was not dissuaded when
he was told the sitting had been cancelled.
"I went in to see his secretary and said, 'Please, don't do
this to me. I've come all the way from Boston,'" Mr.
Bachrach said in the 1985 interview. "I waited for Kennedy
for eight hours. When he arrived, he wasn't too pleased that
I was there. He gave me only 10 minutes, but I had the pose
all figured out beforehand -- a sitting pose. It became his
official portrait."
Mr. Bachrach, whose portrait of Kennedy was one of many
iconic images he shot as part of the third generation to run
his family's photography business, died Friday in
Newton-Wellesley Hospital, the place where he was born. He
was 92 and lived in Newton his entire life.
Photographing everyone from brides to business leaders and
heads of state, Mr. Bachrach created enduring images in a
career that spanned nearly 60 years.
Returning to his family's business after serving in the Navy
during World War II, Mr. Bachrach hoped "to give a truthful
ring to all the extravagant things they were saying about me
in our advertising," he wrote in 1954 for his Harvard class
report. "People still ask me, 'Do you actually know how to
take pictures yourself?' I don't know what they think I have
been trying to learn all these years."
He added: "Once you get into it it is really good fun and
never boring, and the best part of it is that you get paid
for doing something you enjoy."
Just as appealing to Mr. Bachrach was the family tradition.
He learned photography from his father and, in turn, taught
his two sons.
"He loved photography," said his son Louis III, who is known
as Chip and lives in Ashland. "Growing up in the house, we
used to talk about photography from when my brother and I
were young. By the time Robert and I were in our teens, we
knew how to photograph a guy who had a long nose or was
pudgy or bald. It was a marvelous education."
"I worked with him side by side for many years, and he was
always a very generous teacher," said Robert, who lives in
Holliston. "And he taught me some philosophies for dealing
with people that stuck with me -- almost a philosophy of
life. One of those was always put yourself in the other
person's shoes."
Part of the art of portrait photography, Chip Bachrach said,
is getting the subject to relax and forget what the
photographer is doing. He said his father, well-versed in
many topics, was a master at disarming his clients.
"It's very important to, what we call in the trade, 'hide
the knife in a rose,' " Chip said. "A good photographer can
talk about baseball or meteorology or home improvement. He
can talk about subjects from Italian literature to
mathematics to scientific theory. He can make conversation
with anybody and make it a real conversation. I think my
father was really great at that."
Mr. Bachrach grew up in Newton, part of a family that traced
its photography work to the Civil War.
The family launched its business in a Baltimore studio in
the late 1860s, about five years after a publication sent
Mr. Bachrach's grandfather, David, to photograph President
Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.
Louis Fabian Bachrach Sr., the eldest of David's children,
moved the studio to Boylston Street in 1914 and opened
dozens of branches across the country. The family closed
many distant studios during the Great Depression, but
Bachrachs continued to photograph each president.
Mr. Bachrach graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in
Exeter, N.H., and majored in European history at Harvard,
from which he graduated in 1939.
He married Janice Daugherty in 1941 in Omaha, where she was
from. She died June 1988.
In 1942, he was commissioned an ensign in the Navy and was a
flight instructor in Florida before serving in the Pacific.
He returned to his family's business in 1945, working with
his brother, Bradford, and their father. The studio in
Copley Square was a destination for business executives,
brides, and affluent families who could afford the cost of a
Bachrach portrait.
About midway through his term in office, President George
H.W. Bush invited Mr. Bachrach and his two sons to the White
House. While the Bachrachs set up their equipment for the
photography session in the Oval Office, the president had an
aide retrieve from elsewhere in the White House a tinted
black and white photograph of his wife, Barbara, that was
taken in the Bachrachs family's studio in 1945, when she was
a bride.
Gregarious at work and in social situations, Mr. Bachrach
found many puns irresistible. His tastes, meanwhile, ran
from elegant to commonplace.
"I don't think he ever drove a car that wasn't the cheapest
on the lot," Chip said.
College was another matter, Chip said, and Mr. Bachrach
"made sure all of his children were well-educated."
Mr. Bachrach took pleasure in gardening and reading history,
and was particularly devoted to all things Italy -- the
food, the culture, and the language, which he learned to
speak. In the mid-1980s, he received a master's in Italian
literature from Boston College.
In 1989, Mr. Bachrach married Eleanor Volk, and he continued
working until retiring at 80.
Louis Bachrach Sr. informally split the photography
assignments between his sons, designated Mr. Bachrach as the
photographer of men and the Bradford as the photographer as
women, but the brothers occasionally worked in each other's
areas.
Asked in 1985 if there was anyone he wished he had
photographed, Mr. Bachrach paused to consider, then smiled.
"Sophia Loren," he said.
In addition to his wife and two sons, Mr. Bachrach leaves
two daughters, Pamela of Russell and Gretchen of Arlington;
a sister, Jeanne Kimball of Nashville; nine grandchildren;
and six great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on March 14 at the
First Unitarian Society in West Newton.