“Bob Mader will be remembered as one of the most intriguing portrait photographers of the late 20th Century. He was a skilled and inventive professional with a penchant for taking his subjects from around the globe—out of the studio and into specially selected locations and contexts that tapped into their personalities. The range and quality of these portraits needs to be examined and chronicled, and will provide a significant overview of American culture at the turn of the millennium. But beyond this, from his early photography in the 60s and 70s, prior to his being a student at Chicago’s prestigious Institute of Design, to the largely landscape based photography that intrigued him in the last years of his life, this was an artist whose career is a superb microcosm of the aims and procedures of modern photography, all linked by one very talented personality.”

JIM YOOD, PROFESSOR AT THE SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

“Photography, like all art, demands a context in order to be understood. Bob Mader’s photographs need to be seen not only in the context of their time but also seen in the context of the personal artistic struggle shared by all artists. Mader’s restless activity as a photographer reached across the chaotic, searching decades of the American 60’s and 70’s and dug deep into the glossy celebrity obsessed 80’s and 90’s. His last photographs reveal a quieter exploration of the power of images to define the human in terms of place and form­seeking solace in self and our surroundings. These photographs finding themselves at the end of a century. As such, the work is both informed by its epoch and a record of its time. A time spent in America expressed through image and place.”

STEPHEN LAPTHISOPHON, ARTIST AND WRITER