Ranging from Provocative to Evocative, Broadsheet Founder’s Photographs Evince a Vision Undimmed by His Passing
Robert Simko, the Broadsheet’s cofounder (who died November 10, at age 68, from a September 11-related cancer), was many things: publisher, musician, community leader, amateur horologist, devoted husband and father. But anyone knew him well would rank high on Robert’s list of defining joys the pursuit that was both his profession and his passion: photography. Robert, who was born in Bayonne, loved his adoptive hometown of Lower Manhattan, and chronicled its transformation through five decades of images capturing moments both stupefying and sublime.
When studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, Robert came to the attention of legendary photographer Aaron Siskind, whose work focused on texture and detail in a way that created images with a life independent of their subjects. Siskind, who became a mentor, once said to a classroom full of students (including 20-year-old Robert Simko), “if you photograph with love, the spirit will come flying out.”
Robert scrawled this passage into his notebook, and what began as an epigraph would eventually become his epitaph, summing up a body of work that ranges from haunting (images of Battery Park City when it was mostly sand dunes) to humorous (reactions to a man in a chicken suit) to horrifying (the second plane smashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center 21 Septembers ago).
An exhibition and tribute, “Robert Simko’s Lower Manhattan: 50 Years of Photographs,” will open at Six River Terrace (across from the Irish Hunger Memorial) this Sunday (March 26), from 2pm to 5pm. The showing, offered in partnership with the Battery Park City Authority, will celebrate Robert’s life and legacy through some of his best work. After opening day, the exhibition will be open to the public on weekdays from 5pm to 8pm, and on Saturday and Sunday, April 1 and 2, from 2pm to 6pm. The show closes April 2. Admission is free and all are welcome.