Robert T. Gumpper was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1928. At the age of ten he started using cameras and a darkroom at his fathers business. He soon learned how to express emotion through photography. He studied and was most influenced at an early age by the Pictorial Movement and the Photo Secessionists. By the time he was sixteen he’d taken a first place award at the Detroit Photographers Guild. This Chloro Bromide print”Enchanted Castle”shows his love and proficiency for antique photographic processes at an early age.

“Enchanted Castle” Chloro Bromide, 1944, In the permanent collection of The Detroit Institute of Arts

He avidly began studying and producing prints in a wide range of antique processes. Gum Bichromate, Kallitype, Collotype, Platinum and Palladium prints, Cyanotypes, Dye Transfer. And his favorite, Bromoil and related oil printing.

His interest in these processes was not just in the mood they could evoke, but how they lent themselves to the creation of unique prints instead of editions, and to the permanence of the image through the use of archival inks, dyes and papers. Permanence became his call to action, second only to the mood or beauty of the image.

In the summers of 1949 and 1950 my father studied at the Mortensen School of Photography, in Laguna Beach, California. The skills and processes he learned there became the foundation for his photographic career. But it was more than the techniques he learned that made William Mortensen a key figure in his life. “I was interested not so much in his techniques as in his outlook. He was less concerned with the specific person he was photographing and more interested in finding the universal in them. He looked for something timeless.” he stated in an 1985 interview for the New York Times. It was this search for the “universal” that motivated him for the rest of his life. Finding not just what is timeless but also what images connect and move us all, like dream symbolism from the collective unconscious.

As 1950 wore on, my father enlisted as a photographer in the U.S army. After graduating from the Signal School, which he credited with furthering his photographic and cinematic abilities, he and his new wife (my mother) were sent on assignment, first to New York and then Paris, on the staff of SHAPE, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe. His primary assignment there was following and promoting then General Dwight.D.Eisenhower, in his soon to be bid for the Presidency.

After his assignment ended, my parents settled in Bridgewater, Connecticut. Here they set up a home and separate studio for painting and photography. It was from this studio that his creativity flourished. The height of his productivity was here, during the turbulent ‘60s and ‘70s. He produced sensual images of nudes, landscapes, still lives and sculpture. He made anti-war statements in some, expressed his fear of death and the unknown in others, and evoked simple beauty in many. He also ran a portraiture business from his studio at this time, and taught classes in the photographic processes he’d become known as a master of.

Robert T. Gumpper died in 2005. He felt an alienation from society which was both torturous to him, and an inspiration to his creative genius.It is what inspired his “Search for the Universal”. That he was so often successful in finding the “Universal” in his images is the strong appeal of his work, and his lasting legacy.

Education : Wayne State University, Detroit,MI.

Publications: Source for “Keepers of Light”, by William Crawford. Primary contributor for Oil/Bromoil chapter, p.213-226

Post Factory Photography Publication #6, 2001 “Bromoil Express”

Teaching : Northlight Studio,Bridgewater,CT group and individual seminars antique processes, 1976-1990

Seminars: Southeastern Masschusetts University 1980, The Bromoil Process

University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 1980, The Bromoil Process

Exhibits: Detroit Institute of Arts, Permanent Collection

Recent : Stairwell Gallery GunnMemorial Library Washington,CT April-July, 2022

Burnham Library Bridgewater,CT June, 2022

Brookfield Library Brookfield,CT October, 2022

Brookfield Municipal Center Brookfield,CT May-June 2023

Lynn Tender Bignell Gallery, Brookfield Craft Center, Brookfield,CT June-July 2023

Life time :

Westover School- Middlebury,CT 1973

Alcott Damon Smith Gallery, Kent,CT 1975

Washington Art Association, Washington,CT 1975

Slater Memorial Museum-Norwich,CT 1975

Galerie les Contrade, Lacoste, France 1975

Burnham Library, Bridgewater,CT 1973, 1985

Greater Hartford Civic and Arts Festival, Hartford,CT 1973, 1975