Bud Hirsch
Our Member Spotlight features renaissance man Bud Hirsch! Bud has been a great friend of Webster Arts over the years and we are so happy to feature him as today!
Native of St. Louis, photographer for over 70 years going from Brownie Hawkeye to today’s mirrorless cameras. Bud’s work is a combination of left brain and right brain. He bred, trained, and showed Paso Fino horses for over 30 years, is a poet with five collections of his work, has a PhD in Accounting from Washington University with many academic articles in his discipline.
His first darkroom was in a converted half-bath in his parents’ basement. When his wife, Marian, and he came back to St. Louis after college, he built a full b&w darkroom where his children, especially Jeff, accompanied him as he processed and enlarged images. Bud moved from film cameras into digital in 2000. In 2011 began traveling on a series of photo workshops in Europe, Cuba, and New Zealand.
While his main interests have been street photography, details, hands/feet/heads, and food, he has taken over 70,000 shots at gymnastics meets following his granddaughter for the past 15 years. He is now experimenting with abstractions made with intentional camera movements and multiple exposures, saying “It’s time for old dog, new tricks.”
He says: “I am a story teller in my poetry and photography. I try to have each capture a window to the tales one can imagine that preceded it and that follow. Like poetry where what the listener hears/reads can be interpreted from each person’s frame of reference, so it is with my images as you view them. Each is meant to be a metaphor for you to construe.”
Bud and his wife of 62 years, Marian, live in Chesterfield. He is an arts advocate having been one of the founders of Chesterfield Arts/Arts Unleashed and was long-serving and founding member of The Repertory Theatre on St. Louis Board of Directors.
