Award-winning Photojournalist Gerhardt ’95: “Trying To Create A First Draft Of History”

Rob Gerhardt ’95 is a photojournalist who gets deep into issues that are important to communities. His recent photo story focused on gun violence in Brooklyn received the Institute for Nonprofit News' Insight Award for Visual Journalism after he spent years following groups working in the city’s Brownsville section.

 

 

I have never been a photographer that shoots everything. My work has always been rather project orientated. For example, for a few years after I moved to New York City after college I photographed daily commuters on the subway.

 

I am a rather big news junkie, and stayed on top of what was going on in the world, and when the chance came to do that kind of documentary work while I was in grad school. The first real issue oriented project was in 2006, when I spent a month on the border between Thailand and Myanmar around the town of Mae Sot photographing the Karen people who live there and their struggles against the military junta that was then running Myanmar (and are once again now).

 

Then around the time of the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 I began photographing Muslim American communities around the US after reading and seeing all the coverage of their communities and realizing that many/most people had never been in a Mosque, myself included. So I reached out to the Muslim American Society, and asked about coming to photograph their community in Brooklyn. And the project expanded from there.

 

And then in 2014, with the murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, I started documenting the Black Lives Matter Movement in New York City, which I did till 2021.

 

And now I have spent nearly four years covering gun violence in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

 

 

The key to gaining trust is time. You have to show people that you do really care about what is going on. You have to keep going back, keep showing up. The more time you spend with those you are photographing, and talking with them, the closer you get. One of the biggest things I've learned over the years is that knowing when to put the camera down, and talk and listen to those you are covering makes all the difference.

 

With the BLM protestors it was just being seen over and over again. With the Muslim American Communities, it was reaching out way ahead of time, showing them my work, and talking about what I was doing and not getting in the way of their services and events. For Brownsville it took me almost a year of showing up constantly and talking to people I'd meet on the street or at events to convince some people that I was not just after all the bad stories that come out of the neighborhood, but was really interested in their lives and their community. And when you promise people things, like sending them copies of the photos you take, do it. Little things like that make all the difference.

 

 

My Prep education definitely had an impact. I know a lot of people always reference the idea of being "A Man for Others," and that is part of it, but I think in a different way than the service oriented meaning usually used. For me, it's more about trying to create a first draft of the history we are living through. It's about trying to show that parts of our collective history still affects us everyday, even if we try our best to ignore it. To show that the fight for social justice did not end in the 60's.

 

The education I got in my classes like history, english, and archaeology that instilled a love of those subjects, a love of reading, and thirst to know more have all affected my work. Reading is a big part of what I do, to both research the topics I cover and to understand the reasons and put it all in context to be able to see the bigger picture through what may be seen as small, or local, issues. 

 

 

It was my whole class of '95, actually. I grew up in the suburbs of Philly, and it wasn't until I got to the Prep, and among my very diverse classmates, that I really began to realize how many different life experiences people have. It opened the world to me, and got me onto this path through spending time with them, going places I wouldn't have otherwise, seeing and doing things that were all new to me. It led to my studying Sociology in college, which in turn led to photography.