Robert Carrithers, BFA

Robert combines his teaching expertise with his creative talents, drawn from a rich personal history in the arts scenes of New York, Berlin, and Prague. His work spans writing, film, and photography, reflecting his experiences and deep connection to these cultural hotspots.

Robert works mainly with documentary styles of filmmaking, and often takes photography concepts into feature filmmaking. He has also collaborated with renowned artists on video art installations and has exhibited his work extensively on an international scale.

Originally from Chicago, Robert has been deeply immersed in underground music, art, and club scenes since the early 1980s, with his involvement stretching back to New York during that era. As a freelance photographer, he specialises in revealing portraits from underground culture and documents cultural events for magazines and newspapers across major cities like New York, London, and Paris.

His work was internationally-recognised in 2017, when his photographs formed part of a major group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, entitled 'Club 57: Film, Performance and Art in the East Village 1978 – 1983'. 

In the same year his book 'City Primeval New York Berlin Prague' was published. The book weaves together the stories of three influential cities—New York, Berlin, and Prague—exploring how each shaped artists, including writers, poets, musicians, designers, filmmakers, and performers, and how these artists, in turn, left their mark on the cities. The narrative demonstrates through the perspectives of contemporary figures from the underground scenes the evolution of cultural movements, from New York’s Post-Punk and No Wave to the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, to Prague’s Velvet Revolution and subsequent cultural renaissance.

In 2018 Robert published a second book 'The Downtown Luminaries' through Berlin publisher Pogo Books, which featured his photographs of New York in the 1980s. His book also received several design awards.

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