There is always light in the shadows of a city. Not everyone sees it.
Robert Natkin did.
In 1948 Natkin, then 29, was commissioned by the Chicago Housing Authority to document residents and create publicity images of new public housing projects. Natkin covered the 1962 Republican National Convention at the International Amphitheatre as well as the city’s narcotic courts. He shot for Ebony magazine and Life magazine. Natkin’s cinematic sense of light become one of his signature style points.
In 1969 Natkin became the first unofficial team photographer for the Chicago Bulls, creating communal sparks in the dimly lit Chicago Stadium. He brought his son Paul to the sparsely attended games of the three-year-old franchise, which is how Paul Natkin began his illustrious photography career.
Late in life, Robert became a full-time nature photographer, focusing on sunrises and cool waters. He also taught himself how to act as a general contractor, a profession to which he devoted his life from the mid-1950s until the mid-1970s. In 1974 he built the Ross-Ehlert Photo Labs in Chicago that went on to serve thousands of international photographers and advertising agencies. In the late 1980s Robert and his son William built the first all-solar heated home in Chicago.
Robert was a master of time and space. In his street photography, he knew the moment to understand the eyes because it is the eyes that tell the truth: a thin young girl selling the Chicago Sun-Times when Dwight Eisenhower was elected president, boxer Ezzard “The Cincinnati Cobra” Charles with hard turn away on the ropes from 1951 and a forward-looking Black gentleman from 1952-53 when Ebony assigned Natkin to travel around the country chronicling people who had turned 100 years old.
Robert Natkin was born on April 23 1919 in Chicago. He died of complications from heart disease on September 13 1996 in the two-story, three-bedroom family vacation home he had built in Eagle River (pop. 1,628) in Northern Wisconsin.
Paul is in the process of cataloging and preserving his father’s historic work. Robert shot in so many different formats at so many different places that the task is daunting. Paul guessed there were 5,000 images for him to go through in the next few years. Paul works at a methodical pace but the objective is clear: this post-World War II photojournalism is essential for future generations to see.
Robert became engaged in photography while attending Von Steuben High School on the north side of Chicago. During the summers he was a camp counselor at his beloved Eagle River where he began to photograph nature. He planned a career in medicine until 1941 when he was drafted into the military. Young Robert was first assigned to the medical corps and then reassigned as an Air Force gunner photographer to document the effectiveness of air strikes. Natkin flew from the last plane in the formation where he honed his photographic skills. In 1944 he received the Purple Heart after being wounded in the foot on his 49th mission. Natkin completed his 50th mission before returning from the war in early 1945. The war informed Natkin’s empathy.
When he returned to civilian life, Natkin continued his pursuit of photography; “Keep in flight,” as the great Chicago photographer John H. White says. A memorable commission came to Natkin in 1948 when he was dispatched on a border-to-border automobile journey by the
Mexican Tourism Bureau. Natkin’s emerging documentary style went beyond the borders of tourism to reveal all truths and emotions.
Natkin had connected with the tourism bureau through the Black Star photo agency (founded in 1935) in New York. He obtained assignments for Life, Look and the Saturday Evening Post magazines through Black Star. “I have no idea how long he was on the road in Mexico,” Paul said. “I was born in 1951. He had some nice tourism pictures, images of fancy buildings. But they didn’t want most of his pictures: like a topless woman bathing in a stream, people making pottery, bullfighters stabbing a bull.” Once again, the viewer sees eyes of wonder and desire, like Natkin capturing a pensive group of four people sitting at a bus station in Oaxaca. Natkin had a knack for making himself a part of any community.
Natkin was self-taught. His favorite photographer was the French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) the purveyor of the decisive moment. Also a Black Star client, Cartier-Bresson believed that every event has a decisive moment. A basic premise of photography is not about shooting a zillion pictures. It’s about shooting a couple of very good ones. Cartier-Bresson also became Paul’s guiding light.
In the early 1960s Ben Bentley (1920-2001) was a partner in the Burns & Bentley public relations agency, co-helmed by Ben Burns, the founding editor of Ebony magazine and later editor of Sepia magazine. Robert was taking pictures for Ebony. Burns, Bentley and Robert Natkin were white men in a Black world. When Bentley resurfaced as the first publicist and announcer for the Chicago Bulls, he recruited Robert as a part-time game photographer. “He only did it for a couple of years,” his son said. “He got bored. He spent more time taking pictures of fans. One of his greatest pictures was of a guy sitting near the front row with a stack of upside-down beer cups next to him. He thought that was much cooler than shooting the game.”
Paul enjoyed going to the games more than his father, although Robert played hoops for a 5’6” and under Von Steuben team that went to the state tournament. Robert Natkin topped out at 5’2.” “He taught me how to use a camera as we were driving from East Rogers Park to the Chicago Stadium,” Paul recalled. “He put the camera in my lap. Every time we hit a red light he would point out something on the camera, saying what it did.”
In 1949 Natkin married photographer Judy Lewis (1927-2013). Once they had their sons, Paul, and William, Natkin purchased a lot in West Rogers Park for a larger home and taught himself how to act as the general contractor for its construction. “Later, a friend of his had a hot dog stand on Lincoln Avenue near Foster,” Paul recalled. “He built a rubble wall around the picnic area next to the stand. He embedded all this stuff in the brickwork he had taken from buildings that had been torn down during the King riots.” Robert’s gritty DIY ethos was the bridge he built with the soul of Chicago.
In the 1970s Robert revisited some of the Chicago Housing Authority projects that he had documented being built. He brought along a bag of his photo equipment, including an expensive Hasselblad that had its 1940s roots in the production of military cameras. “He’d go to the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green,” Paul explained. “He’d walk up to a family sitting on a bench outside a building. He’d talk to them and find out about them. And then he would take a portrait of them. It would be impeccable. He would make a print and go back and give them a print. He wanted to show that he was a real photographer. And people cherished those pictures. He’d go down there three or four times a week. Until he got held up at gunpoint and they stole his
camera equipment.” Robert Natkin’s compassionate psyche was wounded. He never returned
to street photography.
“I’ll never forget what he told me,” Paul said. “Everybody on this earth is equal. Until they prove that they’re not.’ He believed he could go wherever he wanted to go and nobody would bother him. Until somebody stuck a gun to the back of his head. He was never able to take pictures of people after that. It destroyed everything he believed in. He helped start Ebony magazine with John Johnson. He was an honorary Black person. A short Jewish guy working for the biggest
Black magazine in the world. He went everywhere.”
So Robert went full circle and returned to his comfort zone of Eagle River, 330 miles north of Chicago. He started taking nature pictures. He traveled to where the Wisconsin River meets the Chain O’ Lakes. He visited his retreat at all times of the year. “He became a whole different photographer,” Paul said. “There was no human interaction. He’d get up every morning, grab his camera and tripod. He’d drive to the Nicolet National Forest, which was about 20 miles away (in Park Falls, WI.) He’d take pictures of lakes and rocks and streams and trees.”
Robert Natkin was a photographer who respected his subjects, inanimate or sentient. “The story I tell that sums it up is that we sat down for dinner one night at 5:30,” Natkin said. “We always ate at 5:30. (Photography is timing.) My mother puts the food on the table and just as we sit down, the doorbell rings. My father goes to the front door. He comes back. He had to go through the kitchen to get to the basement. He’s followed by this guy with a big portfolio. They go downstairs and he talks to the guy for two hours. The food gets cold, my mother puts it back in the refrigerator. He comes back upstairs with the guy with the portfolio and lets him out the front door. I said, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘No idea.’ Total stranger. They just talked about photography. That’s what he did.” Robert Natkin connected us with the world.
By Dave Hoekstra
