Robert Bauers, commercial photographer
Robert Bauers, 87, of Lower Gwynedd, a commercial photographer in the Philadelphia area for nearly 50 years, died of congestive heart failure Friday, March 29, at the Springhouse Estates retirement community.
Mr. Bauers was well-known in commercial photography circles before retiring in the 1990s. He maintained studios near Rittenhouse Square in the 1950s and '60s from which he took pictures for company magazines, ad campaigns, and annual reports.
Among his clients was the Bell Telephone Co.
In the 1970s and '80s, he worked as a photographer and video specialist at Betz Laboratories, a water-treatment company in Trevose.
He created training videos for those who used Betz products, and also calendar artwork and images of Betz products for campaigns in trade publications.
From 1970 to 1971, he was president of the Society of Commercial Photographers of Delaware Valley, an association of industrial and advertising photographers. He exhibited his work in Philadelphia on occasion and was a member of the Philadelphia Art Alliance.
Mr. Bauers always frowned on competition among photographers, but his colleagues prevailed on him to enter some professional contests.
As a result, he won national recognition in 1985 from Industrial Photography magazine for a staged image of five different-colored liquids being poured into a beaker.
The picture was tricky to take, because there was no Photoshop at the time for digital adjustment, said his son Robert J. Bauers. He said his father had people pour the liquids while he clicked the shutter.
Whether taking photos of hummingbirds in his backyard, coastal seascapes, or the inside of an industrial boiler, "he tried to capture beauty," his son said. "Beauty is what moved and motivated him."
Mr. Bauers also painted and worked in wood. At one point, he created an entire flotilla of miniature boats and sailors, an enterprise he playfully called "Bauers Boat Works."
Born in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, Mr. Bauers graduated from Frankford High School and learned his craft at the Antonelli School of Photography, a Philadelphia technical school that trained aerial photographers for World War II.
Mr. Bauers joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, but the war ended before he could be deployed.
A resident of Glenside for several decades, he and his wife, Marie, who died in 2002, belonged to the Music Theater of Abington. Mr. Bauers did lighting and publicity photography for the group, which performed musical comedies.
Mr. Bauers moved to Hilltown, Bucks County, in 1974 and lived there for three decades. He moved to Springhouse Estates in 2007.
As a youth, he spent summers in a cabin on Long Beach Island, N.J., at a time when traveling to the barrier islands was an adventure. He became an avid surf fisherman and sailor. One of his great pleasures was sailing his Cape Dory Typhoon, a small sloop, on weekends on Lake Nockamixon.
In the 1990s, he joined his son Robert and daughter-in-law Sandra, an environmental reporter for The Inquirer, on extended sailing adventures in the Bahamas.
In addition to his son, Mr. Bauers is survived by two other sons, Peter and Christopher; five grandsons; and a niece.
A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 13, at Springhouse Estates, 728 Norristown Rd., Lower Gwynedd. Interment is private.
Contact Bonnie L. Cook
at 215-854-2611 or bcook@phillynews.com.
