Bob Willoughby

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, 1962

1962

Bob Willoughby was an American realist artist and photographer, born in 1927, in Los Angeles, California. He was most-loved for his photojournalistic motion picture stills capturing famous faces, including Audrey Hepburn and Frank Sinatra, demonstrating an ability to capture film stars in unguarded moments of repose and vulnerability. Between 1948-54, he also shot iconic moments of US Jazz history. In 1955, Edward Steichen selected one of Bob's images of a screaming female audience, to be included in the landmark 1955 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, “The Family of Man”.

Bob's photographs are now held in major collections worldwide, including at the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, the National Portrait Gallery, in London, Tate, in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale, in Paris.