Welcome to Bob Compton's Photo Site

"Arkansas native and Big Easy resident Bob Compton has a gift for making
public performance shots come across as accessible and personable, almost
intimate, portraits of his subjects at work."
-- D. Eric Bookhardt, from his "Inside Art" column.

It says on his birth certificate that Bob Compton was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but no one who has ever heard him talk believes that for one minute.

That's because, some five months after his birth in 1953, his father quit the FBI and returned to Arkansas to begin practicing law in the small town of El Dorado, where Bob grew up in what he later realized was an idylic, almost fairy-tale setting, replete with country club priviledges and public schools that actually offered an education.

After graduating from the tiny liberal-arts institution known as Hendrix College in 1975, Compton tried both law school and heavy drinking, finding the latter much more to his liking and ditching the former after just one year.

Thus began a series of experiential endeavors that made Compton a "jack of all trades, master of none"... until he discovered photography at the ripe middle age of 38.

Since then, he has followed his camera from one end of the country to the other, and generated an estimated ninety thousand images.

Arriving in new Orleans in early 1996, Compton moved into an apartment on Maple Street, and began shooting the music and culture of the city that he had come to love.

His work was selected for exhibition in the first "No Dead Artists" show in 1997.

His first one man show "New Orleans: The Beauty, The Beast and The Music" opened at Positive Space, The Gallery in the spring of 2000.

In 2001, John Product Gallery showed "The Black&White Photography of Bob Compton"

(He sincerely hopes that his presence in a show at The Big Top won't cause them to close as well...)

In 2002, Compton began spending summers in Northern California, where he joyfully attends the High Sierra Music Festival in July and Reggae On The River in August.

In 2003, he and Zack Smith and Jenny Bagert took their work to the Bonneroo Music Festival, and a splendid time was had by all.

Compton is currently photo editor for Beat Street Magazine.