Searching for both his past and future, Nathan Farb bought his first camera and started shooting on the streets of NYC’s Lower East Side in 1966. This work was presented as “The Other Summer of Love,” in “Lens”, the NY Times’ photography blog in 2017.

In 1971 his political multimedia work “Lockport” was shown at The Public Theater to critical acclaim and a cult following. Farb was then asked to create a photography/multimedia program in the experimental Art and Music Department at Livingston College, Rutgers University where he taught until 1979.

In 1977 The United States Information Agency sent Farb on a cultural exchange to the USSR. In Novosibirsk, Siberia he used a 4’’x 5” view camera with a Polaroid back and brought out of the Soviet Union a revealing set of portraits of that society. Magazines throughout Europe published these images and a book of 100 portraits was published in Germany, France, Italy, Holland and the United States. The NY Times magazine published 12 of those portraits and a 50” x 70” print of “The Party Chiefs” from that series was acquired by MoMA and hung at the museum for many years.

In 1981, Farb returned to his childhood home in the Adirondack Mountains to recharge himself, spending a lot of time in the woods. Over the next 20 years, he produced three books published by Rizzoli cataloguing many of his finest 8”x10” negatives. That work has been excerpted by close to 100 magazines including The NY Times Magazine. NY Times Magazine then sent him to document the Exxon oil spill and the Yellowstone Fires, and to the Galapagos Islands twice.

Nathan Farb has been given honorary Doctor of Arts degrees by St. Lawrence University and The State University of New York. He is currently working on multimedia pieces about the transcendental connection between the natural world and our spiritual existence.