Robert Alexander Gilbert (Born c. 1870,

Natural Bridge, Virginia Natural Bridge is an unincorporated community in Rockbridge County, Virginia, United States. The community is the site of Natural Bridge, a natural arch which gives the town its name. Natural Bridge is located at the junction of U.S. Route 11 a ...

; died January 7, 1942,

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

) was an African-American nature photographer. Gilbert was a helper and field assistant to ornithologist William Brewster from 1896 or 1897 until Brewster's death in 1919 and was later employed at the

Museum of Comparative Zoology A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

at Harvard. His photographic work while employed by Brewster went uncredited until the publication of a book-length biography on Gilbert by

John Hanson Mitchell John Hanson Mitchell (born 1940) is an American author best known for a series of books that concentrate on a single square mile of land in eastern Massachusetts known as Scratch Flat. Early life and education Mitchell was born in 1940 in Englewoo ...

, ''Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Unlikely Life of the First African American Landscape Photographer''.

References

1870s births 1942 deaths Nature photographers African-American photographers Photographers from Virginia People from Rockbridge County, Virginia 20th-century African-American people {{US-photographer-stub