Four years ago, I was offered a buyout from Gannett New Jersey, a home where I had worked for almost three decades. With my mom's words ringing in my ears, "Robert, you always need to keep reinventing yourself if you want to stay viable," I created this website (bobkarpphotography.com) and started sending out emails to Triangle area editors not knowing if anyone would care about another displaced journalist relocating from the north.
In January 2018 during an interview at Indy Week I asked the editor about advice for a newly relocated Yankee now working in North Carolina. He told me simply, "a y'all goes a long way?" It now rolls semi-fluently off my tongue as I tried to reinvent myself and assimilate to my new home. I joined family and beloved friends in NC and have been blessed to have met and worked alongside some of the kindest and most talented people I've ever had the honor to share a profession with in the North Carolina Photo Coffee Club?
The monthly get-togethers gave me an opportunity to not only be inspired by fellow seasoned photojournalists, but also a new generation of shooters that share very different views on our world and are no less inspiring as the seasoned veterans.
So, it is with a heavy heart that on December 12, I'll be leaving Raleigh, NC and once again try to "reinvent myself," this time moving a little farther south to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is our family's first real step towards retirement, an amazing opportunity to spend time with my Brazilian family, but most of all, to meet some capybaras in their natural habitat. Throughout the many lives I've lived, North Carolina quickly became home and I wish I had just a little more time to stay.
Living down south has been an education. To wit, I've learned more about the Civil War, the Confederacy and civil rights movement than I ever did growing up in New York. I gained a new perspective about our history and my own preconceived ideas. It became my obsession to document not only anti-racist clashes with white supremacists and the BLM movement, but the many protests surrounding Confederate monuments. In September 2021, Bodhi and I traveled to Richmond, VA to witness history and capture the Robert E. Lee statue taken down after more than a century as a symbol of white supremacy. Witnessing that moment will always be one of the Holy Grail images of my career.
Finally, a profound thank you to 27587 Magazine's Phillip Read who became like a big brother to me, Laura Wall and Ayn-Monique Klahre of Walter Magazine, the amazing staff at Indy Week, the reporters and photographers at the News & Observer, Connie Gentry at Midtown Magazine and Leslie King from Durham Academy for believing in me, giving me the freedom and encouragement to swing for the fences in my new home. Most of all, to the amazing, inspirational people (and of course the lemurs) that allowed me to tell your story. If you haven't already, I'd love it if you'd follow me on Twitter (@BobKarpDR) and Instagram (Photopup) and join me on my next life journey.
In the past four years, I've tried to not take one moment for granted. For giving me the opportunity to extend that life I once only dreamed about, I offer my sincerest "Thanks Y'all!"