Robert de Gast | Chronicled Chesapeake, 79

Robert de Gast, 79, a photographer whose 1970 book

The Oystermen of the Chesapeake

captured in harsh and unsentimental images the final days of America's last fishing fleet under sail and is regarded as one of the finest depictions of the watermen who make their living there, died of cancer Sunday at a Baltimore hospice.

Dutch by birth, Mr. de Gast spent most of his life as a freelance photojournalist and commercial photographer on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. He wrote and illustrated a half-dozen books, including one about the bay's lighthouses and two about cruising its tributaries.

Paula J. Johnson, a curator at the National Museum of American History's work and industry division, called Oystermen of the Chesapeake "a masterpiece among volumes devoted to the bay and its people. It's not a romanticized look at the work. It builds a more nuanced, more atmospheric portrait. It gives a sense of place before the phrase 'sense of place' became fashionable."

In his black-and-white pictures, Mr. de Gast depicted the winter fishing season in stark terms. Decks are piled high with what looks more like ore than living things. Huge, dirty sails luff in becalmed creeks. Bleached, abandoned boats rot at the end of tidal guts.

The white and black faces of the oystermen are rarely legible and almost never face the camera. Instead, the portraits are of the moments and objects. A view belowdecks where two men, hands to their foreheads, pray before eating. A hand with cracked fingernails on the spoke of a ship's wheel. A fistful of large-denomination bills on payday.

"It was all done without really any conversation," de Mr. Gast recalled recently. "I had four cameras strapped to my body. I was dressed accordingly. I never asked them for anything. It was like a play."

Mr. de Gast was born in the Hague on Oct. 10, 1936. His father, who built pianos, resettled the family in Linden, N.J., when Robert was in his teens.

To improve his English and declare his independence, he worked on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma for a year. In 1954, he enlisted in the Army and was trained as a photographer.

- Washington Post