The Amazing Burt Keppler

There are fond remembrances out there already by those who knew Burt Keppler better than I did, including former Popular Photography editor Jason Schneider and former Pop managing editor Mason Resnick, both also Burt's colleagues at the late Modern Photography. Burt's old friends have tried their best to convey specifics of his brilliant career, though the man had such influence and such a presence in the photo industry that it would be impossible to account for so much history with anything but a thick biography. Read their tributes if only for the sense of a life fully lived, and I'll add just a few thoughts and recollections. (Below, Burt with fellow Pop Photo great Norman Rothschild.)

I first met Burt a little more than 20 years ago, when I was senior editor at Popular Photography. He had been lured away from rival Modern Photography to revamp Pop. It was an awkward transition, as changes of the guard at magazines almost always are, with staffers going and coming. But the ever-upbeat Burt made Pop his own, bringing his distinctive voice and vision to the magazine. (Initially he even fought the magazine's time-honored diminutive, preferring to call it Popular!)

Even after I left Pop for American Photographer, I continued to work with Burt on a variety of projects. I can vouch for the remarkable work ethic cited in other tributes. I remember, after Burt had had a heart attack in the early 1990s, visiting him in the hospital at his insistence to work on a piece that absolutely had to be in the next issue of Popular Photography. I went away with copy well edited in Burt's trademark green-ink fountain pen.

Even in the heat of deadlines Burt remained cool. He had a sort of inner, Zenlike calm that I envied. Yet he focused like a laser beam on whatever needed to be done.

And while Burt knew more about photography than anyone I've ever known (except perhaps his and my late colleague, Bob Schwalberg), he was a true polymath. He could tell you way more than you ever knew about almost anything, from wine to antique cars. And it was all stuff he loved. The only one of his subjects on which our playing field was level was art music, and we had regular conversations about it when Burt passed by my office on the way to the Pop Photo lab. With typical generosity he bequeathed to me his telephone-book-sized references to every classical recording in creation, Machaut to Schoenberg.

I'll miss those conversations, whether they were about music, photography, or something else. I'll miss walking down the hall to Burt's office for the answer to a question that I knew only he could provide, without a hint of arrogance, off the top of his head. I'll miss watching him gracefully accept the adulation that office visitors and Popular Photography readers provided. But Burt's life was long, full, and meaningful, and for that we all should be happy.
--Russell Hart