LASKY/ISRAEL PHOTO-AIRBRUSH
Before Photoshop. Before AI. Every Effect Was Made by Hand.
In the 1980s, two Miami artists—Michael Israel and photographer Bob Lasky—combined painting, photography, darkroom experimentation, and airbrush into a unique body of work.
The process began with Michael transforming live models with hand-painted body art, sometimes turning the human form into animals, butterflies, fantasy figures, and other surreal creations. Bob then photographed the models on film, capturing the transformation through his lens.
But the photograph was only the beginning.
Bob developed and printed the images in his own lab, experimenting with traditional darkroom chemistry to alter color, contrast, and mood. After the large photographic prints were mounted, Michael went back to work, painting directly onto each photograph with an airbrush—adding color, light, shadows, atmosphere, and fantasy elements that didn't exist in the original photograph.
In some works, Bob then re-photographed Michael's finished artwork and returned to the darkroom for another round of experimentation.
No Photoshop. No digital effects. No AI.
It was photography, painting, chemistry, imagination—and a tremendous amount of hands-on experimentation.
Michael transformed the models. Bob captured the moment. Then together, they took the image somewhere neither photography nor painting could have reached alone.
Explore more of Bob Lasky's photography at boblasky.com.
Bob Lasky — Photographer
For more than four decades, Bob Lasky was one of South Florida’s most accomplished and respected photographers, building a career that reached far beyond Miami. Click to visit boblasky.com
After settling in Miami in 1971, Bob became known for his distinctive work in celebrity, fashion, beauty, entertainment, commercial photography, and especially actor portraiture. His photographs appeared in publications including Vogue, People, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Sports Illustrated, Billboard, and Rolling Stone.
Through the years, his camera captured an extraordinary range of personalities—from Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, James Brown and the Bee Gees to Muhammad Ali, Dan Marino, musicians, actors, models and professional athletes. His commercial clients included major record companies, corporations, universities and national organizations.
Bob was more than a photographer. He was an experimenter, educator and mentor who understood both the technical science and the artistic possibilities of photography. Long before digital manipulation became commonplace, he was exploring what could be achieved through lighting, film, printing, darkroom chemistry and unconventional photographic processes.
That spirit of experimentation led to his collaboration with Michael Israel in the 1980s. Michael transformed live models through body painting, Bob captured those transformations on film, and the two continued developing the images through darkroom experimentation and Michael’s hand-painted airbrush work.
The result was neither simply a photograph nor simply a painting, but a remarkable fusion of their two disciplines—created entirely by hand decades before Photoshop and artificial intelligence changed the way images could be transformed.