Marty Forscher, R.I.P.

As a guitarist, I remember the days when the Fender Strat was described as "a door with strings." I especially loved Marty's line describing the Nikon F as "a hockey puck that could take pictures." He was beyond value to a lot of the photogs we all admire most! R.I.P.
Vic
 
As I recall from the mags in the 70s, he started in the US Navy in WWII. I guess he was something of a local legend where ever he was then. He then became a legend world wide. From the stories told, there didn't seem to be anything he or shis shop could not do. Sorry to hear of his passing.
 
Very sad news. Don't know how many polaroids I ran through an F back of his. And he was a wealth of information.
 
A great guy and a creative genius in the shop.
I had the pleasure of meeting him at the
Miami Herald in the early 70s. A real loss.
 
Met him a number of times at PCR. Good guy, knew his stuff back-and-forth. Quite sad to hear this.


- Barrett
 
Although I didn't know him, I've worked with a couple of guys who knew him. All the stories point to one of those rare people who could adapt cameras like no other. He approached challenges creatively, and I don't think that anyone else has been able to approach what he did. An amazing guy, from all reports.
 
From Bill PiERCE, on his RFF Column: "Marty, what an incredibly decent man. When I was in school in the mid 50's the center of the photographic universe was 480 Lexington Ave., the Grand Central Palace. Marty took care of your cameras. Axel Grosser souped your film in a one man (plus a receptionist) branch of Modernage. Katherine Ujeley Bertrand retouched the portraits of girls you wanted to impress (She had learned to retouch small film during WWII when there was no sheet film in Europe.). Actually, they were your family. And Sam Locker at Royaltone, the Fotocare of the Fifties, was the grouchy neighbor. And punk kids from New Jersey were treated as well as their heroes, many of whom they were introduced to at Marty's.
People forget, cameras were forever. Every year your cameras would get rotated through Marty's and get a CLA, clean, lubricate and adjust. I remember when one photographer had a camera smashed at a civil rights demonstration, Marty epoxied the main body casting and kept the camera going. Marty was repairing the cameras of the kids covering the movement for free.
If you were on the road and needed something repaired or customized, he moved on it, shipped it and trusted you would pay him when you got back.
Marty made the first thumb wind; actually it was an index finger wind, an arm that attached to the circular wind knobs of 35mm cameras with a hole that accepted your index finger and allowed you to spin the wind knob. By the time he moved up to 37 W. 47th in the diamond district, all 35 cameras had wind levers, but he started it. The 180 and 300mm Olympic Sonnars, movie camera lenses, were the long lenses of choice and Marty adapted them to everything from Visoflexes to Nikons. If you wanted that extra smooth focusing movement, he showed you how to temporarily replace the lubricant in the lens with valve grinding compound. When the Leicaflex first came out, there were no zoom lenses for it; so, he adapted Nikon lenses for it. When he first made Polaroid backs for Nikons, he made me a Canon "prototype" so I wouldn't feel left out.
I don't know how he did it, but Marty knew the name of every photographer that came into that shop. And it wasn't that he checked the name on the repair slip. If he saw you on the street, he called out your name. He didn't pretend to be your friend; he was your friend. What a kind, decent man. There are little pools of goodness in our tiny photo world and Marty's was one of them, thanks to Marty."
 
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