Robert Forrester

Franz Robert Forrester is an award-winning, five-star club photographer whose life plays out like an epic adventure novel spanning continents, oceans, and untamed wilderness.

Born in 1941 in Harare, Zimbabwe, to an Irish mother and an Austrian father, Robert discovered his lifelong obsession with the lens as a schoolboy, developing raw film from a Kodak Brownie Box camera in a makeshift darkroom. After a coast-to-coast trek across the United States in 1961, the magnetic pull of the African continent brought him back home to launch Salisbury Safaris, leading intrepid expeditions across Victoria Falls, Kariba, and deep into Tanzania.

Driven by an insatiable wanderlust, Robert and his wife, Rosemary, later shipped a rugged Land Rover across the Atlantic to Venezuela, embarking on an audacious, years-long overland expedition across South America.

In an era of analog photography, he meticulously wrapped his precious film in tinfoil to battle the tropical humidity, capturing raw moments on his trusty Minolta SRT101.

After a highly successful stint building one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest tourism operations, a profound personal loss in 1987 sparked a realization that life was too short for a desk job. Robert traded the corporate world for the open ocean, buying an Oyster 435 ketch and setting sail from Gibraltar on a spectacular 20-year voyage around the globe—accompanied by their legendary sea-faring Jack Russell terrier, Tara.

Today, having traded the high seas back for the African bush, Robert continues to document the raw majesty of Southern Africa's wild game reserves, capturing a lifetime of untamed beauty through his lens.