Beese, Robert S.

From 1942 until his retirement in 1977, Robert S. Beese served as photographer for the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, advised the Penn State Camera Club, and was active with the Color Slide Club. Beese began his photographic career while growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was an active member of his high school's camera club, and even set up a dark room in his parents' basement, equipped with an enlarger he made himself. Shortly after graduation, he began an apprenticeship with a local photographer who encouraged him to enroll in a top photographic school. Beese enrolled at the Clarence White School of Photography in New York City, where he studied under Ansel Adams. His classmates included Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. Beese also studied at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, and the Winowa and Leica schools of photography, both in Winowa, Indiana.