Robert Melvin "Bob" Adelman (October 30, 1930 – March 19, 2016) was an American photographer known for his images of the civil rights movement.

Adelman used his background as a graduate student in applied aesthetics from Columbia University to forge close ties with leading figures of art and literature, including Andy Warhol and Samuel Beckett.

After studying photography for several years under the tutelage of Harper's Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch, Adelman volunteered as a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality in the early 1960s, a position which granted him access to key leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin.

[4][5] The gallery also exhibited and represents Adelman's photographs of New York artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, Adolph Gottlieb, other artists and social photographic essays.

[6] On March 20, 2017, the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division officially acquired the Bob Adelman photographic archives which included the full spectrum of his work from his famed Civil Rights captures to his less celebrated pornographic bondage images.