Steve Schapiro @ Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Steve Schapiro: Heroic Times
Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Through January 27, 2018

STEVE SCHAPIRO, Nico in Times Square, 1972

© Steve Schapiro, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

An exhibition of the photography of Steve Schapiro is on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery. Heroic Times marks the inaugural exhibition of Steve Schapiro’s work at the Gallery. Steve Schapiro has witnessed key moments of American history and culture, from the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march to Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign to Andy Warhol’s Factory to the filming of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. 

Steve Schapiro: Heroic Times surveying American milestones from the photographer’s nearly six decade career, with a focus on the 1960s and ‘70s. A number of the photographs are unpublished and on public view for the first time. With assignments from Life, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and many other publications, he captured iconic and humanistic images of politicians, celebrities, artists, and newsmakers in action.

“I am always seeking the image that conveys the spirit of the person,” Steve Schapiro noted. “At the same time, as a photojournalist, I want to create an image so that people will understand what news is being made.”

During Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, Steve Schapiro traveled with and got to know the young U.S. senator from New York, who greatly impressed him. Also during that time, Steve Schapiro documented the civil rights movement, making photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others who fought for social justice.

Steve Schapiro’s subjects extended beyond politics into the worlds of film, rock and roll, and art. He documented The Godfather, Taxi Driver, The Way We Were, Midnight Cowboy, and Chinatown. Among the luminaries were David Bowie, Samuel Beckett, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Barbra Streisand, and Nico, who sang with the Velvet Underground. 

STEVE SCHAPIRO

Steve Schapiro was born in New York City in 1934. His formal education in photography began when he studied with W. Eugene Smith in the early 1960s. In 1961, Steve Schapiro began to work as a freelance photojournalist, his photographs appearing in magazines including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, and People.

Steve Schapiro’s photographs have been widely reproduced in magazines and books related to American cultural history from the 1960s, civil rights, and motion pictures. Monographs of Schapiro’s work include Schapiro’s Heroes, 2007, which offers intimate profiles of ten iconic figures. Recently, Powerhouse published Bliss, 2015, about the changing hippie generation; Bowie, 2016; and Misericordia, 2016, about a facility for people with disabilities. This year,  Taschen published The Fire Next Time with text by James Baldwin and Schapiro’s civil rights photographs from 1963 to 1968. Powerhouse will publish Muhammad Ali in spring, 2018.

Museums and galleries have exhibited Steve Schapiro’s photographs worldwide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes numerous photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. by Schapiro. Recent solo shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin. He has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Steve Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C.; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. In September, he received the James Joyce Award from University College in Dublin. In October he won a Lucie award for achievement in photojournalism. He lives and works in Chicago. 

HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY
41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406, New York, NY 10022
www.howardgreenberg.com

Steve Schapiro photographs of movies stars

The Godfather Family Album. Never-before-seen photos of Coppola's masterpiece.

Selections from Steve Schapiro's photographs provide an insider's view of the making of the legendary trilogy. This edition is limited to 1,000 copies, each numbered and signed by Steve Schapiro.

Imagine the experience of witnessing renowned actors as they made their most memorable performances. Steve Schapiro has had such a privilege as special photographer on some of American cinema's most beloved movies. For Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Schapiro immortalized actors such as Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton. His photographs of the Godfather holding the cat and the whisper in the Godfather's ear have become iconic images known throughout the world. Brought together in a book for the first time is a vast selection of images from all three Godfather films, reproduced from Schapiro's original negatives.

This lavish, limited edition book, which also includes background articles and interviews about the films, contains over 400 color and black & white images, most of which have never been published before. It allows fans a privileged peek behind the scenes at the making of film history.

Also available: The Art Edition, limited to 200 numbered copies, each signed by Steve Schapiro and accompanied by one of two original prints.

About the editor - Paul Duncan has edited 40 film books for Taschen, and authored Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick in the Film Series.

About the photographer - Steve Schapiro is a distinguished journalistic photographer whose work is found in many museum collections and has been published in his books American Edge and Schapiro’s Heroes. His photographs have appeared on the covers of most major magazines in the world, including Life, Look, Time, Sports Illustrated, Paris Match, and the first People magazine cover. In Hollywood he has worked on more than 200 motion pictures; his most famous film posters are for Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, Parenthood, and The Godfather Part III.

The Godfather Family Album - Hardcover + Box, 29 x 44 cm (11.4 x 17.3 in.) - 444 pages - Taschen - December 2008 - € 1000.00

Book Cover Photo (c) Taschen / Taschen UK Ltd. - All Rights reserved