JERRY SCHATZBERG (born 1927)
Jerry Schatzberg was born in the Bronx, New York. After attending the University of Miami, he began his career in the 1950’s as an assistant to the successful fashion and advertising photographer William Helburn. At age 28, Schatzberg left Helburn’s employ and started his own photographic studio. Schatzberg’s work was published in VOGUE, McCall’s, Esquire, Glamour, and LIFE magazines and he photographed many of the leading artistic personalities of the 1960’s including The Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Faye Dunaway, Jimi Hendrix, and Catherine Deneuve. Schatzberg’s portrait of Bob Dylan, taken on a freezing cold day in the grimy meatpacking district of downtown New York, was chosen for the cover of Dylan’s 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.
Schatzberg’s affinity with making his photographic subjects comfortable led to his later career in filmmaking. After directing some commercials for television, in 1970 Schatzberg directed his first feature film Puzzle of a Downfall Child which starred his former girlfriend Faye Dunaway. Dunaway’s character was based on Anne St. Marie, who was one of the leading fashion models of the 1950’s. Schatzberg continued to direct more than a dozen feature films, including The Panic in Needle Park in 1971 with Al Pacino, Scarecrow in 1973 with Gene Hackman and Pacino (which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival), and No Small Affair in 1984 with Demi Moore.
Schatzberg’s photographs have been exhibited at the Les Rencontres d’Arles Festival in France, the Victor & Albert Museum in London, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Books of his photographs include Thin Wild Mercury: Touching Dylan’s Edge (2006), Paris 1962: Yves Saint Laurent and Dior (2008), and Women then: Photographs 1954-1969 (2010).
Jerry Schatzberg lives in New York.