Jerry Schatzberg is a photographer, director, and screenwriter, born in 1927 in New York. He attended the University of Miami and worked as assistant to the fashion and advertising photographer Bill Helburn, before starting is career as a freelance photographer.
“In the 1960s, Schatzberg captured the attention of the american public with his work in Vogue and McCall’s, which revitalized the approach to fashion photography. Additionally, his portraits (from Bob Dylan to Fidel Castro, from Coppola to Redford, from the Rolling Stones to Catherine Deneuve), his landscapes, and his snapshots of urban life showcased the breadth of his range and personality.
In the 1970s, he was involved with other filmmakers in the revival of American cinema. “Portrait of a Child Gone Astray,” “Panic in Needle Park” (awarded Best Actress for Kitty Winn in 1972), “The Scarecrow” (Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973), among others, marked an era with their innovation. Schatzberg gave Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman some of their best roles.
Through his work as a filmmaker and photographer, Schatzberg observes twenty-five years of American life as a concerned, sensitive, and attentive contemporary.
From his fashion photos in “Portrait of a Child Gone Astray”, street scenes in “Panic in Needle Park” and “Thieves Like Us”, landscapes in “The Scarecrow”, the world of politics in “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”, and the world of entertainment in “Honeysuckle Rose”, the links between his roles as a photographer and filmmaker are close and attest to constant concerns, as well as a lucid and vibrant subjectivity.”
(Excerpt from “Schatzberg, from Photography to Cinema,” by Michel Ciment and Jerry Schatzberg, Chêne/Hachette editions, Paris 1982.)