© photograph copyright Stephen Schapiro |
*'Hero' frame is the best image in a group of similar photographic images. Looking at a contact sheet of photographs, an editor would write 'hero' next to the one picture he/she particularly liked. The hero frame, or 'hero' as it was simply called, would then become the lead picture or perhaps the magazine cover.
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As a young photographer on assignment for Life, my only ambition was that the pictures I took each day would be published in the following week’s magazine; I never thought beyond that. I could not imagine that 40 years later, so many of my subjects would remain strong, iconic figures in the world. However, as I photographed each of these ten individuals, I was aware of the life-changing effect they were having on me.
-Steve Schapiro
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Schapiro's Heroes documents his personally selected collection of iconic images from his encounters with artists, writers, actors, athletes, and politicians throughout the second half of the 20th Century. His work ranges from dramatic images of the Civil Rights movement, as he followed the many marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow patriots, to archetypal images of several groundbreaking and influential personalities, newsmakers, and thinkers of the era. Striking portraits, from Bobby Kennedy to Andy Warhol and James Baldwin, fill the exhibition with a sense of the depth and breadth of Schapiro's extraordinary life in photography.
Photo-essays have been an important part of journalism since the first halftone ran off press nearly a century ago. Steve Schapiro made his reputation following some of the most important names in American through the mid-20th Century. Assignments lasting from a few days to several months allowed him to penetrate the veil of his subjects' public personas. "You developed a sense of the person's inner drives and expectations," he explains in the introduction to his new book, Schapiro's Heroes. "You got into a rhythm that gave your story a visual and emotional continuity." The exhibition of works from the book celebrates the iconic in his narratives.
Steve Schapiro's career in photography began in 1960 with a personal documentary project on Arkansas migrant workers, which The New Times Magazine published as a cover story. The coverage of this situation, which garnered no national attention before his expose, resulted in bringing electricity to a farm camp, which had previously used only kerosene lamps.
In the 1960's and 1970's, Schapiro traveled extensively throughout the United States covering stories on American culture and politics. In the 1970's and 1980's, Schapiro continued his documentary photograph and also worked in Hollywood creating iconic movie stills for Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather, Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver, and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, and he later created album covers for icons like Barbara Streisand.
Schapiro's photographs have graced the covers of many of the world's most prominent magazines, including Life, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Look, Sports Illustrated, People, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, and The New York Times Magazine.
A companion book 'Schapiro's Heroes' is available |
