Steve Schapiro, photojournalist and documentary reporter who covers the civil rights movement, has produced stills for Godfather and Taxi driver and portraits of David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Andy Warhol and Ray Charles, dead. He was 87 years old.
Schapiro died Saturday at his home in Chicago from pancreatic cancer, a journalist announced.
Schapiro photographed the 1963 Washington march, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968.
He has produced promotional materials, stills and promotional posters for films including Midnight cowboy (1969), Godfather (1972), Our way (1973), Taxi driver (1976), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Business risk (1983) and Billy Madison (1995) and collaborated with Streisand and Bowie for the album covers.
His 2007 book Hero of Schapiro, winner of the Art Directors Club’s Cube Award, outstanding profiles and portraits by Streisand, Warhol, Kennedy, Charles, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Truman Capote.
Other books included of 2008 Godfather Family Album; 2010 Taxi driver; Year 2012 Past and present, with photographs by Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Orson Welles and others; 2016 Bowie and Barbra Streisand; 2017 Fire next time, with his citizenship photographs taken between 1963-68 accompanied by the words Baldwin; and 2018 Ali.
Martin Scorsese (left) and Robert De Niro on the set of ‘Taxi Driver’ in 1976
Courtesy of Fahey / Klein . Gallery
David Bowie in New Mexico in 1975
Courtesy of Fahey / Klein . Gallery
Born in New York, Schapiro discovered photography at the age of nine while at summer camp. He studied with photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, who would provide information on his humanistic approach to photography, and attempted to imitate the work of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Schapiro started out in 1961 as a freelancer and his photos would appear on the covers of magazines including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, Everyone and Paris match.
He has created photo essays on topics as varied as drug replenishment, Easter in Harlem, Apollo Theatre, Haight-Ashbury, poodles, and the president.
Since the 1969 exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Harming my mind, which contains several of his photographs, whose photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions around the world. One-man shows have recently been held in Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin.
Survivors include his 39-year-old wife, Maura, and children Theophilus, Adam, Elle and Taylor. Donations in his name may be made to Chicago’s Saint Sabina church.
