MOVING PICTURES

Moving Pictures. In Schatzberg’s photographs you can see the trust between subject and photographer. Both famous and anonymous people portrayed strip themselves of anxiety in front of his camera, and what is left before the lens is pure emotion.

Using his fashion photography as a jumping-off point, Schatzberg started to photograph some of the most noted icons of the sixties. Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Catherine Deneuve, Roman Polanski, Faye Dunaway, Charlotte Rampling, Edie Sedgewick, Fidel Castro, the Rolling Stones and many more reveal these moments of truth. Not only to know them better but to see beyond the surface and discover their true self, the one they may have tried to hide from the outside world.

Instead of the self-contained space of the frame he looks for the space beyond. His photographs are narrative; they tell a story. In an instant they recognize an action, a gesture, an emotion, while at the same time they have a rigorous formal pattern that expresses their meaning. The style, however, never manifests itself ostentatiously and never encroaches on the fluidity of life.

In more than forty years of photography and cinema, Schatzberg has achieved a delicate balance between a refined form of mise-en-scène and the rendering of true moments. He has a particular gift to restrain the emotions only to make their release more powerful and to avoid the obvious by suggesting rather than by underlining. He makes us feel something that is too often missing in contemporary American cinema: an adult and mature artist, dealing with adult and mature themes and characters.

www.jerryschatzberg.com