Howard Schatz


Howard Schatz is an American photographer.

Life and work

The photographs of Howard Schatz are exhibited in museums and photography galleries internationally and are included in innumerable private collections. He has received international acclaim for his work which has been published in twenty-two monographs.
KINK, Schatz 22nd monograph, will be published in April 2018. The Folsom Street Fair is held every year in San Francisco on the last Sunday in September, celebrating the world of kink and bondage, discipline and sadomasochism. For over a quarter century Schatz has made a serious photographic exploration of the people and personalities who visit the fair.
May 2015 marked the publication of a monumental 2-volume 25-year retrospective of the work of Howard Schatz: Schatz Images: 25 Years.
Schatz's 20th book, Caught in the Act: Actors Acting was published in October, 2013. In it he gives us a unique window into the world of stage and screen as he explores the magical transformation that happens when an actor takes hold of words on a page and becomes another person. Schatz directed and photographed 85 actors to explore an enormous range of scenarios in one-on-one improvisation, capturing the dynamic energy of the actors in full creative flight. The book includes powerful and compelling portraits of each actor along with an extensive interview, focusing on the creative process.
In 2012, his 19th book, AT THE FIGHTS: Inside the World of Professional BOXING was published. Born out of a six-year study and exploration,it is a magnificent collection of fantastic and award-winning photographs and revealing interviews of boxing's current champions and key movers and shakers including promoters, managers, announcers, referees, judges and trainers. At The Fights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing is published by Sports Illustrated Books is Schatz's nineteenth book.
Published in 2011, WITH child, is the result of a 20-year long exploration of the landscape of the human body in the last two weeks of pregnancy. It is his eighteenth book.
In 2007, Bulfinch Press published the third in Schatz's series of explorations of imagery made on, over and underwater. It is a breathtaking feat of underwater photography and a visionary celebration of movement and form. Working with uncommonly graceful and aquatically gifted dancers, models, and performers, photographer Howard Schatz has found joyous inspiration underwater. The images in H2O take advantage of water's unique properties- light, clarity, buoyancy, and reflectivity-to create a delightfully serene and otherworldly aesthetic. At once uncanny, lithe, athletic, and mysterious, the figures in Schatz's photographs transform the pool into studio and stage. Howard Schatz first established a following in the 1990s with two collections of underwater photography, Water Dance and Pool Light. With H2O, Schatz takes the magic of weightlessness and the beauty of dance to new heights. Whether in single portraits or as part of a larger, spectacular ballet, his dancers are as utterly elegant as they are phantasmagorical. They appear before the camera as though borrowed from a dream.
In Character: Actors Acting Schatz's sixteenth book of photographs, was published in April 2006 by Bulfinch Press. Schatz photographed 100 actors of stage, screen and television, directing them in one-on-one improvisation. Botanica and Athlete, were Schatz's two other most recently published books of photographs. Schatz's books are known worldwide; other titles include: Nude Body Nude; Body Knots, Passion & Line, Pool Light. Schatz's editorial work has been published in magazines around the world, including Time, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Vogue Italia, GQ Italia, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Stern, Life, Black/White, American Photo, Photo France, and Photo Italia. His work has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, NPR, Fox Sports Network, the Discovery Channel and widely in Europe.
He has made extraordinary images for such advertising clients as Ralph Lauren RLX, Escada, Sergio Tacchini, Nike, Reebok, Wolford, Etienne Aigner, Sony, Adidas, Finlandia Vodka, MGM Grand Hotel, Virgin Records, and Mercedes-Benz.
Howard Schatz's fine art work is represented in New York by the Staley-Wise Gallery in Manhattan and Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton, in Denver, by Gallery M, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston and Preiss Fine Art in Vienna, Austria, among others. A full listing of other galleries in the United States and abroad can be found in the Galleries section of the website.
Schatz began his professional life in medicine. He was a world-renowned retina specialist, authoring over 100 peer-reviewed articles and seven text books in the field. He lectured all over the world and was in private practice in San Francisco from 1970-1995. He was a Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California, San Francisco; he also taught regularly at Stanford University.. He completed his medical degree at The University of Illinois College of Medicine, followed by an internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, ophthalmology residency at The University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary, and fellowship in vitreoretinal diseases at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Schatz is married to Beverly Ornstein, the former head of Current Affairs at PBS television station, KQED, in San Francisco; she is currently executive producer for Schatz Ornstein Studio. They live and work in Connecticut and New York.

Publications

As Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein

2018
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
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2003
2002
2001
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1999
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1992