Howard Schatz

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 and has won virtually every award in his field including numerous “Photographer of the Year” awards and Gold Medals in the most prestigious competitions. His work has been published in twenty-two monographs.

On April 1, 2018 Howard Schatz’s 20-year long study of the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco was published in his newest book, KINK.

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 Fight: 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 (Bulfinch 2005) and Athlete, (HarperCollins, 2002) 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, and 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.