Steve Schapiro, the photojournalist and documentarian who covered the Civil Rights Movement and shot iconic portraits of Muhammad Ali, Barbra Streisand, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, David Bowie and many other luminaries during his career is no more.
According to media reports, Schapiro died on Saturday at his home in Chicago battling pancreatic cancer at the age of 87.
Schapiro photographed the March to Washington in 1963, the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination and Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968.
He played a key role in producing advertising materials, publicity stills and posters for movies including, Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Godfather (1972), The Way We Were (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Risky Business (1983) and Billy Madison (1995) and collaborated with Streisand and Bowie for record covers.
His 2007 book, Schapiro’s Heroes, was the winner of an Art Directors Club Cube Award.
Other books included 2008’s The Godfather Family Album; 2010’s Taxi Driver; 2012’s Then and Now, with photos of Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Orson Welles and others; 2016’s Bowie and Barbra Streisand; 2017’s The Fire Next Time, with his civil rights photos taken from 1963-68 accompanied by Baldwin text; and 2018’s Ali.
He produced photo essays on subjects as varied as narcotics addition, Easter in Harlem, the Apollo Theater, Haight-Ashbury, poodles and presidents.
