Lawrence Schiller

November 8th – December 20th, 2008

 

 


 

Adamson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Lawrence Schiller, a noted American photographer, journalist and film director. Born in Brooklyn and raised in San Diego, Schiller published his first photos in 1953 at age sixteen. Shortly after, he began work as a photojournalist for LIFE, Paris Match, Time, The Saturday Evening Post, and Newsweek, among others.

 



In the 1960s, Schiller was a photographic witness to a tumultuous time in American cultural history. When Nixon conceded to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, Schiller was there to capture Pat Nixon’s tearful reaction. Three years later, Schiller’s lens captured a chilling photograph of what is arguably the most famous gun in American history--the one Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill John F. Kennedy.

 



In 1962, Schiller shot a series of nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe on the set of Something’s Got To Give. The series was published in Paris Matchmagazine. The film, never finished, was to be the actress’ last before her untimely death three months later.

 

On assignment for LIFE magazine in 1966, Schiller documented the effects of LSD on the patrons of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Test in San Francisco. Tom Wolfe would later include the events of the photo session in a chapter of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Later assignments would find him on Robert Kennedy’s private plane during the senator’s 1968 presidential campaign, or in the mud with soldiers in basic training for Vietnam.

 

Schiller’s celebrity assignments in this era included editorial photographs of many Hollywood luminaries, including Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock, and Clint Eastwood. He shot the on-location publicity stills for several films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1968).

 



In the 1970s, Schiller went on to become a producer and film director. He has directed several motion pictures and mini-series for television and his films have received countless awards, including seven Emmys.

 



In 1976, he began a series of interviews with convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, who would become the first American to be executed following the reinstatement of the death penalty that same year. The interviews, first published in Playboy magazine, would become the impetus for Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Executioner’s Song. Schiller’s portrait of Gilmore, photographed two hours before his execution, is included here.

 

Over the next several decades, most of Schiller’s negatives sat in storage boxes, unseen since their magazine and newspaper publications. In 2007, Schiller’s 1960s photos were exhibited for the first time. This is his first show in Washington, DC.



 

Not merely a product of being at “the right place at the right time”, Schiller’s photographs have captured past presidents, movie stars and notorious criminals in moments of stark and revealing honesty. He has documented a chaotic yet pivotal era in American history.

 

This exhibition is part of FotoWeekDC. (Visit www.fotoweekdc.org)                                       

 

For more information please contact Laurie Adamson or Erin Boland at (202) 232–0707.