East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 186/70. Photo: Steve Schapiro / Columbia. Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968).
British postcard by Star-Graphics, no. S 91. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).
Italian postcard by Edizioni Beatrice D'Este, no. 20 162. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
British postcard by Music & Movie Stars Ltd. Publishers, no. MMS 036. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Personality #81, SC176971063. Photo: Steve Schapiro / Sygma. Burt Reynolds.
Photojournalist and real activist
Stephen Albert Schapiro was born during the Great Depression, in 1934 in Brooklyn and grew up in the Bronx. His parents were David Schapiro, a stationery store owner in Rockefeller Center and Esther (Sperling) Schapiro who worked at her husband's stationery store.
Steve discovered photography at Summer Camp at the age of nine and continued to take pictures as he grew up. One of his role models was the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. He sought to emulate his style as he roamed the streets of New York. Schapiro attended Stuyvesant High School and Amherst College, from where he later transferred to Bard College. He graduated from there in 1955 with a degree in literature.
In 1960, Schapiro took lessons with W. Eugene Smith, an influential photographer during the Second World War. Smith taught him how to develop his own views of the world and photography. Schapiro even embedded with Smith for a time in his Manhattan loft. He learned how to make prints and picked up some tricks of the trade, like showing two points of interest in a portrait, which Smith told him would make the viewer’s eye go back and forth and thereby hold the viewer’s attention. Schapiro's work reflects the influence of his teacher.
In 1961 Schapiro began working as a freelance photographer. His photos were published in Life, Look, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Time and Paris Match. Schapiro photographed jazz pianist Bill Evans, artist Andy Warhol, writer Samuel Beckett, heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, actresses Barbra Streisand and Mia Farrow and musician David Bowie, among others.
The political, cultural and social changes of the 1960s in the United States were an inspiration for Schapiro. He accompanied Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign. He captured key moments of the civil rights movement such as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or the Selma to Montgomery marches. For Life, he documented the scene of the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968. Schapiro not only worked in photojournalism and documentation but also became a real activist. This is, for instance, visible in his way of documenting the hard lives of immigrant workers from Arkansas he dealt with in 1961.
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 136-183. Photo: Steve Schapiro / The Ludlow Collection. Marlon Brando and Cat in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).
British postcard by Star-Graphics, no. S 89. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Al Pacino in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972).
Belgian promotion card Taschenhen Gallery for the exhibition 'Taxi Driver - Unseen Photographs from Scorsese's Masterpiece'. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
Canadian postcard by Canadian Postcard, no. A-5. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
Vintage postcard. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
Capturing key moments of modern American history
With the sharp decline in circulation figures for magazines such as Life and Look, the demand for high-quality photo essays fell from the end of the 1960s. Steve Schapiro moved to Los Angeles, where he photographed promotional material for film studios, artwork for record sleeves and portraits of well-known Hollywood stars, among other things. Having taken photos of Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969), among them also a famous one of Dustin Hoffman, he was hired as a photographer by Paramount Pictures.
He photographed on the set of the mafia epic The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola with a cast including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall. One of his photographs is of "Marlon Brando and the Cat". Rob Sharp in The Independent: "A man in his early fifties is dressed in black tie. He is lit from above, which throws his features into an intimidating scowl. The picture is completed – rather incongruously – by a young cat in his arms."
Schapiro was also present at the film set of Chinatown (1974) by Roman Polanski. His role involved being as unobtrusive as possible while the actors worked. As such, very little of what he produced was posed for. In 1974, he also shot the cover for the debut issue of People magazine: a portrait of Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974).
Two years later, Schapiro was – by request of Robert De Niro – hired as a photographer on the set of Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver (1976). The chilling film situated in New York in the angry climate of the post-Vietnam era, became a milestone and DeNiro’s portrait of a trigger-happy psychopath with a mohawk is one of the greatest performances of the 1970s. As the special photographer on the set, Schapiro captured the film’s most intense and violent moments from behind the scenes.
During his career of six decades, Schapiro captured key moments of modern American history with his photos that also reflect his own social and human awareness. In 2022, he died from pancreatic cancer at his home in Chicago, at the age of 87. Schapiro was married three times. His first two marriages ended in divorce. He was survived by his wife Maura Smith, two sons, Theophilus Donoghue and Adam Schapiro; two daughters, Elle Harvey and Taylor Schapiro; and four grandchildren. Another son, Teddy Schapiro, died in 2014.
French postcard in the Collection Cinema Couleur by Editions La Malibran, Paris, no. MC 33, 1990. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
British postcard by Memory Card, no. 530. Jodie Foster and Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
British postcard by Memory Card, no. 531. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
British postcard by Memory Card, no. 532. Harvey Keitel and Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
British postcard by Palm Pictures, no. C 20. Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
Sources: Katharine Q. Seelye (New York Times), Rob Sharp (The Independent), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.
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