Gregory Heisler
Gregory Heisler is a New York-based photographer whose technical mastery and thoughtful responsiveness allow him to creatively interpret an unusually broad range of subjects.
Gregory Heisler is a New York-based photographer whose technical mastery and thoughtful responsiveness allow him to creatively interpret an unusually broad range of subjects.
He is perhaps best known for the more than fifty TIME magazine cover portraits he has created, yet his trademark editorial portrait covers and essays for LIFE, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, GENTLEMEN’S QUARTERLY (GQ), ESQUIRE, ESPN, HOUSE & GARDEN and THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE have also received wide acclaim. He has photographed award-winning advertising campaign s for American Express, Benson & Hedges, Dewar’s Profiles, Nike, Merrill Lynch, and Zocor.
Gregory has been profiled in magazine articles in ESQUIRE, COMMUNICATION ARTS, LIFE, and numerous industry periodicals. Among the kudos he has received are the ASMP Corporate Photographer of the Year Award (1986), the Leica Medal of Excellence (1988), the World Image Award (1991), and the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (2000).
In 1991 TIME magazine set a precedent by calling upon Gregory to create the first commissioned photographic “Man of the Year” cover in the magazine’s history. The resulting controversial portrait of President George Bush (as TIME’s “Man” of the Year) paved the way for his subsequent “Person of the Year” commissioned portraits of Ted Turner (1992), “The Peacemakers” Yitzak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, F.W. deKlerk and Yasser Arafat (1994), Newt Gingrich (1996), AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho (1997), Andrew Grove (1998), Jeffrey Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com (1999), New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (2001), and most recently, The Whistleblowers: Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Sherron Watkins of Enron (2002). In 2002, Michael Bloomberg chose Gregory as the official photographer for his mayoral inauguration, during which he captured the event itself and created select portraits. In 1990 the City of New York broke with its time-honored tradition of oil paintings by selecting Gregory’s portrait of Mayor Edward I. Koch. It was the first photographic Official Portrait (translated to ink-on-paper as a fine art lithograph) to hang on permanent exhibition alongside the prior works-on-canvas in City Hall. In 1999 The New York Public Library followed suit, commissioning Gregory to create their first photographic portrait of a retiring chairperson. In 2000, the resulting portrait of Marshall Rose (printed as a large-format giclee’ print) was hung alongside the traditional oil portraits in the main branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
Gregory is a sought-after lecturer and teacher at scores of international seminars. Nationally, he has taught at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and The New School for Social Research, the National Geographic Society, The Smithsonian Institution (Masters of Still Photography Program), the William A. Reedy Memorial Lecture series, and in the Master of Fine Arts Program at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
While his principal focus is portraiture, Gregory’s enthusiasm, curiosity, and drive bring him an unconventional range of projects. His love of the craft, manifested in his “hands-on” approach to every aspect of the photographic process, keeps him intimately involved in the creation of his imagery.
