Photographer Henry Grossman, Who Shot Thousands of Beatles Photos, Dead at 86


The New York Times
has an obituary for Henry Grossman, who died this week at age 86.

Grossman shot photos of the Beatles on their first U.S. visit in 1964 and took thousands of more shots of the group over the years that followed. He also shot portraits of numerous other luminaries, including several U.S. presidents.

From The Times:

He was only 27 — barely older than the Beatles themselves — when he was commissioned by Life magazine in 1964 to cover the band’s American television debut, on the popular CBS variety series “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Mr. Grossman photographed the hirsute quartet juxtaposed against a jungle of television cameras, amplifiers and other backstage impedimenta, and he shot from the balcony to capture their electrifying effect on the audience. His creative eye would be reflected in an archive of some 7,000 photos he would take of the Beatles over the next four years.

That only a few dozen were published or even printed at the time — most famously a 1967 portrait for Life of the newly mustachioed band members — left other photographers (among them Robert Freeman, Dezo Hoffmann, Astrid Kirchherr, Jürgen Vollmer and Robert Whitaker) more closely associated with the Beatles than Mr. Grossman was.

More here

Comments