Michael Grecco (born May 20, 1958) is an American photographer, film director and author.
Early life and education
Grecco was born in the
Bronx and grew up near New York City.
He received his first camera (a
Mamiya/Sekor 35mm single-lens reflex) when he was 12.
[Grecco, Michael (January 2007). "Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait". The Digital Journalist. Retrieved March 27, 2014.] He attended Boston University, where he studied filmmaking and photojournalism as an undergraduate at BU's School of Communications.
During his time at Boston University he also studied with photography historian and photographer
Carl Chiarenza.
Career
While in college, Grecco began working as a freelance photographer for the
Associated Press and then later became a staff photographer at
Boston Herald. He also shot the burgeoning new music scene for
Boston Rock and the Boston radio station WBCN, documenting Boston's "pivotal role in launching the punk rock explosion" of the 1970s.
During the same time period, he began his career as a magazine photographer working for the Picture Group Agency based in Providence Rhode Island.
[Beggy Carol and Shaahan, Mark (December 12, 2006). "Grecco shooting for the stars". Boston Globe.] His early work appeared in magazines including
Time,
[Joel Stein, "He's With Him", Time, 2004] Newsweek,
Esquire,
Vanity Fair, and
Rolling Stone.
[Photos, "Donna Summer Through the Years" , Rolling Stone, 2012]
Grecco moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s. As a contributor to People,[ American Photo (May-June 2007), Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 11 and 19.][Steel, Andy (2009). The World's Top Photographer's Workshops: Celebrity & Performance, pp. 103–108. MBI Publishing. .] In 1993 he was asked to photograph a special edition of Businessweek called the "Entrepreneurs That Matter", traveling the world photographing the most important entrepreneurs of the day. That lead to being asked by Fox Broadcasting to shoot a new show, The X-Files, where he helped define the look of the show by "cross processing" color negative film in color slide chemistry and using special camera filters. In 2015 he created the first Cinemagraph to ever be used as a broadcast television spot for Pizza Hut, during the Turner Broadcasting show, Billy on the Street.
His subjects have included Martin Scorsese,[Richard Schickel, "Martin Scorsese", The 2007 Time 100, 2007] Robert Duvall, Johnny Cash, Will Ferrell, Kanye West,[ "Will Ferrell: Brilliant Idiot" Time, 2007] Mel Brooks, Ben Stiller,[Miller, Alice B. (January 2007), "Open Book: Like his new best-seller, Michael Grecco is a creative amalgam of the intuitive and the technical.". Studio Photography, Vol 10, No. 1. ISSN.]
Grecco's first two books were on lighting techniques in photographic portraiture.[Blue, Violet (November 15, 2007). "One photographer's 'Naked Ambition'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 28, 2014.] He also directed a documentary of the same name that premiered in April 2009.[Barker, Andrew (May 1, 2009 ).
]
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Review: Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry". Variety. In 2020, a collection of Grecco's photos,
Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991, was published by Abrams Books. A "photographic document of a critical pocket of the American punk scene in all its brash and seedy glory,"
Awards and recognition
In 1995 Photo District News named Grecco in their “Lighting Master” series. Grecco has received 5 Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts Magazine and in June 2001 was named a Hasselblad Master.
[Fiedler, Kerstin (June 2001). Hasselblad Masters: Michael Grecco . Hasselblad.com. Retrieved March 27, 2014.] He also received several awards in the 2011 Prix de la Photographie Paris competition including ones for his portraits of
Steve Martin and
Martin Scorsese and in 2012 was one of the eight recipients of the Professional Photographer Leadership Award from the United Nations International Photographic Council.
[Prix de la Photographie Paris (2011) Exhibition Winners and Honorable Mentions. Retrieved March 27, 2014.][International Photographic Council (March 28, 2012). "IPC Announces Leadership Awards". Retrieved March 27, 2014.] As a staff photographer for the
Boston Herald, he won several Boston Press Photographers awards.
[Santoro, Henry (May 18, 2010), "Peep show: Michael Grecco's Naked Ambition". The Boston Phoenix. Retrieved March 27, 2014.]
Bibliography
-
The Art of Portrait Photography, Creative Lighting Techniques and Strategies, 126 pages. Amherst Media (2000).
-
Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait, the Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography, 192 pages. Amphoto (2006).
-
, 224 pages. Rock Out Books (2007).
-
Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978–1991, 240 pages, Abrams Books (2020),
Personal life
Grecco is based in Los Angeles. He has three children. He and his wife, Elizabeth Waterman, a photographer
and the CEO of Black + Gold, a marketing agency, were married in 2018.
External links
