On the Cultural Front Lines of a Generation
Lawrence Schiller is an American photojournalist, film producer, director, and author. Schiller photographs have been featured in prominent publications such as Life, Look, Vanity Fair, The London Sunday Times Magazine, Paris Match, Sports Illustrated, and the Saturday Evening Post. His iconic images of celebrities, politicians, news events and athletes— including Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bette Davis, Barbara Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, and Muhammad Ali—showcase his proficiency. Beginning in the 1970s Schiller directed a number of major motion pictures, notably the Emmy award winning films, The Executioner’s Song (1982) and Peter the Great (1986), The American Dreamer with Dennis Hopper, and his editorial direction of The Man Who Skied Down Everest, won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary (1975).
Schiller has published numerous books, his most notable being with his friend and colleague, Norman Mailer. Over nearly thirty-five years, the two collaborated on Marilyn (1973), The Faith of Graffiti (1974), Oswald’s Tale (1995), Into the Mirror (2002), and The Executioner’s Song (1979), for which Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize. Schiller also co-authored (with James Willwerth) the New York Times number one best-selling American Tragedy (1996) which detailed O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial. Schiller consulted for NBC News, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and Annie Leibovitz Studios. Upon the death of Norman Mailer in 2008, Schiller was named the President and co-founder of the Norman Mailer Center and Writer’s Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2017 he curated the Centennial of John F. Kennedy for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
