Bil Zelman
Encyclopedia
Bil Zelman is an American photographer and director known for his powerful, candid portraiture and spontaneous, photojournalistic style. Zelman developed a highly stylized form of hard-flash street photography
while in art school and Los Angeles Times
art critic
Leah Ollman compares the "psychological density" of his work to the likes of Garry Winogrand
, Larry Fink
, Diane Arbus
and William Klein
- photographers that are "purposely getting it wrong in one way so as to get it right in another, disrupting visual order to ignite a kind of visceral disorder". As described by David Hobby in an interview for Strobist, "His airy, moment-oriented photos are loose, honest and have an unscripted, natural feel to them… [His] work has evolved (or maybe regressed?) into a look that is almost childlike".
Bil Zelman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
, to Dr. David Zelman, and his wife Adala Zelman who are both professors. He spent his early life in Troy, New York
in a "home [that] was far from functional". He began shooting and developing film at an early age and at nine-years-old he built his own darkroom
with a friend– a place that would become his sanctuary.
Shortly after ninth grade, Zelman dropped out of high school and left home, roaming cross-country for several years as a runaway and delving into heroin and other hard drugs while living on and off of the streets. Although he did not have many personal possessions at this time, he held fast to his camera and continued to use photography as a creative outlet when he could afford to do so.
At age 19, while still attending State University of New York at Buffalo, he began sending prints to magazines to promote his work and managed to get his first celebrity photography assignments with artists such as David Bowie
, Marilyn Manson
and Trent Reznor
. Zelman stated in a lecture at Ohio State University
for the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts in 2010 that he was "terrified and made mistakes and images would sometimes turn out blurry or orange, but the magazines seemed to love the naiveté of the work and kept giving [him] more assignments".
Zelman moved to Southern California
in 1998 and is sought after by celebrities such as Taylor Swift
, John Legend
, Jason Mraz
, Jerry Seinfeld
, Ozzy Osborne, and brands such as Guinness
, Apple Inc., Virgin Records
, Sony
, Lee Jeans, LensCrafters
, Hard Rock
, Taylor Guitars
, Microsoft
, Jacuzzi
, Caesars Palace
, Intel, a long list of record labels and was named one of the 200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide by Lüerzer's Archive http://www.luerzersarchive.us/luerzers-products.asp? magazine and signed on with @radical.media
http://www.radicalmedia.com in 2009.
In regards to his ability to capture such genuine moments under stressful conditions and time constraints Zelman states, "Shooting good portraits is equal parts psychology, trust and technical expertise-- with the technical part probably being the least important".
One of Zelman's proudest achievements is producing Isolated Gesture, a collection of highly stylized black and white street photography that he worked on over the course of 14 years. The project has shown solo seven times, in collectives dozens of times and has hung or been added to the permanent collections of museums including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Collins http://www.fcmoca.org/, The Museum of Photographic Arts http://www.mopa.org/, The Lucie Foundation http://www.luciefoundation.org/, The Center for Fine Art Photography http://www.c4fap.org/, The Oregon Center for Photographic Arts http://www.blueskygallery.org, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts http://www.cepagallery.org/ and others.
Artweek portrays Isolated Gesture as "a cross between S. E. Hinton
's The Outsiders
and Dutch genre painting". Referencing Zelman's distinctive style, Los Angeles Times
art critic
Leah Ollman proclaims that Zelman's guiding principle is having an intense proximity to his subject, "He doesn't shoot in a war zone but in the realm of ordinary life--on the street, at parties, in restaurants and stores. Working aggressively close to his subjects, and rapidly, intensifies whatever is in front of the camera" . Ollman also points out that Zelman "revels in the burlesque
opportunities of such split-second glimpses, the particular oddities that give way to general truths".
Zelman regularly engages in pro bono
work for selected charities around the world and describes using the camera as a tool for social change during an interview with Rob Haggard from A Photo Editor, "The positives to taking on these types of projects are endless. To improve the lives of others, to better your community, to art direct your own piece and have total creative freedom, to travel, to see and experience things you may have never thought possible- to be reminded that not everyone is middle class
".
with two dogs and a bunch of old motorcycles. In between shoots Zelman spends time with his daughter Alex Smith who lives in Maine
, he loves good Scotch whisky
, camping and travels as often as possible.
Street photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
while in art school and Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Leah Ollman compares the "psychological density" of his work to the likes of Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand was a street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation....
, Larry Fink
Larry Fink (photographer)
Larry Fink is an American photographer best known for his black-and-white images of people at parties and in other social situations.- Life and career :Fink was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York...
, Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
and William Klein
William Klein
William Klein is a photographer and filmmaker noted to for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography...
- photographers that are "purposely getting it wrong in one way so as to get it right in another, disrupting visual order to ignite a kind of visceral disorder". As described by David Hobby in an interview for Strobist, "His airy, moment-oriented photos are loose, honest and have an unscripted, natural feel to them… [His] work has evolved (or maybe regressed?) into a look that is almost childlike".
Bil Zelman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, to Dr. David Zelman, and his wife Adala Zelman who are both professors. He spent his early life in Troy, New York
Troy, New York
Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...
in a "home [that] was far from functional". He began shooting and developing film at an early age and at nine-years-old he built his own darkroom
Darkroom
A darkroom is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light sensitive photographic materials, including photographic film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been created and used since the inception of photography in the early 19th century...
with a friend– a place that would become his sanctuary.
Shortly after ninth grade, Zelman dropped out of high school and left home, roaming cross-country for several years as a runaway and delving into heroin and other hard drugs while living on and off of the streets. Although he did not have many personal possessions at this time, he held fast to his camera and continued to use photography as a creative outlet when he could afford to do so.
At age 19, while still attending State University of New York at Buffalo, he began sending prints to magazines to promote his work and managed to get his first celebrity photography assignments with artists such as David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
and Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
. Zelman stated in a lecture at Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
for the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts in 2010 that he was "terrified and made mistakes and images would sometimes turn out blurry or orange, but the magazines seemed to love the naiveté of the work and kept giving [him] more assignments".
Zelman moved to Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
in 1998 and is sought after by celebrities such as Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift is an American country pop singer-songwriter, musician and actress.In 2006, she released her debut single "Tim McGraw", then her self-titled debut album, which was subsequently certified multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America...
, John Legend
John Legend
John Roger Stephens , better known by his stage name John Legend, is an American singer, musician, and actor. He is the recipient of nine Grammy Awards, and in 2007, he received the special Starlight award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.Prior to the release of his debut album, Stephens' career...
, Jason Mraz
Jason Mraz
Jason Thomas Mraz , also known as Mr. AZ and Mr. Raz, is an American singer-songwriter. Mraz released his debut album, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, which contained the hit single "The Remedy ", in 2002, but it was not until the release of his second album, "Mr. A-Z", in 2005, that Mraz achieved...
, Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the situation comedy Seinfeld , which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons,...
, Ozzy Osborne, and brands such as Guinness
Guinness
Guinness is a popular Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is directly descended from the porter style that originated in London in the early 18th century and is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide, brewed in almost...
, Apple Inc., Virgin Records
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Lee Jeans, LensCrafters
LensCrafters
LensCrafters is an international retailer of prescription eyewear, and prescription sunglasses, and the largest optical chain in the United States, with about 90 stores in California alone. It was founded in 1983 in the U.S. and has subsequently expanded to over 850 stores in Canada, the United...
, Hard Rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
, Taylor Guitars
Taylor Guitars
Taylor Guitars is an El Cajon, California‐based luthier, specializing in acoustic guitars, as well as semi-hollow and solidbody electric guitars. It was established in 1974 by Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug.- History :...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Jacuzzi
Jacuzzi
Jacuzzi is a company that produces whirlpool bathtubs and spas. Its first product was a bath with massaging jets. The term "jacuzzi" is now often used generically to refer to any bathtub with massaging jets.-History:...
, Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace
Caesars Palace is a luxury hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, an unincorporated township in Clark County, Nevada, United States in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Caesars Palace is owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment Corp....
, Intel, a long list of record labels and was named one of the 200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide by Lüerzer's Archive http://www.luerzersarchive.us/luerzers-products.asp? magazine and signed on with @radical.media
@radical.media
@radical.media is a global transmedia company founded in 1993 by Jon Kamen and Frank Scherma with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Sydney and Shanghai....
http://www.radicalmedia.com in 2009.
In regards to his ability to capture such genuine moments under stressful conditions and time constraints Zelman states, "Shooting good portraits is equal parts psychology, trust and technical expertise-- with the technical part probably being the least important".
One of Zelman's proudest achievements is producing Isolated Gesture, a collection of highly stylized black and white street photography that he worked on over the course of 14 years. The project has shown solo seven times, in collectives dozens of times and has hung or been added to the permanent collections of museums including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Collins http://www.fcmoca.org/, The Museum of Photographic Arts http://www.mopa.org/, The Lucie Foundation http://www.luciefoundation.org/, The Center for Fine Art Photography http://www.c4fap.org/, The Oregon Center for Photographic Arts http://www.blueskygallery.org, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts http://www.cepagallery.org/ and others.
Artweek portrays Isolated Gesture as "a cross between S. E. Hinton
S. E. Hinton
Susan Eloise Hinton is an American author best known for her young adult novel The Outsiders.While still in her teens, Hinton became a household name as the author of The Outsiders, her first and most popular novel, set in Oklahoma in the 1960s. She began writing it in 1965...
's The Outsiders
The Outsiders (novel)
The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel based in 1965 by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967 by Viking Press. Hinton was 15 when she started writing the novel, but did most of the work when she was sixteen and a junior in high school. Hinton was 18 when the book was published...
and Dutch genre painting". Referencing Zelman's distinctive style, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Leah Ollman proclaims that Zelman's guiding principle is having an intense proximity to his subject, "He doesn't shoot in a war zone but in the realm of ordinary life--on the street, at parties, in restaurants and stores. Working aggressively close to his subjects, and rapidly, intensifies whatever is in front of the camera" . Ollman also points out that Zelman "revels in the burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
opportunities of such split-second glimpses, the particular oddities that give way to general truths".
Zelman regularly engages in pro bono
Pro bono
Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...
work for selected charities around the world and describes using the camera as a tool for social change during an interview with Rob Haggard from A Photo Editor, "The positives to taking on these types of projects are endless. To improve the lives of others, to better your community, to art direct your own piece and have total creative freedom, to travel, to see and experience things you may have never thought possible- to be reminded that not everyone is middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
".
Personal life
Bil Zelman married producer Megan Power in 2004 and lives in Southern CaliforniaSouthern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
with two dogs and a bunch of old motorcycles. In between shoots Zelman spends time with his daughter Alex Smith who lives in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, he loves good Scotch whisky
Scotch whisky
Scotch whisky is whisky made in Scotland.Scotch whisky is divided into five distinct categories: Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Single Grain Scotch Whisky, Blended Malt Scotch Whisky , Blended Grain Scotch Whisky, and Blended Scotch Whisky.All Scotch whisky must be aged in oak barrels for at least three...
, camping and travels as often as possible.
Selected Exhibitions and Permanent Collections
- 2010 Lucie Foundation, "Dusk," Los Angeles, California
- 2010 Museum of Photographic ArtsMuseum of Photographic ArtsThe Museum of Photographic Arts or MoPA is a museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park. First founded in 1974, MoPA opened in 1983. MoPA is one of three museums in the US dedicated exclusively to the collection and preservation of photography, with a mission to inspire, educate and engage the broadest...
, San Diego, California - 2008 Portland Museum of ArtPortland Museum of ArtThe Portland Museum of Art is an art museum in Portland, Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882, it is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District, and is the largest and oldest public art institution in the U.S...
, Portland, OregonPortland, OregonPortland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States... - 2007 Isolated Gesture at Blue Sky GalleryBlue Sky GalleryBlue Sky Gallery is a non-profit exhibition space and archive for photography in Portland, Oregon. In 1975 a group of photographers pooled their resources to start a small gallery...
, Portland, Oregon - 2007 FCMOA "Interations" Exhibit, Ft. Collins, Colorado
- 2007 Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon
- 2006 Isolated Gesture at Voice 1156 Gallery, San Diego, California
- 2005 Center for Photographic Arts, Carmel, California
- 2005 Museum of Photographic ArtsMuseum of Photographic ArtsThe Museum of Photographic Arts or MoPA is a museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park. First founded in 1974, MoPA opened in 1983. MoPA is one of three museums in the US dedicated exclusively to the collection and preservation of photography, with a mission to inspire, educate and engage the broadest...
, San Diego, California - 2002 Isolated Gesture, University of California, San DiegoUniversity of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
, California - 2001 "Street Work," Nicole Dintamin Gallery, Los Angeles, California