World-renowned Scottish photographer Albert Watson, born in 1942, is one of the renaissance men of contemporary photography, working seamlessly across genres, from portraiture to landscape to still life, and making them his own. His career spans more than four decades, and beyond some of the most iconic fashion images of all time, his portfolio is as varied as it is distinctive, marked by a deeply intuitive understanding of texture, color, and form – always in the service of creating dramatic, breathtaking compositions that are the visual equivalent of literary epic.
Since beginning his career in 1970, Albert Watson has established himself as one of the world’s most successful and prolific photographers, blending art, fashion, and commercial photography to create some of the most iconic images ever seen. From portraits of Alfred Hitchcock and Steve Jobs to beauty shots of Kate Moss, Las Vegas landscapes and still lifes of King Tutankhamun artifacts, Albert’s diversity and body of work is unparalleled. His striking photographs and stunning handmade prints are featured in galleries and museums around the world. The photography industry’s bible, Photo District News, named Albert one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time, along with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, among others.
Albert has received numerous awards, including a Lucie Award, a Grammy Award, three Andys, a Der Steiger Award, a Hasselblad Masters Award, and the Centenary Medal, a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Photographic Society. In June 2015, Queen Elizabeth II awarded the Scot an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his lifetime contribution to the art of photography.
Over the years, Albert’s photographs have appeared on more than 100 covers of Vogue worldwide and in countless other publications from Rolling Stone to Time to Harper’s Bazaar, many of them iconic fashion shots or portraits of rock stars, rappers, actors and other celebrities.
Albert has also created the photography for hundreds of advertising campaigns for major companies such as Prada, the Gap, Levi’s, Revlon and Chanel. He has shot dozens of Hollywood movie posters, including “Kill Bill” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and has directed more than 100 television commercials. All the while, Albert has spent much of his time working on art projects for museum and gallery exhibitions, combining his well-known portraiture and fashion photography with powerful images from his travels and interests, such as a snake charmer in Morocco, a dominatrix in Las Vegas, or the dramatic mountains of the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Albert has published five books: “Cyclops” (1994, Bullfinch); “Maroc” (Rizzoli, 1998); “Albert Watson” (Phaidon, 2007); “Strip Search” (PQ Blackwell/Chronicle 2010); and “UFO: Unified Fashion Objectives” (PQ Blackwell/Abrams 2010.) His latest book, “Kaos,” was published by Taschen in Fall 2017.
In addition, numerous catalogues of Albert’s photographs have been published in conjunction with museum and gallery exhibitions. Since 2004, Albert has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Milan, Italy; KunstHausWien in Vienna, Austria; City Art Centre in Edinburgh; FotoMuseum in Antwerp, Belgium; NRW Forum in Düsseldorf, Germany; Forma Galleria in Milan; Fotografiska in Stockholm, Sweden; and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. A major retrospective of Albert’s work, including new work shot in Benin, Africa, was shown at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany, in 2013. Albert’s photographs have also been featured in numerous museum group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Deichtorhallen. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Scottish Parliament, the Deichtorhallen, the Multimedia Art Museum, and the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, among others.
