A living legend of photography.
Albert Watson has been one of the world’s most prolific and successful photographers since his career began in 1970. His work has produced some of the most iconic images ever seen, ranging from fine art to fashion to commercial photography. According to the photography industry bible, Photo District News, Watson is one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time, along with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.
Albert Watson was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied graphic design at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee and film and television at the Royal College of Art in London. Although blind in one eye since birth, he studied photography and in 1970 moved to the United States with his wife who found work as an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles, where Albert began taking photos, primarily as a hobby. In the same year, Albert met an artistic director of Max Factor, who offered him his first test session, from which the company purchased two shots.
Albert’s distinctive style caught the attention of American and European fashion magazines such as Mademoiselle, GQ and Harper’s Bazaar, which hired him for a shoot with Alfred Hitchcock, the first celebrity to be photographed by the artist. Shortly thereafter, Albert began moving between Los Angeles and New York, and in 1975 he won a Grammy for photography on the cover of Mason Proffit’s “Come and Gone” album. In 1976, Albert landed his first job at Vogue, and with his move to New York later that year, his career took off.
Over the past forty years Albert Watson’s multithematic oeuvre has produced an exceptionally diverse portfolio spanning fashion and portraits, nudes and dance, still lifes and landscapes, photo essays and advertising campaigns. Yet, however diverse, his portfolio maintains an exceptional coherence of graphic purity through which the artist strips his images to distill their essence. The result shots are clear and intense and enhance the subject.
Albert’s photographs have appeared in more than 100 covers of Vogue worldwide and featured in countless other publications, from Rolling Stone to Time to Harper’s Bazaar. Albert has also created the photography for hundreds of ad campaigns for major companies, such as Prada, the Gap, Levi’s, Revlon and Chanel. He has shot dozens of Hollywood movie posters, such as “Kill Bill” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”, directed more than 100 television commercials and portrayed rock stars, rappers, actors and other celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock and Steve Jobs.
Since 2004, Albert has had solo shows in several museums and galleries around the globe and group museum shows. His photographs are included in the permanent collections at 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.
Albert has won numerous honors, 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. Queen Elizabeth II awarded the Scotsman an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in June 2015 for his lifetime contribution to the art of photography.
The visual language follows the artist’s distinctive rules and concepts of quality. Brilliant and grand, his photographs illuminate his subjects, particularly fetish objects and portraits, creating an almost meditative atmosphere. The variety of images connotes his natural predisposition for versatility, even if each shot is totally recognizable as his own thanks to pure power and technical virtuosity. And it’s precisely the search for perfection that has made Albert Watson one of the most sought-after photographers in the world. The artist is represented by the Echo Fine Arts Gallery, a gallery based in the French Riviera. The gallery is also media partner of Excellence Magazine and of the digital platform beyond.luxury.
