ABOUT BILL
For internationally celebrated, award winning portrait and documentary photographer Bill Bernstein, photography is anthropology. Since beginning his career at the Village Voice in the 1970s, his methodology has been one of researching and representing contemporary cultures and sub-cultures through photography.
The breadth of Bernstein’s career has been spent peeking into contemporary "tribes"—including New York City’s late 1970's notorious night scene and a 15 year span touring at Paul McCartney’s side as his personal photographer—and apprehending their unseen dynamics, as well as the subtleties of his individual subjects’ lives.
Bernstein was honored to be invited to speak at the Library of Congress in 2017 on his work during the unique and magical bubble of time of the late 1970's in New York City where he focused attention on the club culture where inclusion and freedom of expression reigned in it's full glory. This was a special time after Stonewall and pre-AIDS, where the manifestation of sexual liberation, Women’s Liberation, Civil Rights and equality was on display in the clubs and on the dance floor throughout the night.
The openness of Bernstein’s style, like the photographers who have long influenced him—Avedon, Brassai, William Klein, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn—is classical, but current. Whether he is photographing the rockstars of U2, business titan Richard Branson, or the homeless of Bowery Mission, nothing about a Bill Bernstein image is superfluous. Rather, every photograph cuts through public persona to offer glimpses of the unguarded. Consistently, Bernstein can be called upon to deliver the full weight of his subjects’ personalities and render celebrities and civilians accessible to viewers via the immediacy of the moment.
Bernstein services an international advertising and editorial clientele including National Geographic TV, Time Magazine, Elle, New York Philharmonic, Warner Brothers and HBO. He is also the author of four books: Night Dancin’ (Ballantine Books, 1980), Each One Believing: Paul McCartney On Stage, Off Stage, and Backstage (Chronicle Books, 2004), DISCO: The Bill Bernstein Photographs (Reel Art Press, 2015) and Last Dance (BillBernsteinFineArt.com, 2021). His work is exhibited globally. Most recently, in the stand-alone exhibition, “Night Fever: New York Disco 1977-1979,” at Manhattan's Museum of Sex, The Galerie fuer Moderne Fotografie (Berlin), The David Hill Gallery (London), as well as an upcoming exhibit at Philharmonie de Paris in May, 2019, followed by the London Design Museum in April, 2020. His work is also featured in a traveling exhibit for the Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany) and will be seen in various venues throughout the world until 2024.
(see the entire list here)
He lives and works in New York City, his hometown.
To purchase books and fine art prints visit: www.billbernsteinfineart.com