Photographing History As It Unfolded: Being Everywhere Movie Review – Steve Schapiro Saw It All, Brought It To America

Photographing History As It Unfolded: Being Everywhere Movie Review – Steve Schapiro Saw It All, Brought It To America

 

An intimate portrait of the man behind the lens in some of the most iconic and recognizable photos ever taken.  

 

Steve Schapiro is a native New Yorker, Brooklynite, and true citizen of the world.  He traveled all over the world and met all different types of people.  And similar to the effect that type of experience had on Dan Rather and Jules Campbell, it made him love and understand people more.  He didn’t judge, and he accepted everyone regardless of their race, religion, or politics.  

 

Schapiro also lived through the Civil Rights era as well as the assassination of Kennedy and his brother – both of whom he knew.  He met many leaders in the Civil Rights movement – including many who were killed for their belief that everyone is equal and everyone deserves the same chance at the American Dream regardless of their race or in what state they were born.  

 

Similar to many New Yorkers, I can relate to a lot of what Mr. Schapiro talks about.  He understood what it’s like to see everyone as your own family.  It doesn’t matter where they came from, it only matters that they’re here now.  They made it to this point from wherever they started out, and people usually respond to kindness and acceptance in a positive way.  

 

I feel that much of what he talked about and experienced were colored by where he grew up and how everyone acts towards everyone else.  This is in distinction to Dan Rather who grew up in Texas, and who came to these kinds of understandings on his own, and he lived from his own true heart.  Many Texans would have been closed minded – even if they had been where he was and gone through what he’d gone through.  But as a New Yorker myself, I definitely relate to Mr. Schapiro’s personality more.  

 

This is a very intimate film, and it’s distinctly different from many documentaries. I wonder if it’s because he was a photographer, so much of it is still shots rather than videos.  Mr. Schapiro is interviewed extensively in his apartment and in his storage. He shows and discusses his incredibly vast library of photography that he has taken and stores in filing cabinets that line the walls of his rooms.  

This is a beautifully put together documentary, weaving the past together with the present, including at the very end of his life where he becomes a Christian.  The filmmaker spends time with the subject of the documentary, who discusses his life and experiences, including how moving he found it meeting with people from the Civil Rights movement, covering the JFK and RFK assassinations, and being in all the places where history was unfolding.  His work with Life Magazine brought him all around the country and all around the world at the most important times in our history.  This includes when Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the movement marched from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama to protest racial discrimination in voting.  

 

This excellent documentary is very interesting and compelling, with firsthand historical accounts illustrated by photography that was taken by Steve Schapiro over the course of his career.  He is also responsible for many of the most iconic movie posters and movie case  images, including Billy Madison with Adam Sandler and many others.  

 

This is a very well-made and interestingly composed documentary.  It is highly recommended, and I would give it five stars.  

The following was provided by the filmmaker and distribution company:

SYNOPSIS

Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere documents the firsthand stories of photographer Steve Schapiro along with his vast archive of iconic images. Over six decades, Schapiro bore witness to some of the most significant social and cultural moments in modern American history.

 

Schapiro began his photojournalism career by documenting addiction in East Harlem and then traveling on his own to Arkansas to photograph migrant workers in 1961. His photo series on migrants was published in the Catholic magazineJubilee.

 

The New York Times saw the article and used one of Schapiro’s photos for the cover of their magazine. Schapiro then went on to work for Life, Look,Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated ,People, and Paris Match.

 

Throughout his career, Schapiro photographed such notable people as Andy Warhol, Muhammed Ali, David Bowie, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rosa Parks,Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, Bill Evans, and Samuel Beckett among countless others.  

 

He documented Robert F. Kennedy’s last Christmas with his family and captured key images of the Civil Rights Movement.  In the 1970s, as picture magazines like Look folded, Schapiro shifted his attention to film. 

 

With major motion picture companies as his clients, Schapiro produced advertising materials,publicity stills, and posters for such notable films as The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Chinatown, and even Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

 

Schapiro later returned to his primary interests: photojournalism and social justice. Shot shortly before his passing in 2022,Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere is a loving tribute to a man who was the quintessential “fly on the wall,” waiting for moments to unfold and capturing them with a naturalism and skill that’s nothing short of dazzling.

Banner Image: Movie poster. Image Credit – Abramorama