Even though combing through the archival material could feasibly take a lifetime, making a documentary on a legendary photographer like Steve Schapiro must be the most fun to assemble. Searching through photos and film reels would be like traveling through time, and time has been quite kind and revealing to Schapiro. Though he died in 2022, Schapiro spent the last years of his life in Chicago with his wife Maura Smith, who just happens to be the director of the documentary Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere. Because the filmmaker and subject know each other so well, there’s an intimacy achieved that normally wouldn’t be present in such a career-spanning profile.
For the most part, it’s the subject who is going through files of images that span six decades of photography; Schapiro didn't just capture images of celebrities on movie sets, photo shoots or at gatherings; he also bore witness to major social and cultural events in American history, including traveling with Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders; capturing drug addicts in Harlem, and photographing the plights of migrant workers in Arkansas circa the early 1960s. He worked for every major magazine that prominently featured photography (Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, People, Sports Illustrated, Time), but it seems his most famous photographs landed in the pages of Life magazine. He was also an on-set photographer for many studios, and a few times, his photos actually ended up being the poster art for films like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and The Godfather. Hell, he even took the poster shot for Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
And sometimes he just got to spend time with people he admired, following them through several days in their schedule, including James Baldwin, David Bowie, Muhammed Ali, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, and perhaps most notoriously, Andy Warhol. You’ll recognize several of his photographs, and this film presents them and the stories behind them with all due reverence and affection. Schapiro was the quintessential fly-on-the-wall-style artist, capturing significant images that managed to convey information, told us something about the subject’s circumstances, and were always meticulously composed. Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere elegantly profiles an artist who was at the crossroads of culture, news, and humanity, and it’s nearly as memorable as the man himself.
The film will play at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Friday Dec. 5 at 6pm, Sunday Dec. 7 at 2:30pm, and Wednesday Dec. 10 at 6pm. Director Maura Smith will be in attendance for all three screenings, moderated by former Illinois governor Pat Quinn (Dec. 5); Chicago-area broadcaster and photographer Jason Marck (Dec. 7); and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and biographer Jonathan Eig (Dec. 10).
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