Shepard Sherbell obit

SHEPARD SHERBELL Obituary

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SHERBELL--Shepard, Photographer and photo journalist, born New York City, 1944. Died of heart failure August 3, 2018 at Vassar Medical Center, Poughkeepsie, NY. His wide-ranging interests included Soviet Era Russia, rock music, American politics and the lives of ordinary working people. In 1960s London he photographed musicians including the Beatles, The Who, Keith Moon, Cat Stevens, Jimi Hendrix, Badfinger, the Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Frankie Valli, Humble Pie and Grand Funk Railroad. In the mid 70s, Sherbell moved to Washington and became a photojournalist covering the White House and Capitol Hill. He was the principal photographer for several editions of the Almanac of American Politics. He covered several Republican and Democratic national conventions. Sherbell traveled extensively, covering conflicts and news stories in Grenada, Libya, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Moldovia, Lithuania, Moscow, Hamburg, Paris, Rome, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1991-1993. His book Soviets: Pictures from the End of the USSR was published by Yale University Press in 2001. On 9/11/2011 Sherbell was living in Manhattan, near the World Trade Center. The photographs he took that day were published all over the world. Hundreds of his photographs can be seen on the website of Sherbell's agency, Getty Images. Sherbell is survived by his sisters Rhoda Sherbell-Honig of Westbury, NY and Jeannine Oldak of Warrington, PA. Married and divorced twice, Shepard Sherbell had no children.

Sherbell was born in Brooklyn. In 1966, while he was a student at Columbia University, he published a poetry magazine, East Side Review. Contributors included LeRoi Jones, Allen Ginsberg, and Norman Mailer. The issue appeared in February 1966. Due to a lack of funding, Sherbell was unable to publish any further issues of the magazine.

In the late 1960s, Sherbell moved to London. He portrayed music groups, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Badfinger, Deep Purple, Humble Pie and Grand Funk Railroad. He also made individual portraits of musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, The Who drummer Keith Moon and The Four Seasons singer Frankie Valli. He also designed numerous record covers and portrayed well-known artists such as Salvador Dalí.

On September 1, 1967, Sherbell traveled to the Netherlands with Brian Jones and photographer Michael Cooper to attend a performance by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. ​​Sherbell, Jones and Cooper then followed the Maharishi to Germany, where the Maharishi visited the Academy for Personal Development he had founded in Bremen and held meditation exercises.

In the early 1970s, Sherbell spent some time in California and was involved in the music scene there. In the mid-1970s, Sherbell moved to Washington and worked as a photojournalist. He was the lead photographer for several issues of The Almanac of American Politics magazine and for Democratic and Republican party conventions. Sherbell traveled extensively and reported on various countries, including Grenada, Haiti, Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, Libya, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

From 1991 to 1993, Sherbell lived in Russia and wrote a coffee table book titled Soviets: Pictures from the End of the USSR, which was published by Yale University Press in 2001. At the time of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Sherbell was living in Manhattan near the World Trade Center. The photographs he took that day were published worldwide.