Michael Grecco

Michael Grecco (born May 20, 1958) is an American photographer, film director and author.

Early life and education

Grecco was born in the Bronx and grew up near New York City. He received his first camera (a Mamiya/Sekor 35mm single-lens reflex) when he was 12. He attended Boston University, where he studied filmmaking and photojournalism as an undergraduate at BU's School of Communications. During his time at Boston University he also studied with photography historian and photographer Carl Chiarenza.

Career

While in college, Grecco began working as a freelance photographer for the Associated Press and then later became a staff photographer at ''Boston Herald.'' He also shot the burgeoning new music scene for Boston Rock Magazine and the Boston radio station WBCN, documenting Boston's "pivotal role in launching the punk rock explosion" of the 1970s. During the same time period, he began his career as a magazine photographer working for the Picture Group Agency based in Providence Rhode Island.Beggy Carol and Shaahan, Mark (December 12, 2006)
"Grecco shooting for the stars"
''Boston Globe''. Retrieved March 27, 2014 via HighBeam Research . His early work appeared in magazines including ''Time'',Joel Stein
"He's With Him"
''Time'', 2004 ''Newsweek'', ''Esquire'', ''Vanity Fair'', and ''Rolling Stone''.

Grecco moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s. As a contributor to ''People'', his coverage of events such as the Golden Globes, the Emmy Awards and the Academy Awards led to his career as a celebrity portrait photographer. In 1993 he was asked to photograph a special edition of ''Businessweek'' called the "Entrepreneurs That Matter", traveling the world photographing the most important entrepreneurs of the day. That lead to being asked by Fox Broadcasting to shoot a new show, ''The X-Files'', where he helped define the look of the show by "cross processing" color negative film in color slide chemistry and using special camera filters. In 2015 he created the first Cinemagraph to ever be used as a broadcast television spot for Pizza Hut, during the Turner Broadcasting show, ''Billy on the Street.''

His subjects have included Martin Scorsese, Robert Duvall, Johnny Cash, Will Ferrell, Kanye West, Mel Brooks, Ben Stiller, Penélope Cruz, Jet Li, Bill Murray, Joaquin Phoenix and Gwen Stefani. He has shot covers for ''Time'', ''Wired'', ''Entertainment Weekly'', ''ESPN'', and ''People'', among other publications.Miller, Alice B. (January 2007)
"Open Book: Like his new best-seller, Michael Grecco is a creative amalgam of the intuitive and the technical."
''Studio Photography'', Vol 10, No. 1. ISSN 1097-1181. Retrieved March 27, 2014 via HighBeam Research .

Grecco's first two books were on lighting techniques in photographic portraiture. In 2007, he released '' Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry'', a collection of photographs on the American porn industry and its stars taken at the AVN Awards and Convention in Las Vegas. He also directed a documentary of the same name that premiered in April 2009. In 2020, a collection of Grecco's photos,
''Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991'', was published by Abrams Books. A "photographic document of a critical pocket of the American punk scene in all its brash and seedy glory," the photos from the book were first exhibited at Photo London in 2021. In early 2022, a touring exhibit of the photos, ''Days of Punk'', premiered at La Termica Museum in Malaga, Spain. ''Days of Punk'' was subsequently exhibited in England and at the Southeast Museum of Photography

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