Bonnie Schiffman

Bonnie Schiffman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1950. She is a gemini. Her parents owned a bowling alley in Glendale where she started bowling at the age of five. By 11 years old, she bowled a game of 260. What she liked about bowling was the requirement to have one absolute moment of focus and knowing when to release the ball. One night well into her career and while she was with her friend Sparky, she compared bowling to photography. The pins are the subject, the ball is the camera, the release is the shot. Bonnie attended Van Nuys High school where she took a photography class with a beloved teacher Barbara. When she saw her first picture come to life in the developer she screamed with joy. As a student at Cal State Northridge, Bonnie began photographing families and going to the Troubador to shoot the likes of Joni Mitchell. When she started looking for work, and after failing the phone operator test, she took herself to A&M Records, made a business card out of a poster, and convinced the photo department to hire her. They did. By the 80s, she was shooting for Rolling Stone and major entertainment studios.
 

Bonnie's subject has always been people. If you asked her, she would say that she's a "people person." Her shoots always included a long lunch that allowed her and her subjects to relax and get comfortable with each other. Bonnie’s radical authenticity, playfulness, imagination--and great cooking--made possible happy professional connections. Setting the stage for a good shot to emerge requires the emotional safety of the subject, a great eye, and exquisite timing. Bonnie has all of these. Laurie Kractochvil, who first started hiring Bonnie for Rolling Stone, once said that it wasn't about "taking the picture" but "making a picture." This principle is evident in Bonnie’s creative body of work, the photographic evidence of joyful playdates with a long parade of famous people, from which individual uniqueness and a special intimacy emerges.