Rocky Schenck

Rocky Schenck (born April 18, 1955)[2][3] is an American photographer and music video director.[4][5] Schenck has photographed several album covers and has written and directed numerous music videos and short films. He has shot fashion, editorial and portraits for magazines such as Vogue,[1] Rolling Stone,[1] Time,[6] New York Times,[6] Entertainment Weekly,[1] and others. Schenck has collaborated with personalities in the music and entertainment world ranging from Alice in Chains,[7] Jerry Cantrell,[8] Adele,[9] Ozzy Osbourne,[7] Robert Plant,[9] Willie Nelson,[7] B.B. King,[6] Stevie Nicks,[6] Nick Cave,[9] P.J. Harvey,[9] Annie Lennox, Alison Krauss,[6] Ray Bradbury,[6] Ellen DeGeneres,[6] Baz Luhrmann,[6] Kylie Minogue,[7] T-Bone Burnett, Joni Mitchell,[7] The Cramps,[6] Tom Cruise,[6] Johnny Mathis,[6] Linda Ronstadt,[6] Sheryl Crow,[7] Josh Duhamel,[6] Diana Krall,[9] Brian Wilson,[9] Donna Summer,[7] Nicole Kidman,[10] Gary Coleman,[6] k.d. lang,[6] Jerry Lee Lewis,[6] Natalie Cole,[7] Gloria Estefan,[9] Neil Diamond,[7] Laurence Fishburne,[11] Gladys Knight,[6] Frances Bean Cobain,[12] and Rod Stewart.[6]

Rocky Schenck
Born (1955-04-18) April 18, 1955
Austin, Texas
NationalityAmerican
Occupation
  • Photographer
  • music video director
Years active1975–present[1]

Biography

Schenck was born in Austin, Texas,[13] and when he was five years old his family moved to an isolated 800-acre ranch in central Texas, near the town of Dripping Springs, where his view of the outside world came from the movies he watched on television. "Movies were the closest things to the dreams I was having", Schenck said.[1] Schenck's ancestors included two noted Texas painters, Hermann Lungkwitz and Richard Petri.[1]

At age 12, he began studying oil painting,[6] and at age 13 he started selling his work professionally.[1] In his early teens, Schenck began writing, directing and photographing short experimental films and learning still photography while shooting production stills on the sets of his movies.[6]

Schenck majored in art at North Texas State University.[1] Encouraged by a friend, Schenck left college early and moved to Los Angeles to work with film and photography.[1] Artists in different fields began approaching him for their projects, which led him to create a diverse portfolio of fine art, portraiture, film and theater work.[6]

A gallery owner in New York discovered Schenck's work and gave him his first photography exhibition, followed by a second exhibition a year later. Since then, Schenck has continued to show in galleries around the world and his work is now included in several prestigious museum and private collections.[6]

Director William Friedkin utilized Schenck's art photographs as sets in his productions of the opera The Makropulos Affair in Florence, Italy, and also in the classic Bartok opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle in Los Angeles.[6][14]

A collection of Rocky Schenck's photographs was published by the University of Texas Press in 2003, which sold out its first and second editions. Schenck's second book of fine art photographs, The Recurring Dream was published in 2016.[14]

Published works

His published collections include:

  • Rocky Schenck: Photographs (2003, University of Texas Press, TX) ISBN 978-0-292-70217-2
  • The Recurring Dream (2016, University of Texas Press, TX) ISBN 978-1-4773-1066-3

Album covers

Selected Videos

References
  1. Schonauer, David. "Photographer Profile - Rocky Schenck: "Movies were the closest things to the dreams I was having"". August 16, 2016.
  2. "Rocky Schenck". BBC.
  3. "Dream Life: The Incandescent Unreality of Rocky Schenck". Texas Monthly. August 24, 2016.
  4. "Rocky Schenck, The Recurring Dream". The Eye of Photography.
  5. Catmull, Katherine (November 7, 2003). "A World Slowly Liquefying: Rocky Schenck comes home for celebrations of his dreamlike art photography". Austin Chronicle.
  6. "Story". rockyschenck.com.
  7. "Rocky Schenck - Credits". All Music.
  8. "Boggy Depot - Jerry Cantrell". AllMusic. Retrieved May 10, 2018.
  9. "Rocky Schenck". mvdbase.com.
  10. "Artwork by Rocky Schenck - Nicole Kidman (1994)". Artstack.
  11. "Larry Fishburne by Michael O'Keefe". Bomb Magazine. April 1, 1992.
  12. "Frances Bean Cobain: Fashion's Timely New Muse". Rolling Stone. August 18, 2011.
  13. Dworetzky, Thomas. "Stills from Unmade Movies: The Haunting Photography of Rocky Schenck". Bowhaus.
  14. Weideman, Paul (March 10, 2017). "I am a camera: Photographer Rocky Schenck". Santa Fe New Mexican.
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