Just by chance, this prestigious ophthalmologist with a thriving practice in San Francisco and a professorship at the UCSF Medical Center, decided to call it quits to the scientific community and in turn became a photographer.
Howard Schatz at 67 is currently a professional photographer whose work appears regularly in the pages of Vanity Fair and on the cover of magazines like Newsweek, Time and Sports Illustrated. His commercial clients range from Ralph Lauren to McDonald’s. Not bad for a former retina specialist.
After selling his home in San Francisco, Schatz and his wife moved to the East Coast. Here they purchased a 5,000-square-foot house in Sherman, Connecticut for $1.3 million. Ms. Beverly Ornstein—Schatz wife and business partner—wanted a house with an abundance of light; an indispensable attribute for underwater photographs. She has been quoted as saying, “Our goal was to build a house in which you would have to wear sunglasses.”
A year after buying the house, they added an outdoor pool, then bought a clear vinyl dome to enclose it — and keep it warm — in winter. This would be the set for their unique wet photographs which would raise a few eyebrows of photographs connoisseurs.
Howard Schatz’s photographs explore the romantic, liberating qualities of a being in a buoyant, otherworldly environment. His most recent work — 100 photographs of dancers, models, athletes and acrobats taken in or on the water — is collected in his 17th book, “H2O,” published by Bullfinch. All of the photographs were made at his home studio in Sherman, Connecticut.
Source: “Coming Up for Air” – The New York Times
One of Howard Schatz’s photographs taken in his Connecticut pool.
(Credit: The New York Times)
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