George Holz

Career

George Holz was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1956. He grad­u­ated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1980. While still a stu­dent, he appren­ticed under Helmut Newton, whose invalu­able guid­ance pro­foundly influ­enced his career. 

Visual Style

As a young pho­tog­ra­pher, Holz lived in Milan and Paris, where he worked for major mag­a­zines such as Lei, L’Officiel, Vogue Italia, and Elle Magazine. He later moved to New York, where his pho­tographs were pub­lished in renowned pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Mademoiselle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vanity Fair, while also pro­duc­ing cam­paigns for Elizabeth Arden and Nike. He pho­tographed numer­ous movie posters and album cov­ers, includ­ing sev­eral highly rec­og­nized works such as Face/​Off fea­tur­ing John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, and Madonna’s Borderline.

Major Series and Works

His 2016 mono­graph, Holz Hollywood: 30 Years of Portraits, serves as a vir­tual who’s who of the worlds of cin­ema, music, tele­vi­sion, sports, and pol­i­tics across three decades. Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Mariah Carey, Serena and Venus Williams, and Javier Bardem are among the per­son­al­i­ties fea­tured in the book. 

Recognition

Holz lec­tures inter­na­tion­ally at muse­ums and uni­ver­si­ties, con­ducts work­shops, and men­tors emerg­ing pho­tog­ra­phers. His work has been exhib­ited in pres­ti­gious gal­leries and muse­ums around the world, and his pho­tographs are part of numer­ous pri­vate collections. 

Reading the Work

George Holz’s work finds its bal­ance in fash­ion and por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy that is at once glam­orous, graphic, and deeply atten­tive to the pres­ence of the sub­ject. It is dis­tin­guished by ele­gant stag­ing, a close rela­tion­ship with the per­son­al­i­ties he pho­tographs, and a strong edi­to­r­ial aes­thetic. Viewing his images ben­e­fits from atten­tion to nuance: a com­po­si­tional detail, a par­tic­u­lar dis­tance main­tained from the sub­ject, a qual­ity of light, or a tex­ture is often enough to reveal their depth.