Charles Gatewood

Gatewood was born November 8, 1942, in Elgin, Illinois. From ages one to three Gatewood lived with his father, John Jay Gatewood (a traveling salesman) and his mother, Clarene Hall Gatewood (a housewife) near Dallas, Texas. In 1945 the family moved to Rolla, Missouri, where Gatewood's father found work as a traveling salesman. In 1951, the Gatewood family moved to Springfield, Missouri, where Charles attended J.P Study Jr. High and Parkview High School.

From 1960 to 1964, Gatewood attended the University of Missouri, majoring in Anthropology and taking a minor in art history. In 1964, as he was finishing his first year of graduate work, Gatewood met George W. Gardner, a gifted student photographer. Gatewood credited Gardner's work and a Museum of Modern Art photography book, "The Family of Man" as influences that helped him choose a career in photography.[1]

From 1964 to 1966, Gatewood lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden. He enrolled at the University of Stockholm to study sociology and apprenticed with a group of documentary photographers.[2] In 1965, after exploring Europe, Gatewood returned to Sweden and found work as a darkroom technician for AB Text & Bilder, a Stockholm news agency. At night, Gatewood took advantage of his press pass and the agency's sophisticated equipment to photograph jazz concerts and happenings.

On April 29, 1966, Gatewood photographed the press conference and concert of musician Bob Dylan. One photograph, "Dylan With Sunglasses and Cigarette," was syndicated and received worldwide publication. It was Gatewood's first sale, his first published picture. "Taking the Bob Dylan photo gave me faith I could actually be a professional photographer," said Gatewood.[3]

Other celebrity photos taken by Gatewood during this time include pictures of Martin Luther King Jr., Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Joan Baez, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald.

In June, 1966, Gatewood returned to the United States, rented an apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and found work as second assistant at Jaffe-Smith photography studio in Greenwich Village. Ten months later, after learning studio photography techniques and advanced darkroom skills, Gatewood quit Jaffee-Smith and began his career as a freelance photographer.

Rents were cheap, and the photography market was booming. Gatewood rented part of a photography studio at 8 East 12th Street, and sold photos to textbooks, magazines, poster companies, and other editorial markets. From 1970 to 1974 Gatewood worked as staff photographer for the Manhattan Tribune. He also photographed on assignment for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Harper's, Business Week, Time and other magazines.

In 1972 and 1976, Gatewood was awarded CAPS fellowships by the New York State Arts Council. In 1975, Sidetripping, Gatewood's first photography book, was published, with text by William S. Burroughs. The book was widely praised. A.D. Coleman, writing in The New York Times, said, "Gatewood's work is freakish, earthy, blunt, erotic--most of all, terribly and beautifully alive."[4]

Gatewood's work during this period included shots of Mardi Gras in New Orleans (12 times), Gay Pride celebrations and Manhattan's downtown music and art scene. The notables he photographed in this time span include Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Sly Stone, Luis Buñuel, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ron Wood, Carlos Santana, Abbie Hoffman, Etta James, Gil Evans and Nelson Rockefeller.

From 1978 to 1987, Gatewood lived near Woodstock, New York, and worked in Manhattan and elsewhere. His photos from this period include one of social protests, rock festivals, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, body modification, outlaw bikers, and nature. The celebrities he captured images of include Larry Clark, Annie Sprinkle, Michael O'Donoghue, Ira Cohen and Quentin Crisp.

In 1984 the New York State Arts Council awarded Gatewood a grant to publish Wall Street photographs, and in 1985 the book Wall Street was awarded the Leica Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Humanistic Photojournalism. In 1985, a feature film about Gatewood, titled "Dances Sacred and Profane", premiered at the Antwerp Film Festival and was screened in U.S. theaters to critical acclaim.[5]

From 1987, Gatewood lived and worked in San Francisco, California. From 1998 to 2010, he was a photographer for Skin and Ink magazine. During this period, Gatewood produced over thirty documentary videos about body modification, fetish fashion and other alternative interests. His San Francisco period subjects include the Folsom Street Fair (15 times), Dadafest (4 times) and Burning Man (4 times). Gatewood also photographed a number of nude studies during this period.

Gatewood's documentation of alternative culture in San Francisco is unmatched. People he photographed include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Herb Gold, Charles Henri Ford, Carol Queen, Ron Turner and Ruth Bernard.

In 1994 Barbara Nitke attended her first meeting of The Eulenspiegel Society, the oldest SM support and educational group in the country, to see a presentation by Gatewood. The couples she met in the SM scene fascinated her, and she began photographing them in 1994. They became the focus of her book, Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism (2003). It was among the first mainstream publications to examine the subject of BDSM.[6]

Gatewood's photo books from this period include A Complete Unknown, Burroughs 23, Badlands, True Blood, The Body and Beyond and Primitives. In 1986 Pocket Books published his novel Hellfire.

Gatewood died in San Francisco on April 28, 2016, after sustaining serious injuries in a fall from his balcony three weeks earlier, in an apparent suicide attempt. He left several notes behind.[7] He was 73.