http://www.mankowitz.com/
Gered Mankowitz is a English photographer born on 3rd August 1946. After leaving school at the age of 15 and not really gaining any formal qualifications Gered took on a hobby of photography which he discovered during a school trip to Holland. His photographs were noticed by a famous photographer named 'Tom Blau' and as of this he offered Gered an apprenticeship with his famous photography agency named 'Camera press Ltd' based in London. Over a period of several months Gered worked in all the various departments that made up 'Camera Press' which gave him a great knowledge of the industry and encouraged him to progress further. He gained a job with 'Camara Press' and immediately began working professionally on assignments based in and around London.
In 1962 Gered went over to Barbados with his family and began working over there. He took a range of photographs for various people and companies such as a lead architect in the country and British West Indian Airways. When Gered finally returned back to England he was offered to visit Paris to work with a fashion photographer, but Gered was not drawn to this despite of the exciting and glamourous atmosphere as he felt as that particular area of work was not for him. Instead he began to work with a 'show-biz' photographer named 'Jeff Vickers'. He focused upon various theatre productions which made him the youngest photographer to have taken this kind of photos, so while working for Jeff Vickers he was given the chance to develop his 'show-biz' contracts and broaden his experience in the studio taking portraits of many actors and other personalities.
From this moment on Gered became know in the photography world has he began photographing musicians and became focused on this industry just at the time it needed new, mould breaking images. At the end of 1963 Gered opened his first studio in London. It was close to popular 'hangouts' of the celebrities of that time and also close to where John Lennon met Yoko Ono.
In early 1965 Gered was asked to photograph 'The rolling stones' this was a major turning point in Gered career because of a result from photographing the rolling stones he was asked to travel America with the band on their record-breaking 1965 Autumn tour. Gered took photos of them none stop for around 9 weeks and began producing album covers for their songs as well as taking photos for press and publicity, home, studio and on stage photographs. This unfortunately stopped when the band broke off from their manager in 1967.
Throughout the 1960's Gered photographed many famous stars such as 'Jimi Hendrix', 'The yardbirds' and 'Softmachine'. In the 1970's Gered began working with other names such as 'Slade', 'Gary Glitter', 'Elton John', 'Kate Bush', 'Duran Duran' and many others. At this time Gered was also asked to photograph on the set of new films to create 'stills' for advertising needs.
For over 22 years Gered was based at his North London studio taking prize-winning photographs for the advertising industry. He still works in the music business photographing band and singers for album covers and magazines. He contributes regulary to the Sunday Times Magazine and Mojo magazine as weel as shooting sessions with musical artists such as 'Oasis', 'The Verve', 'Embrace', 'Snow Patrol' and many others.
Prints of Gered's work are purchased in galleries thoughout the world including London, Manchester, Glasgow, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Dubai and Tokyo.
More recently Gered has had features in galleries such as 'The National Portrait Gallery' in London.
Gered has also teamed up with the legendary Beatles photographer, 'Robert Freeman' and presented a 64 image show in Hong kong which was huge success as of that the show travelled all over the world.
From 2007 to date it is known that Gered moved to Cornwall and spends most of his time working on his own projects and teaching at the University College Falmouth.
