The ultimate celebrity photographer

NEW DELHI: When Taylor Swift opened her Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona, in March 2023, Kevin Mazur was granted full access to photograph the show. When Beyoncé opened her Renaissance Tour in Stockholm, Sweden, two months later, Mazur captured the performance from directly in front of the stage. That fall, when Madonna opened her Celebration Tour in London, Mazur was once again in position for the best shots.

At the Met Gala and Vanity Fair’s Oscar party, Mazur, 63, roams freely while photographers from major news outlets are given a short amount of time to shoot the goings-on away from the red carpet. Bob Dylan has let him into the recording studio, Barbra Streisand has had him in her home, and Kurt Cobain invited him on a Nirvana tour. He took some of the last photographs of Michael Jackson, on the night before his death.

His motto — “Why wouldn’t you want to make people look good?” — helps explain how he became the John Singer Sargent of live-action digital photography, a go-to chronicler of rock gods and movie stars.

On a recent afternoon, when hundreds of photographers stood outside the UBS Arena on Long Island, baking in the sun while waiting to collect press badges for the MTV Video Music Awards, Mazur was already inside. He looked very much at ease in his plain black pants, black Nikes and a navy blue FDNY T-shirt as he watched Chappell Roan do a run-through of her hit “Good Luck, Babe!”

“He’s our preferred photographer for every show,” said Bruce Gillmer, the executive producer of the annual telecast. “He gets the access he gets because he’s artistically the best in the business and the person the artists most trust.” Mazur lives with his wife, Jennifer, in a waterfront mansion in Babylon, New York, not far from his childhood home. During a tour of the place on a recent weekend, he paused at a wall of framed photographs. There he was with Jon Bon Jovi, Miley Cyrus, Drake, Ariana Grande, Dave Grohl, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, Katy Perry, Julia Roberts, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.

In addition to his ability to put his famous subjects at ease, Mazur gets preferential treatment from stars because he is a leading photographer for Getty Images, a major syndicator of pictures from concerts, sporting events and movie premieres. Getty’s photographers are somewhere between journalists and courtiers to the rich and famous: Much of the company’s revenue comes directly from the celebrities and corporations who hire its photographers to shoot events in the knowledge that the images will be flattering and plentiful. The company also brings in money by selling its photos to The Daily Mail, People, The New York Times and other news outlets around the world.

Mazur wasn’t so much hired by Getty as he was bought by it. In 2001, he and seven other photographers founded WireImage, a syndicator with a focus on entertainment and sports photography that grew quickly, setting up offices in New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles. In 2007, Getty offered to buy WireImages for around $200 million. When the partners met to take a vote, the only hand that didn’t go up belonged to Mazur. “I walked out,” he recalled. He wouldn’t divulge how much he had made from the sale, but a few of his friends estimated that it was around $10 million.

Mazur was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Babylon. His father was an officer with the NYPD and a firefighter with the FDNY; his mother, Kathy, who now lives in a section of the waterfront house that Mazur calls the North Wing, was a homemaker. He wasn’t an easy kid.

“What didn’t he do?” Kathy said, standing in Mazur’s office, discussing his high school years, during which he partied hard and banged up cars.

When he was a teenager, the walls of his bedroom were covered with pictures and posters of Aerosmith, the Beatles, Black Sabbath, Farrah Fawcett, Kiss, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and the Who. He began setting himself apart from the typical fan in 1977, when he was a junior in high school and Led Zeppelin was playing six shows at Madison Square Garden. After scoring nosebleed seats for the first night, Mazur and his friends learned the ins and outs of scalping, buying and reselling their way to the loge on the second night and the floor on the third.

Dreams of becoming a photographer swirled in his head while he studied advertising, art and design at Farmingdale State College, a public university on Long Island. With no connections to speak of, he wentto work after graduation at Brookdale Hospital as a medical photographer. The worst part of the job, he said, was not photographing cadavers but abused children.

“There was one kid with cigarette burns who came in three times,” he said. “There was a toddler who was hit in the face with a frying pan. It was heartbreaking.” He unwound by going to concerts, camera in tow, at Nassau Coliseum, Max’s Kansas City, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and CBGB. On a lark, he cold-called Annie Leibovitz, the famed celebrity portraitist, for career advice. “When she actually picked up her phone, I had a heart attack,” Mazur said.

The conversation lasted less than a minute and involved her rattling off a list of photo syndicators. The only one he remembered was Retna. Mazur went to the company’s office, taking along some of his photos. Retna placed one of these shots, a picture of Billy Joel onstage, in People magazine, and he was on his way.

When Talking Heads played Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in 1983, Mazur sneaked backstage and made the acquaintance of Ken Sunshine, who oversaw communications for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Sunshine, who would go on to be a powerful entertainment publicist and behind-the-scenes player in Democratic politics, hired Mazur to photograph Paul McCartney at a luncheon.

The ex-Beatle took a liking to Mazur, and he was soon hired to shoot a series of Elton John concerts.

Before he knew it, he was photographing Elizabeth Taylor, Jon Bon Jovi, and on and on. “He had this hustle,” Sunshine said. “And he knew when to shut up. He’s also a good person in a sea of vipers, and people sense that.”