Tom Zimberoff is a classically-trained musician who studied at the University of Southern California before pivoting to photojournalism. In association with the legendary Sygma Photo Agency, he covered hundreds of historical and breaking news stories for publication worldwide.
His career took off — literally — with a helicopter carrying the military dictator of Panama. Tom was a stowaway. As a young freelancer trying to make his bones, hoping to grab exclusive photos of the inscrutably camera-shy ruler, General Omar Torrijos, it turned out to be an entrée to more than twenty years of shooting for Time magazine.
His first two portrait photos were Marx and Lennon: Groucho and John. He’s shot hundreds more, including magazine covers depicting cultural icons from Ava Gardner to Steve Jobs, plus two sitting American presidents for the covers of Time and Fortune.
Zimberoff wrote Focus on Profit (Allworth Press, 2002), a textbook used at colleges nationwide about the business side of photography. He also wrote and illustrated two volumes, Art of the Chopper Vols. I and II, about the custom motorcycle culture he calls “haut moteur” (Bulfinch Press/Hachette, 2003 and 2006), including biographies and portraits of its proponents. Forewords were written by Sonny Barger of the Hells Angels and James Hetfield of Metallica..The installation debuted at the Clinton Presidential Library & Museum in 2009 before it traveled to other museums.
His work is found in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Performance + Design, among other collections. His film is archived at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in San Francisco, California.
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