Gregory Watermann | Photographer and Video Director
Greg Watermann | Music Photographer and Video Director
Greg Watermann got his first camera at age seven and used it documenting family vacations. Later he was photographer for his high school and college yearbooks. In 1980 Watermann was studying Computer Science at Texas A&M then eventually transferred to Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California to study Commercial Photography until 1984. Then on to NYC - He learned the trade in New York assisting top photographers — among them Gilles Bensimon, Annie Leibovitz, and Steven Meisel — which he credits as his real education. He began taking his own assignments in the late 1980s shooting portraits and fashion for Elle, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Rolling Stone. And in 1991 Spin sent him to Phoenix to photograph a band on tour called Nirvana. The pictures ran on the cover of the January 1992 issue the band's first major national magazine cover two months ahead of their first Rolling Stone cover.
Professional Background
At the end of the Twentieth Century, he moved to Los Angeles and shifted to Music photography exclusively. He joined Linkin Park in 2003 for the band's fan club tour and the Summer Sanitarium run, and was their photographer through 2010. He has been System of a Down's photographer since the early 2000s, an assignment that has covered tours, solo projects, weddings, and the births of the members' children; his photograph of the band waving to the crowd after their 2006 show is, by his account, the last picture taken of the four of them together before the hiatus. Since 2011 he has been Pitbull's personal photographer and videographer, shooting recording sessions, tours, album packaging, merchandise, and social content across more than forty countries. He shot tour and album cover work for Toby Keith. Other credits include Beth Hart, Scars on Broadway, Afrojack, The Struts, Lamb of God, and Mudvayne.
Watermann shot live work on film well into the 2000s — a Nikon F3 with Fujichrome 400 for color and T-Max 3200 for black and white, no autofocus, no zoom lenses, and never a flash, which he treats as an intrusion on the moment. Roughly half of his current work is video now; his cinematography credits include Pitbull's "Feel This Moment" with Christina Aguilera (2013). He has been a ZEISS Camera Lens Ambassador since 2014 and has taught as a guest lecturer since 2000 at the USC School of Journalism, Art Center College of Design, Otis College of Art and Design, Brooks Institute, the Grammy Foundation Camp, MoJoCon, Photo/Expo NYC, and numerous high school journalism classrooms around the country.
Books
I Photograph Rock Stars, 2009 (62-page limited edition released to accompany his A&I Gallery exhibition; portraits spanning his career from Julia Roberts to Ozzy Osbourne)
TV Land Legends, Melcher Media, 2006 (230 pages, book opens with Watermann’s 1990 portrait of Carol Burnett)
From the Inside: Linkin Park's Meteora, Bradson Press, 2004 (192 pages, documenting the 2003–04 Meteora touring cycle; photographs by Watermann, text by Steve Baltin, foreword by David Fricke, introduction by Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, captions by the band)
Nirvana - The Day to Day Illustrated Journals, Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, Barnes & Nobel, 2000 (194 pages, Includes Watermann’s account of the infamous photo shoot)
The Pictures of Texas Monthly: 25 Years, US Media Holdings, 1998 (160 pages, Magazine retrospective includes Watermann’s Texas Monthly cover portraits of Susan Powter)
Exhibitions
I Got Pictures on My Wall, a retrospective of more than twenty years photographing System of a Down, ran October 19–26, 2024, at Eye For Sound Gallery in Los Angeles, where Watermann was the gallery's first featured photographer. The title comes from the band's 2002 song "Pictures.”
I Photograph Rock Stars, an exhibit of images from the first twenty years of his career, was shown at A&I Gallery in Los Angeles from May 7 to June 10, 2009.
Greg Watermann lives in Los Angeles and shoots around the globe.