Ryszard Horowitz

Ryszard Horowitz is recognized as a pioneer of special effects photography predating digital images. He was born in Krakow, Poland 5th of May 1939, a few months before the Nazi invasion of his homeland and beginning of the Second World War. His entire family were send to concentrations camps. He and his parents miraculously survived and could re-establish their life in Poland. Ryszard Horowitz is one of the youngest known survivors of Auschwitz.

He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, the city that in the late 1950s emerged as a centre of avant-garde art, music, theatre and film. In 1959 he emigrated to USA and enrolled at New York Pratt Institute. As student he was apprenticed to Alexy Brodovitch, one of the most influential figures in the world of editorial design and photography at the time. After graduating from Pratt in 1962 he worked for a number of film and design companies and as art director for Grey Advertising. Ryszard Horowitz opened his own photography studio in November 1967 and entered a lifelong career and passion. In the ensuring four decades his work has been collected, exhibited and published around the world.