Who

A longtime portrait photographer, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders has become something of a celebrity taking pictures of celebrities.

Backstory

Greenfield-Sanders originally planned on going into filmmaking and earned an MFA from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. On a whim, however, he became the school's photographer in the mid-1970s, capturing the likenesses of such cinematic luminaries as Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, and Orson Welles, which led to commissions from Interview and People. He's since made a name for himself with his large-scale portraits of famous personalities, ranging from intellectuals and writers to fashion icons and porn stars. These days, he's also a contributing photographer at Vanity Fair.

In print

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Face to Face: Selected Portraits 1977–2005 includes shots of Andy Warhol, Salman Rushdie, John Malkovich, Diane von Furstenberg, Beyoncé Knowles, Richard Meier, Toni Morrison, and Bob Vila, to name just a few. His 2004 book, XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, tapped into the porn going mainstream zeitgeist (he supposedly got the idea from the movie Boogie Nights) and was made into an HBO film, Thinking XXX. His latest book is the somewhat less risqué Look: Portraits Backstage at Olympus Fashion Week.

Trophy case

A film he made about his friend Lou Reed won the Grammy for best music documentary in 1999.

Family ties

His father-in-law is Joop Sanders, a founder of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York. His brother-in-law is sculptor John Sanders.

Personal

He and his wife Karin, a lawyer, have two daughters: Isca Greenfeld-Sanders, an up-and-coming artist who is already commanding solid five-figure prices for her paintings; and Liliana, a filmmaker who had a short film in the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. The couple lives in a converted church rectory on East 2nd Street which houses Sanders' studio in the basement. Sanders and his wife converted it into their home in the late 1970s.