Kim Gottlieb-Walker is an American photographer and writer living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Over the past 50 years, she has built a distinctive portfolio that includes some of the most notable musicians and personalities of the '60s and '70s.
A graduate of UCLA with honors in Motion Picture Production, Kim worked as a teaching assistant in the film department and began photographing concerts and interviews. This led to her classic portrait of Jimi Hendrix and as well as culture heroes Dr Spock and the first black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm.
Kim worked as a photographer in the LA underground scene of the early '70s, accompanying journalists on assignments and often shooting at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge where she photographed Andy Warhol and author Howard Fast, among many others.
She moved to London for a year, shooting Pink Floyd in the recording studio and Rod Stewart and Joni Mitchell on stage during the 1970 Isle of Wight music festival. She then returned to Los Angeles and working for Music World Magazine, photographed hundreds of recording artists including Gram Parsons before his untimely death in 1973.
Kim's ability to shoot candidly in natural light has produced some of her most iconic photographs in “Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae,” her first photo book, which documents many never-before-seen photographs of reggae legends including Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Peter Tosh with commentary from Cameron Crowe, Roger Steffens and former Island Records head of Publicity, Jeff Walker.
She went on to shoot film stills for John Carpenter's Halloween, The Fog, Christine and Escape from New York. Her second coffee table photo book “On Set with John Carpenter” (Titan Books/Random House USA) was published in 2014 and her books also have editions in Japan, Russia and France. She also worked at Paramount as unit photographer for Cheers for nine years and Family Ties for five, as well as the pilots for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation, and the last Bob Newhart show Bob.
In 1980, Kim was one of the first women admitted to the International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 600 and served as an elected representative for still photographers on their National Executive Board for over three decades.
Kim Gottlieb Walker's work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Jamaican Consulate in New York, Proud Gallery in Camden, London, Sugarmynt Gallery in S. Pasadena, and Mr. Musichead, Morrison Hotel Gallery, and KM Fine Arts in West Hollywood. She has been published in MOJO, Rolling Stone, Time, People, The Free Press, LA Weekly, Time Out, Feature Magazine, Music World and Crawdaddy. Her photos have appeared in several books including "Classic Hendrix" published by Genesis Press. Kim's High Times cover photo of Bob Marley remains the magazine's most popular cover to date.
A sampling of her work can be seen at www.Lenswoman.com
Recently, she has written two (as yet unpublished) novels: “Lenswoman - A Romance of the 1960s and ’70s” and “Caterina By Moonlight,” a novel about a girl growing up in renaissance Florence.
