Education
He studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he earned a Masters in Science degree in the communication arts program
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Lyle Owerko
Edit ProfileCareer
His photos are collected by many business, entertainment and celebrity clients, they have been used in several films including Henry Singer"s The Falling Manitoba and The Omen (2006 film), as well as books such as Jonathan Safran Foer"s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His work is also included in the permanent archive of the Library of Congress in Washington District of Columbia. Owerko travels extensively around the world each year shooting assignments and personal work. He resides in New York City.
Lyle Owerko was raised in Calgary, Canada.
Photography and Fine Art In 2005 Princeton Architectural Press published Jennifer New"s book Drawing From Life, which featured Owerko"s journals as well as those of Mike Figgis, David Byrne, Carol Beckwith and Maira Kalman. In 2006 Owerko traveled to Africa as part of Doctor Jeffrey Sachs’ Millennium Promise initiative, documenting the lives of the Lau people of Sauri, Kenya.
Current initiatives range from the multi-media exhibition, to an art installation of large-scale portraits of the Samburu Warrior tribe. In 2010 Abrams published The Boombox Project, his historical overview of the history of a seminal popular-culture icon.
The books release was covered by many news outlets including The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, Fast Company, Columbia Broadcasting System News, and National Public Radio.
That same year Hasselblad Cameras named him a "Hasselblad Master" for his work as a fine art photojournalist. Lyle"s work can be seen in many museum and private collections including the Victoria & Albert in London, which holds part of his Boombox collection in their permanent archive of 20th-century historically significant objects. His work can been seen at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta, and Whisper Fine Art in London.
Journalism Owerko shot the photograph featured on the cover of Time on September 11, 2001, the day of the 9/11 attacks, which showed an explosion at the World Trade Center. In 2005 the American Society of Magazine Editors ranked it as 25th out of a list of the 40 most important magazine covers in the last 40 years.
Since 2001, Lyle Owerko has been profiled and given interviews about that day and his work. A portion of Owerko’s personal work as a photographer can be viewed in the self-published book And Number Birds Sang, featuring images he took from September 11, 2001.
Advertising Owerko has directed Robert Redford in a series of Sundance Channel commercial spots. He also worked with Compound shooting live action elements for the 1999 International Business Machines Corporation e-culture campaign that led to a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
