Sam Shaw (1912 - 1999) was the son of a Russian immigrant. In 1950, Shaw took photographs of the making of Panic in the Streets by Elia Kazan. From 1951 he worked on A Streetcar Named Desire and this is when he photographed Marlon Brando in a t-shirt that’s ripped. This photograph came to symbolize the film. It was also around this time that he met and photographed Marilyn Monroe, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. In 1961, he produced Paris Blues together with other several films by John Cassavetes. Shaw loved painting and drawing as a child, and he even made statues out of street tar. He grew up on Lower East Side of New York City. Immediately after high school graduation, he shared a studio for a time with Romare Bearden, a famed African-American artist.
They continued to work together throughout their lives and collaborated on projects with Albert Murray, a jazz and literary critic. Many of his photographs of blues and jazz musicians appear in collages by Bearden. He worked as a courtroom artist in the 1940s, and then as an art director for the Brooklyn Eagle and as a sports and a political cartoonist. He then became a photojournalist and reporter for Collier's magazine for which he traveled around the US documenting American life in the mid-20th century. After suffering a stroke, Shaw died on April 5, 1999. Since his death, his children and grandchildren have worked to promote and preserve his legacy, and his photographs have been exhibited all over the world.
