Timothy White

03/01/2026

Good night.

12/18/2025

Bill Murray - “Scrooged” - Los Angeles, CA 1988. Paramount hired me to shoot this Christmas movie with Bill Murray. They say, “Look, he did the movie, but we have to get his face on the poster. He wanted to meet you, so we need you to go and convince him he’s got to show up for this shoot. Offer him whatever it takes. Just get the shot.” 
So I drive out to the lot to meet Bill and he says, “You want to go hit some golf balls?” We’re driving through the streets of LA and pull up at a red light next to a car full of pretty girls. That was the end of the golf balls.
I finally sit down with him and say, “Look, we’ve got to get this shoot done tomorrow, what do you need to make it happen?” “I want some nice, friendly people to come hang out on set,” he says. I had an idea of what might work. Still fully aware this guy’s likely to disappear on me, I say “I’ll pick you up at 8am. Where are you staying?” “The Holiday Inn in Santa Monica,” replies Bill Murray. “What?” I laugh, thinking he’s pulling one over on me. “It’s mostly Japanese tourists there,” he says, “They have no idea who I am.” This was before Lost in Translation. 
The next morning, I show up at the Holiday Inn, and call up to Bill Murray’s room. He answers the phone, “Murray, homicide.”
We drive to set, where he’s immediately greeted by a lovely group of models I’d hired for the day. They hung out on set and in the dressing room with Bill, laughing at his jokes and feeding him grapes while he was getting into makeup. I realized he needed more of an audience than just me. 
He gave me everything we needed that day for the shoot. I went on to do several other movie posters with him, from Groundhog Day to Ghostbusters. We built this fun, friendly relationship. 
Years later, my 11-year-old nephew was out playing his cello with his elementary school orchestra at a little event at the Met, and Bill Murray happened to be there. My little nephew went up to him and said, “Hey, Mr. Murray. You know my uncle the photographer Timothy White,” to which Bill Murray responded, “That asshole?” and walked away, leaving all these little school kids dumbfounded. Bill is just a quirky guy like that.

12/08/2025

You’re invited …
www.TimothyWhite.com

11/06/2025

Hermitage, Nashville, 2025. The Hermitage Hotel in Nashville is one of the most historic hotels in the country—just a beautiful, special place. When the hotel approached me about exhibiting my work, I saw this wonderful opportunity to bring the music and entertainment history of Nashville and the hotel to life.

The Hermitage has a formal, almost European feeling to it—the columns and vaulted ceilings, the curated detail and design. It’s so perfectly maintained, yet has so much more character and style than most modern luxury hotels. The modern feeling of my pictures creates this wonderful juxtaposition.

We obsessed over every detail—the sizing, the frames, the layout—all dependent on the size and structure of the room and its purpose. We selected all black and white images that just pop as you enter the room. In curating the selection, I was given a history lesson on all these people that had stayed at the hotel over the years. These stories, much like my own, were brought to life by adding my photography to the walls. We filled the lobby, the bar, and the Jean-Georges restaurant with my portraits—musicians and entertainers who had connections to the hotel: Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, Jon Bon Jovi…this perfect mix that somehow just worked.

When it all came together, the hotel hosted this incredible opening with cocktails and live music, it was bigger than I could have imagined. I honestly thought the event was about the hotel and Jean-Georges, but when I arrived, my work was equally as celebrated. Jean-Georges flew down and spoke about the art’s influence on the hotel, the restaurant, and his menu, just as the hotel and his restaurant had impacted our decisions on the artwork. It was this truly wonderful, collaborative celebration.

What made it special was how equal it all felt. The Hermitage tells a story through architecture and design; Jean-Georges tells his stories through taste; I tell mine through photography. That shared storytelling made it all click into place. It wasn’t old meeting new...it was a sort of harmony.

Now those photos will live there permanently. They’ve become part of the hotel’s story—and in a way, part of mine too.

10/31/2025

Changed it quite a bit…

Flaming Skulls. I always had this fascination with fire as a little kid. My town had this crazy loud fire signal—when that thing went off, everybody heard it. My father and I would drop whatever we were doing, hop in the car, and follow the engines. And maybe I was a little bit of a pyromaniac…cause I was always fu***ng around with fire.

One time a friend and I were playing at this fort we built in the woods near my house, and we made a campfire. It started getting big, so we ran as fast as we could back to our houses. My father was out back mowing the lawn, and before I could even catch my breath, we heard the sound of sirens through the neighborhood. He joked “What did you do…set the woods on fire?” I foolishly thought he already knew and confessed.

Later on as I started my photography career. I was on movie sets, witnessing pyrotechnics and special effects. I was blown away. It was like, how could I put water, smoke, or fire into any one of my pictures? So I started to hire a special effects artist for some of my shoots.

It got pretty crazy. I set a stuntman on fire for Dennis Leary’s FX show. I lit Eddie Van Halen’s hands on fire while he played the guitar. Today it would be a quick computer retouch or AI. But back then, we did it all for real.

I started getting this fascination with the day of the dead, the skeletons, and wanted to play around with that in my personal work. So I did a test shoot. We took a skeleton, put an accelerant on it and boom! The thing went up in flames. I shot pictures like crazy—I didn’t know what I was gonna get because the flames are always moving. We’d blow it out with a fire extinguisher, change the skeletons position, spray the accelerant again and set it back on fire. The images we ended up with were incredible. They didn’t require retouching.

So we started doing it on a regular basis, and I created this body of work that is really special and so different from the rest of my photography. My portraits have such life to them. But the skeletons are like still lifes—the antithesis of what I do for a living. Inanimate objects, not responding to me, but in some way still having a life of their own.

10/20/2025

John Varvatos, 2025, New York City. I’ve known John Varvatos for 25, maybe 30 years. I was around when his brand really took off and John’s career was flying. It wasn’t just fun and rock and roll—it fit my sensibilities, my friendship with John, my style. I mean, everything I wear—except for my underwear, which is always Calvin Klein—everything was always fu***ng John Varvatos. Shoes, t-shirts, jeans, leather jackets. All of it.

I always wanted to photograph a campaign for them, but the timing was never right. Then John sold the company, I sold mine, and life just changed over time. I walked into a John Varvatos store and was not impressed by the stuff on their walls, so I told them. I asked them to let me curate it, and they did. That turned into curating more stores, and eventually, I pitched them on shooting their fall campaign.

Clearly they went for it. It was for the 25th anniversary of the brand, so we had to shoot it in New York where it all started. Shoot day came and it was a total monsoon—grey, cloudy, wet streets, pouring rain. I was wearing a Hefty garbage bag over my body with my head through a hole. My assistants were holding umbrellas over me and the camera, over the computers and all the gear. It was a sh*tshow. We were running around Manhattan through traffic, in the rain. It was fabulous. It was chaos—but chaos works for me—I get really calm in it. I laughed my way through a very long day of shooting all over Manhattan.

I retouched the images for them—like major retouching—taking out cars and people walking by and street signs. Everything to make it these very clean street scenes of John Varvatos fashion. Albeit Manhattan, but without all the distractions. And that work is now everywhere. It’s in magazines, blown up 8 by 10 feet in store windows, all over the internet. I’ve been playing a lot with AI to create motion with my still images, so I did that with some of these from the shoot to make them come alive. And I’ve gotten to revisit the progression of my relationship with the brand, of my career, and of their business, as we make it into something new again.

10/06/2025

Jon Bon Jovi, 1988-1999. I remember the day I got the call to shoot ‘s album cover. I was a Jersey boy and a fan—it was a big deal—and the album was called New Jersey. So I jump in the Porsche and haul down the parkway to scout locations. I’ve got the long hair, the fast car, the cool gigs—I’m on top of the world…and then I hear sirens. Apparently I was going 90mph. Lucky for me the cop didn’t feel like going to court, so he downgraded it to 89. It was gonna be a good day.

I end up at the amusement pier in Seaside Heights and convince the owner to rent it to me for the shoot. The day comes and all these kids show up screaming—it’s chaos and the band’s loving it. It was this huge moment. Jon and I hit it off that day. We were close in age, had the big hair, the Jersey attitude. And then I got hired to do another shoot, and another, and another.

I went to London to shoot them for the cover of Rolling Stone for the Wanted Dead or Alive tour. I shot all the shows, behind the scenes, but days passed and I didn’t have the shot. I’m sitting in my hotel room like what do I do with these guys? And then a circus in town pops up on tv with this jumping horse, and I’m like you know what, why not? So I find this guy Loris the horse wrangler, and tell him I want to get his horse in the studio with Bon Jovi. It was insane—but he said yes. 

They get the horse to the location, and we’ve got to get him up this old freight elevator. It’s this huge fu***ng horse, but we finally get him into the studio. I’m like alright Loris, we need the horse to jump a bunch of times behind Jon. And he’s like what? It’s a horse. You get a couple jumps max. Nowadays you look at that picture and think it’s easy, just use Photoshop or AI. But that day, it was this massive horse schlepped up an elevator, a wrangler named Loris, and a barefoot Jon Bon Jovi holding a pose while the building shook with each jump. It was the cover, and people still reference that image today.

Jon and my relationship grew from there. We’ve shot tours, movies, family portraits. We survived the 80s and the 90s. A couple of Jersey kids chasing big dreams—and all these years later, we’re still doing it.

09/24/2025

Al Pacino, 1992 & 2006. I went pretty quick from local bands and young actors to some of the biggest names in pop culture history. I’ve been so lucky to have photographed some of my idols...one of the greats being Al Pacino. The Godfather, Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon—all burned into my brain, a part of my personal library. He’s always been this great influence on me—his career, his work ethic, and his approach to really just giving himself totally to his craft.

I’ve always been in awe of him. His stature is small, physically, but his on-screen stature transcends most actors, for sure, and most roles. So to get the opportunity to work with him for Scent of a Woman was really special. It was humanizing, shooting with him. He was playing this blind man and yelling out constantly for capuccinos. We’d get a shot and you’d hear “I want another cappuccino!” Either from Al himself or someone else on the cast doing an impression. He allowed me to direct him, and he was totally open to my direction. It was one of those life-changing moments for me. I got to be one of Al Pacino’s collaborators. It was a big deal.

Later I shot him again for Ocean’s Thirteen. The room was stacked—George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon—this group of super important people. Al walks right up and he’s like, “Okay what do you want me to do?” Out of that came this one picture, a tight headshot of him completely locked in to that Pacino character. Years after that I had an exhibition at the Bel Air Hotel and hung that shot, huge, 50x60, right over the fireplace in the lobby. I went back a few days later and the concierge pulled me aside and told me that the day before Al was in the lobby, just standing in front of that picture for a good five minutes. Just staring at it, with this smirk on his face. 

That’s the thing about him. He can play killers and gangsters and make it feel so real, then turn around and be this little guy grinning at a picture of himself. He’s eighty now, still making movies, making babies, strolling Beverly Hills like nothing’s slowing him down. I’m still in awe of him today.

09/19/2025

The Sunset Marquis, Los Angeles CA. For many years, I basically lived at the Sunset Marquis. I didn’t just stay there—I lived there. For a year and a half straight, and then on and off for decades. I was flying back and forth from New York twice a month for approximately 30 years, and every time I came to LA, it was home. I kept a gold ’67 Cadillac convertible parked in the garage, and when I’d leave for New York I’d stuff my equipment in the Cadillac. As soon as I got back to the Sunset I’d move my equipment to my room and go for a drive. It was the perfect location for a quick set up—the hotel as my set, my car as a prop. I did it a lot, and I’ve amassed a collection of photos of celebrities and friends at the Sunset Marquis...but it was more than just a hotel to me.

I could literally walk into the kitchen and grab something to eat and no one blinked. I knew everyone that worked there, the front desk, the chefs, the cleaners. I’d run into friends and colleages, and my art was on the walls. If I was sitting at the restaurant people would come up to ask about my pictures. I felt like the mayor—though to be fair, Billy Bob Thornton probably earned that title for real. He lived there longer. But still, it felt like home in many ways—it was that kind of place.

I shot so many people there over the years—Roger Waters, Angela Bassett, Michael Bolton, Julian Lennon, Phil Collins, Rachael Ray, Steven Tyler, Whoopi. Some of the photos happened in the rooms, some out front with the Cadillac. Friends would fly into LA and look me up, and meet me at the Marquis just so we could see each other. There was this freedom and fun and familiarity.

Then I opened a gallery in the hotel. I started working with the hotel management, putting together events. It turned into something bigger. It became a community, and honestly, it ended up being a big part of my identity. It became the backdrop to most of my adult life.

Forty years. It’s wild. But it’s true.

09/19/2025