Bio

Melvin Sokolsky was born and raised in New York City. When Sokolsky was only 21, Henry Wolf, Harper’s Bazaar’s Art Director, invited him to join the magazine’s photographic staff. During the 1960’s he worked as a major contributor to four prestigious magazines, Esquire, McCalls’s, Newsweek, and Show.

Sokolsky’s work is characterized by his sense of fantasy and invention.
He was also given a great deal of artistic freedom. Perhaps the most notable of Sokolsky’s innovative fashion editorials was his 1963 “Bubble Series” campaign, in which he depicted fashion models floating above urban scenes and landscapes. He credits artist Hieronymus Bosch for these images, having been inspired by his painting, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” which features a nude couple in a bubble. This editorial and other very inspired fashion campaigns caught the eye of advertising creatives, and Sokolsky soon became known for his adventurous editorial work and celebrity portraits. He has never confined himself to just one style, and has been deemed by The Digital Journalist as being the most successful advertising photographer of the ‘60s.

Among the museums that have exhibited his work are; The Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, where he was included in “Shots of Style,” a retrospective of the world’s major fashion photographers.