Ron Sherman
Home page: http://www.ronsherman.com
Archive contact: Ron Sherman (info@ronsherman.com)
Ron Sherman (b. May 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio) worked for newspapers in Cleveland, Ohio and Rochester, NY while in high school and college. While at the Rochester Institute of Technology (1960-1964) he studied under Minor White and Ralph Hattersley. After two years as staff photographer at the University of Florida and three years in the US Army, two as a photo officer, Sherman attended Syracuse University (1969-1971) and earned his Masters of Arts degree in Communications.
Sherman moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1971 to start his career as a photojournalist. Time, Life, Newsweek, Business Week and Forbes became clients, some more often than others. He covered civil rights personalities, politics and events throughout the southeast, including Jimmy Carter's race to the White House. Nancy Palmer Photo Agency represented Sherman's archive images in the late 1960's and 1970's. He learned the value of leasing images. He added six regional agencies and one foreign agency after Nancy Palmer closed her agency.
In the late 1970's, Sherman was introduced to corporate communications photography by a graphic designer. Coca-Cola, BellSouth, Georgia Power, IBM and Southern Natural Gas became clients and his corporate and industrial images expanded the growing archives. In the mid 1980's, Tony Stone represented Sherman worldwide and later when Stone Images entered the US market, they became his sole stock agency.
In 1998, when Getty Images bought Tony Stone Images and offered an unsignable contract, Sherman joined 39 other Stone contributing photographers to become the Gang of 40 and hired a New York intellectual property lawyer to represent the group. Eventually, a signable contract was agreed to by some of the members of the group. The financial arrangements had changed with the new contract, so Sherman withdrew thousands of images from Getty Images, leaving 28 images of top sellers for further distribution. The Gang of 40 became the SAA - Stock Artist Alliance, an advocacy group for all stock photographers and Sherman was an active member in the early years of the organization. In 2000 he had a image searchable web site created and started to market his Atlanta and Georgia images directly. Sherman has added additional web sites to display his additional subjects, such as civil rights, corporate/industrial and educational images. In 2009 he created a collection of fine art prints and is currently represented in Atlanta by Mason Murer Fine Art Gallery.
Sherman has published three books: North Fulton County, Toward the Twenty-First Century; Atlanta, A Vision for the New Millennium; and Atlanta, The Making of a World Class City. BrownTrout Publishers has published an Atlanta calendar using many of his images since 1994.