Occupation: Photographer, photo agency founder
Years in the industry: 31
For more than 30 years, Alex Berliner has been photographing celebrities at the Emmys, Oscars and other glitzy industry celebrations. “People tell me I’m good at parties,” he says modestly. “I approach people with trust and I make them feel relaxed and I do it without, in my opinion, being obsequious.”
One of his best-known photos captured an awkward exchange between a blank-faced Angelina Jolie and former Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal at an industry breakfast in 2014, shortly after disparaging hacked emails about the actress became public.
In 2018, he recovered Frances McDormand’s Oscar from the man who stole it at the Governors Ball, which he covers every year.
“There is never anything typical about an awards show,” says Berliner. “There’s always gotta be something.”
This year, however, is truly unprecedented. Instead of taking pictures inside the Microsoft Theater during the show or afterward at the Governors Ball, as he has for several years, Berliner will be watching the Emmys from home.
Like hundreds of other photographers who cover red-carpet events, Berliner, who owns the photo agency ABImages, has been hit hard by the pandemic. “Normally we have hundreds of shoots a year, and this year we’ve had tens of shoots because we stopped shooting at the beginning of March,” he says.
His agency, which had six full-time employees earlier this year, now has none.
“We could not maintain the payroll because of lack of business. We got PPP funding and we paid our employees as long as we could. We all reached that tough decision-making point [of], ‘How much more of my own savings can I give to my employees?’”
Awards season — the roughly six-month period from the Emmys to the Oscars — is a significant part of Berliner’s livelihood, and there is no telling when, if or how it will resume. Though he calls the TV Academy’s approach to the celebration this year “very sensible,” he is also concerned about the countless florists, caterers, security teams, and construction crews who are losing vital income. “They’re all suffering greatly.”
Recalling the gradual resumption of festivities after 9/11, Berliner is optimistic about the industry in the long term. “We all have a yearning for our celebrations to return. I think we are all looking forward to a day when you can blow out [the candles of] a birthday cake with our loved ones. I don’t think that we are accustomed to being isolated behind a screen on Zoom.”