Schatz gave up a career as a retinal surgeon and a clinical professor to follow his passion for photography. He first established a following in the 1990s with two collections of underwater photography, Water Dance and Pool Light. He has since gone on to photograph dancers, athletes, actors, the homeless, flowers, circus performers and design and execute his own compositions. His work often straddles the blurry line between fashion and art and makes the argument for fashion photography as art. Often, Schatz's seems to be as interested in concealing as he is in revealing.

 

Schatz's often focuses on the human body--the graceful form of the dancer, the musculature of the athlete-but he also finds beauty in images we might find grotesque or disturbing or in images we never considered. That is the hallmark of a great artist--to have us take a new look.

 

Schatz was awarded the 2015 IPA International Photography Award for Book of the Year for his retrospective, "Schatz Images: 25 Years." The IPA Awards, administered by the Lucie Foundation, are considered among the most prestigious in the field of photography.

 

His work recently showed at the Brooklyn Museum as part of its "Who Shot Sports" exhibition. His work has been shown in numerous museums, including the Whitney, the Guggenheim, San Francisco MOMA, the Met, MOMA, and that Art Institute of Chicago, and can be found in numerous private collections. Schatz has published 26 books of his work.