Steve Schapiro. The Godfather Family Album. Taschen 40th Edition Series

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Behind the scenes of Coppola’s masterpiece

“It’s dangerous to be an honest man.”
— Michael Corleone, Godfather III

As special photographer on the sets and locations of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy, Steve Schapiro had the remarkable experience of witnessing legendary actors giving some of their most memorable performances. Schapiro immortalized Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton in photos that have since become iconic images, instantly recognizable and endlessly imitated.

Gathered together in this book are Schapiro’s finest photographs from all three Godfather films, lovingly reproduced from the original negatives. With contextual essays and interviews covering the trilogy in its entirety, this book contains over 300 color and black-and-white images. Schapiro’s images take us behind the scenes of this epic and inimitable cinematic saga, revealing the director’s working process, capturing the moods and personalities involved, and providing insight into the making of movie history.

Steve Schapiro’s career as a freelance photojournalist started with a story on Arkansas migrant workers that made the cover of the The New York Times Magazine in 1961. Since then, his images have appeared in Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. In the 1970s, he began a second career as a successful publicity stills and movie poster photographer, working on classic films such as Taxi Driver, The Way We Were, and The Godfather—which can be seen in The Godfather Family Album (TASCHEN, 2008). In 2016, he collaborated with Lawrence Schiller on a Barbra Streisand book (TASCHEN) and in 2017, his Civil Rights photographs were combined with the text of James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time (TASCHEN). He died in 2022.

Paul Duncan is a film historian whose TASCHEN books include The Star Wars Archives, The James Bond Archives, The Charlie Chaplin Archives, The Godfather Family Album, Taxi Driver, Film Noir, and Horror Cinema, as well as publications on film directors, film genres, and movie stars.