Roger Ressmeyer

Artist Biography

Roger Ressmeyer's brilliant career as a photojournalist has its roots in his childhood fascination with space exploration. In 1962, when Roger was eight years old, John Glenn became America's first man in orbit and captured young Ressmeyer's imagination. By the age of eleven, Roger was building elaborate model rockets, polishing optics for telescopes he built by hand, and photographing the stars from his backyard at night. In the years since that time, Roger's diverse subjects have included musicians, authors, earthquakes, and volcanoes. However, his chronicling of the heavens and human endeavors in space remains the art, prints and posters for which he is best known and to which he brings unparalleled originality and beauty.

Roger's professional career as a photographer began in San Francisco in 1975, shortly after his graduation from Yale University. For the first ten years of his career, Ressmeyer focused upon stars of another sort, celebrities. During that time, he photographed hundreds of rock stars, musicians, writers, poets, politicians, scientists, philosophers and business leaders. His art, prints and posters appeared on record albums and book jackets, and in national publications, such as People Weekly and Rolling Stone.

But despite his early success as a celebrity and portrait photographer, Roger was drawn back to his childhood love of space and science. In the early 1980's he began to turn his cameras once again to the night sky and things scientific. During this time, Roger's frequent clients included Life, Time, Newsweek, Discover, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, Stern and Geo. Later, from 1987 through 1995, Roger worked nearly full time on picture stories for National Geographic Magazine. From such assignments, Ressmeyer produced a breathtaking body of award-winning art, prints, posters, and photos.

Roger Ressmeyer Art, Prints and Posters Collection