Collection: Don Bronstein

Don Bronstein is the missing link in the history of popular culture.

He is credited with designing and photographing over 500 album covers for Chess records and its subsidiaries; Checker, Argo, Verve, and Cadet… as well as Mercury, Columbia & Universal. 

Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Sammy Davis Jr., Etta James, Howlin Wolf, Bo Didley, & Little Walter to name a few.

In 1963, Bronstein photographed a young Barbra Streisand looking out as the sun rose over Lake Michigan. The photograph was used on the cover of her PEOPLE album and was awarded a grammy for the best album cover. 

As Playboy’s first photographer, he created covers and centerfolds in the 1950’s and 60’s and traveled the world to document this new culture.

Bronstein died in 1968, at the age of 41, in Mexico on assignment for Playboy.

This archive has just been released.

Don Bronstein

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