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BIOGRAPHY
Chester Simpson grew up in Roanoke, Virginia in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains and hitchhiked across country in 1975 to accept a scholarship at the San Francisco Institute of Art, to study photography. In San Francisco, he met two of the major influences on his life, legendary master photographer Ansel Adams, founder of the Institute's photography department, and Jim Marshall, the famous rock-n-roll photographer. While attending school, he assisted photographers to learn the business side of photography and started hanging out and taking photographs in punk rock clubs at night.
Rolling Stone magazine published his first picture while he was still in Art School, which kicked off his career as a rock-n-roll photographer shooting for MTV, Warner Bros, MCA, AM, Capitol, CBS, and Chrysalis Record companies. He also shot assignments for BAM, Berkeley Barb, Bay Guardian, Circus, California, Crawdaddy, Creem, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Newsweek, New West, New York Rocker, People, Relix, Rolling Stone, and San Francisco magazines.
After ten years and several record covers to his credit he moved to Washington, DC and accepted a photography staff position from the local daily newspaper, the Alexandria Gazette. In 1989 he took a position as Director of Photography at the Pentagon newspaper, the Pentagram, and started freelancing as a tour photographer traveling with music artists all over the world to entertain our troops on USO Tours.
