Arnold Newman, a deeply influential photographer who spent a lifetime capturing penetrating images of artists, entertainers and presidents, has died at age 88.

He died on June 6th, 2006, of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, according to his son, David Newman.

Self portrait, 1979

Among his most famous photos are a close-up portrait of Pablo Picasso in 1954 resting his head against his hand and gazing intensely forward, and a crisp, slightly abstract image of composer Igor Stravinsky at a grand piano in 1966.

"We don't take pictures with our cameras," Newman once said. "We take them with our hearts and we take them with our minds, and the camera is nothing more than a tool."

Born in 1918 in New York, Newman studied art at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, but the Depression hit and he was forced to leave school for financial reasons. He moved to Philadelphia, where he took a job at a portrait studio and learned photography. His early career was influenced by photographs of everyday people taken by photographers for the Farm Security Administration, particularly Walker Evans.

By 1945, Newman had moved to New York. He made his name working as a freelance photographer for LIFE, Harper's Bazaar, Look, Fortune and many other magazines. His 1946 image of Stravinsky was originally rejected by Harper's Bazaar, but later became one of his best-selling and most lucrative images.

He continued shooting pictures well into the 21st century, capturing presidents from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton and many influential figures in the world of art and entertainment.

He advanced the art of the portrait with his careful compositions made in the settings where his subjects worked. The style came to be known as environmental portraiture, but Newman resisted labels.

"I see myself simply as a photographer who works in portraits, abstractions, still lifes or whatever. Therefore I use the word 'portrait' in an all-inclusive generic sense, without limitations," Newman said in a 2002 interview with PDN.