​Phil Parmet began his career as a documentary cinematographer in the 70’s. Though the 80's he directed and/or photographed over sixty documentaries for most the principal American and world news organizations.  Music films he photographed include Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same, Frank Zappa’s Baby Snakes, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird, No Nukes, as well as numerous music videos for artist including Springsteen, Souxie and the Banshees, Roseanne Cash and more.

Awards for documentary films he has photographed include: Academy Award for Harlan Country USA, Academy Award for American Dream, Emmy Award, The Columbia Dupont Prize for Television Journalism, and a National Endowment Individual Artist’s Grant.        

As a director of photography on feature films he has DP'd more than 30 major movies.  Awards include the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for Alex Rockwell's In the Soup.

His work includes Rob Zombie’s Halloween, The Devils Rejects, and the Tarantino produced Grindhouse and Four Rooms. He shot Animal Factory and Lonesome Jim for Steve Buscemi, the Burrowers for Lionsgate, and The Roommate for Sony.  Currently he shoots on the ABC/Disney show Switched at Birth.

He has produced a number of films including Mercy, The Meadowlands and recently with, “Raisin’ Cain” a history of Cains Ballroom.

Photographic works have been exhibited in museums and galleries in New York, LA, Paris, and Berlin.  He’s had a major one man show  at the prestigious Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo Club New York featuring two years work documenting the fall of the Dulvalier Government and the rise of democracy in the Haiti.  

Group shows included: Six-two-Six Gallery, NYC 1987, “Haiti Mon Reve” at the Alternative Museum NYC 1989,  “Uprising in Haiti,” at Schaumburg Gallery of the New York Public Library, The Museum of the City of Berlin 1990, Louis Stern Gallery Beverly Hills in 1992, Still Moving Gallery LA 1999, Media Rare Gallery LA 2000, and Gasp Gallery LA 2001, Harris and Ruble 2011 and 2012, The Loft Gallery in Los Angeles, 2015

His photographs are represented in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum in LA.