Historic and Master Photographers
December 1, 2015
All photography students will research a photographer and complete a research paper as part of their final grade for the 1st semester. Listed below are the names of popular photographers. You may choose one from the list of names or research someone on your own as long a they have a portfolio of work. You may also check the link for Critiquing Photos for December 2nd to find additional information and examples of a photo critique.
The Research Paper
All photography students will research a photographer and complete a research paper as part of their final grade for the 1st semester. Listed below are the names of popular photographers. You may choose one from the list of names or research someone on your own as long a they have a portfolio of work. You may also check the link for Critiquing Photos for December 2nd to find additional information and examples of a photo critique.
The Research Paper
- Students will write a two page paper on the life of a famous photographer.
- Students will include three photo critiques using the form below.
- Students will create a cover page
- Students will create a reference page listing the sources of your information
- The research paper will be a minimum of 7 total pages.
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List of Historically Significant/Master Photographers
Use this list to choose photographer's work for Critiqué of Five Photos assignment.
Use this list to choose photographer's work for Critiqué of Five Photos assignment.
Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry, The J. Paul Getty Museum Entry,Commerce Graphic Entry
She was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of the streetlife and architecture of New York City during the 1930s.
Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984)Wikipedia Entry, Official Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
One of the most widely-known photographers, Adams was a conservationist and an artist with a camera. His photos of Yosemite, the Southwestern US and portraits are equaled only by the techniques that he pioneered.
Eddie Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 18, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, NPR Entry, Newseum (video) Entry 1,Newseum (video) Entry 2, PSB Entry, An Unlikely Weapon Documentary
He was an American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) Wikipedia Entry, Biography.com Entry, Huffington Post Article,
Her controversial portraiture looked beyond the superficial and into her subjects often troubled souls. But her magazine work show she could have a split personality.
Eve Arnold (April 21, 1912 – January 4, 2012) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry,Magnum Photos,
An American photojournalist.[2][3] She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. Many of the iconic figures who shaped the second half of the twentieth century were photographed by her.
Eugéne Atget (12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization.
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American fashion and portrait photographer. His up close, show-every-hair-follicle approach to portraiture can be jarring, but his ability to render both his and his sitters’ personalities in each image he creates is uncanny. A movie musical was based loosely on his life called “Funny Face” in 1957.
Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A photographer and artist born in Germany. He was best known for his fashion photography published in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s and 1950s. An innovative, influential fashion photographer.
Phil Borges (born 1942) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
He is a social documentary photographer and filmmaker. Photographer of all things Tibetan, including the Dalai Lama.
Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the first female war correspondent (and the first woman permitted to work in combat zones) and the first female photographer for Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover. She was a pioneer in both photojournalism and women’s work roles. Her images of World War II — especially the liberation of concentration camps —were deceptively simple. Her images would often be the perfect combination of fact and beauty.
Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1822 – January 15, 1896) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
He was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism. Controversial because he did not take all the photos credited with his name.
Bill (Hermann Wilhelm) Brandt (May 2, 1904 – December 20, 1983) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A German-British photographer and photojournalist. He moved to England, where he became known for his high-contrast images of British society, his distorted nudes and landscapes, and is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century.
Brassai (Gyula Halász) (September 9, 1899 — July 8, 1984) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars. His portraits and Paris street photos are touching and perceptive.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French photographer considered to be the father of photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. Considered the father of Photo Reportage and co-founder of the legendary Magnum photo agency, “HC-B” has influenced generations of photojournalists, documentary photographers and street photographers. Influenced and inspired by classical and impressionist art and freed by the portability of the Leica, He changed the way we look at the world around us.
Julia Margaret Cameron (11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary or heroic themes.
Paul Caponigro (born December 7, 1932) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Is an American photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Caponigro studied with Minor White and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from the NEA. He is often regarded as one of America’s foremost landscape photographers.
Robert Capa (born Friedmann Endre) (October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris.
In 1947, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris.The organization was the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers.
Chim (born Dawid Szymin) (Nov. 20, 1911 – Nov. 10, 1956), Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Chim is pronounced shim, abbreviation of the surname “Szymin”
A Polish photographer and photojournalist known for his images from the Spanish Civil War, for co-founding Magnum Photos, and for his project “Children of War” with UNICEF that captured the plight of children in the aftermath of World War II.
Imogen Cunningham (April 12, 1883 – June 24, 1976) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham’s professional career span over seven decades resulting in some of the most outstanding contributions to fine art photography. She is considered one of the most enduring figures in American photography in the 20th century. Even though her first love was portraiture, Imogen Cunningham is most known for her stunning and sensual close-ups of flowers. She was born in Portland, Oregon and worked for Edward Curtis in Seattle, Washington.
Edward Curtis (February 16, 1868 – October 19, 1952) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An ethnologist and photographer of the American West and of Native American peoples. Curtis built an illustrious career documenting Native Americans in the 1900s. The images resonate 100 years later. Had a studio in Seattle, Washington where Imogen Cunningham.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography which he sold to the French government. One of the first two people to develop photographic techniques, known as one of the fathers of photography.
Robert Doisneau (April 14, 1912 – April 1, 1994) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris. He and Henri Cartier-Bresson were pioneers of photojournalism. He is renowned for his 1950 image Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Town Hall), a photograph of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. Doisneau was appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour in 1984. A street photographer whose decisive moments are imbued with warmth, feeling and wit, Diosneau’s work reveals the fragile moments of urban existence.
Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with making strobes common and is considered the pioneer of high-speed photography. He also was deeply involved with the development of sonar and deep-sea photography, and his equipment was used by Jacques Cousteau in searches for shipwrecks and even the Loch Ness monster. Famous for photographing a bullet through an apple, a droplet of milk that looks like a crown, a punctured balloon in mid-explosion using strobes as to create high-speed photographs.
Alfred Eisenstaedt (December 6, 1898 – August 24, 1995) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A German photographer and photojournalist. He is best known for his photograph of the V-J Day celebration and for his candid photographs, frequently made using a 35mm Leica camera. Eisenstaedt was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1989 by President George Bush.
Elliott Erwitt (b. 26 July 1928) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid shots of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings— a master of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment.” A perceptive street photographer with a sharp sense of humor, a sensitivity to the human condition, and an affinity for dogs.
Frederick Henry Evans (June 26, 1853, – June 24, 1943, ) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A British photographer, primarily of architectural subjects. He is best known for his images of English and French cathedrals.Frederick Evans belonged to a group of photographers who described themselves as “Purist.” He studied light and shadow in cathedrals striving to make it look like the viewer was in the cathedral. He was looking to capture the soul of the cathedral.
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Francis Frith also spelled Frances Frith (October 31, 1822 – February 25,1898) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Classic Photographers Entry, Museum of Modern Art Entry,
An English photographer of the Middle East and many towns in the United Kingdom. He was one of the most successful commercial photographers from the 1860s onwards. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s photographs of historical and topographical sites were highly desirable.
Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider’s view of American society. Frank’s The Americans is a seminal development in the history of photography. He criss-crossed the US in the mid-50’s and produced a collection of subjective images that showed the dark side of the nation that was supposedly in the midst of a socio-economic boom.
Toni Frissell, Antoinette Frissell Bacon (March 10, 1907 - April 17, 1988) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
She started as a writer for Vogue when an editor turned her toward photography. She was known for her fashion photography, World War II photographs, portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, children, and women from all walks of life.
Anne Geddes (born 13 September 1956) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An Australian-born photographer, clothing designer and businesswoman who now lives and works in New Zealand. She is known for her stylized depictions of babies and motherhood. The ultimate children’s photographer. Her colorful, whimsical images leave you wondering how she got those infants to pose like that.
Ralph Gibson (born January 16, 1939) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition. Gibson’s high-contrast, minimalist black and white compositions have influenced a generation of photographers. By isolating the essential elements of a scene, his pictures show a style that is unique and immediately recognizable.
Philippe Halsman born Filips Halsmans (May 2, 1906 – June 25, 1979) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Became an American was a portrait photographer born in Riga in the part of the Russian Empire which later became Latvia. Celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock, Martin and Lewis, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, and Pablo Picasso. Many of those photographs appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
Lewis W. Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. By championing the cause of poor immigrants, child laborers and other downtrodden folks through his powerfully straightforward photos, Lewis Hine showed us how the “Other Half” lived. His passionate photographs enlightened the world and brought about legislation that has protected millions since his work appeared in the early 20th century.
Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakebayashi) (born 1930)
An American commercial photographer. He was born in Shanghai in 1930 to Japanese parents. A “photographer’s photographer,” Hiro has shown a very distinctive vision, and his work in fashion and still life from the mid-1960s onward has spawned many imitators and remains a lasting influence today.
George Hurrell (June 1, 1904 – May 17, 1992)
Made a significant contribution to the image of glamour presented by Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. During Hollywood’s Golden Era, publicity photos had the power to make or break stars. He perfected the “glamour” portrait, was the most sought after glamour photographer by the big names and the wanna-be’s.
Ikko Ikkō Narahara (born November 3, 1931)
A Japanese photographer. Born in Fukuoka. Narahara’s work often depicts isolated communities and extreme conditions. He makes much use of wide-angle lenses, even hemispherical-coverage (“circular”) fisheye lenses. In 1967 Narahara won the Photographer of the Year Award from the Japan Photo Critics Association.
William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942)
An American painter, Civil War veteran, geological survey photographer and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He joined the U.S. government survey and photographed the Yellowstone River and Rocky Mountains. He also was a member of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871which led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park.
Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002)
He an Armenian-Canadian portrait photographer born in in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (present Turkey). He grew up during the Armenian Genocide. Karsh had a gift for capturing the essence of his subject in the instant of his portrait. is work is in permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others.
André Kertész born Kertész Andor (July 2, 1894 – September 28, 1985)
A Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. Kertesz used the camera to transform the chaos of the street into lyrical scenes. He was considered a brilliant, influential teacher and artist. The 1984, purchase of 100 prints by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was its largest acquisition of work from a living artist
William Klein (born April 19, 1928)
An American-born French photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. He was ranked 25th on Professional Photographer’s list of 100 most influential photographers. His brief involvement with photography yielded an influential body of work that has been called confrontational and immediate. They seem to be a furious protest against the establishment. Uncompromising and bold, the images are mostly street photos that stare when others would avert their gaze. He almost dares you to look at them.
Josef Koudelka (born January 10, 1938)
A Czech photographer who witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact (USSR) as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech reforms in 1968. A protege of Carter-Bresson, the first printing of Koudelka’s book about Gypsies is a collector’s item. Koudelka’s documentary photos highlight the dignity of Eastern Europe’s Gypsies, despite their often squalid living conditions. Throughout his career, Koudelka has been praised for his ability to capture the presence of the human spirit amidst dark landscapes. Desolation, waste, departure, despair and alienation are common themes in his work. His characters sometimes seem to come out of fairytales.
David Lachapelle (born March 11, 1963)
An American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, film director, and artist. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as “hyper-real and slyly subversive” and as “kitsch pop surrealism.”A rising star on the celebrity portrait scene, Lachapelle’s photos of Drew Barrymore, Jim Carrey, k.d. lang and the Beastie Boys has earned him accolades from American Photo magazine and others. His first book is a showcase of his impressive talents.
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965)
An influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. Best known for her famous photos of the Depression, including Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, Lange was active from the 1920s to the early 1960s and was one of the most influential photographers in American history.
Edwin H. Land (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991)
An American scientist and inventor,[3] best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. Among other things, he invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and his retinex theory of color vision. His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (June 13, 1894 – September 12, 1986)
A French photographer and painter, known for his photographs of automobile races, planes and Parisian fashion female models. He started taking photographs when he was seven. He photographed his friends and family at play – running and jumping; racing home-built race cars; making kites, gliders as well as aeroplanes; and climbing the Eiffel Tower. He thought of himself primarily as a painter and was only ‘discovered’ as a photographer in 1963, at the age of 69, when an exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Throughout the course of his life Lartigue created an amazing body of photographs, filling scores of albums with his prints and written diaries.
Annie Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949)
Classic Photographers Site
She started as a staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine in 1973 She became Chief Photographer for the magazine working there until 1983. One of today’s most influential and admired artists, renowned for her vivid and distinctive style, Annie Leibovitz is an American original and a master of self-promotion. Her portraits of Bruce Springsteen, Jody Foster, Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Greg Louganis, Mikhail Baryshnikov, John Lennon, Lady Gaga, Queen Elizabeth and more combine a keen eye with a quick wit. On December 8, 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone. It was the last photograph of Lennon. He was killed five hours later. She also took Miley Cyrus’ Vanity Fair photo in which the child star appeared semi-nude, leading to a controversy.
Sally Mann (born May 1, 1951)
An American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.
Man Ray born Emmanuel Radnitzky (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976)
An American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself.
Mary Ellen Mark (born March 20, 1940)
An American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. Mark has published 17 books of photographs; contributed to publications including Life, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair; and her photographs have been exhibited worldwide.
Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989)
An American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, and still-life images of flowers. His sometimes graphic homo-erotic photos challenged the established morality of the times, but his flower photos were considerably less controversial works that showed a subtle genius unencumbered by the baggage of his more infamous work. His Flowers collection, photos taken as he was dying of AIDS, is a symbolic look at life, death and sensuality.
Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938)
A street photographer, and portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art.
He is considered a master of the color image. His exquisitely printed collections include his lyrical landscapes and detailed portraiture that share an autobiographical feel, and a strong sense of place.
Richard Misrach (born 1949)
An American photographer helped to introduction of color to ‘fine’ art photography in the 1970s with the use of large-format traditional cameras. Misrach’s technically perfect images portray American landscapes that have seen the heavy hand of developers, the military and polluters. The serene, understated approach Misrach often employs lies in stark contrast to the ecological damage his work depicts.
Eadweard Muybridge Edward James Muggeridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8,1904) )
An English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He started his career photographing the West.
Nadar Gaspard Félix Tournachon (April 6, 1820 – 23 March 1910)
A French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, and balloonist. Examples of Nadar’s photographic portraits are held by many of the great national collections of photographs.
Arnold Newman (March 3, 1918 - June 6, 2006)
An American photographer, noted for his “environmental portraits” of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. Although he photographed many personalities—Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Mantle, and Audrey Hepburn—he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.
Helmut Newton born Helmut Neustädter (October 31, 1920 – January 23,2004)
He was a German-Australian photographer. He was a “prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.” From big nudes to portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Salvador Dali, Newton has been on the cutting edge of fashion and glamour.
Nicholas Nixon (born 1947)
An American photographer, known for his work in portraiture and documentary photography, and for championing the use of the 8x10 inch view camera. His early work showed a remarkable mastery of large format photography in situations where one would expect to see 35mm cameras; his portrait work includes a series on four sisters taken over a 15-year period and images of people with AIDS.
Pedro Meyer (born October 6, 1935)
He was born in Madrid, Spain and is now based in Mexico.He is one of the pioneers of the digital revolution in contemporary photography. He was the founder and president of the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography) and organizer of the first three Latin American Photography Colloquiums.
David Muench (born June 25, 1936)
An American landscape and nature photographer known for portraying the American western landscape.His images of American national parks and the southwest celebrate the country’s primal beauty through magical patterns of light and form.
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (c. 1840 – January 14, 1882)
He was a photographer widely known for his work related to the American Civil War and the Western United States. He was employed by Mathew Brady at the beginning of his career.
Gordon Parks Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006)
An American photographer, musician, writer and film director. He is best remembered for his photographic essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film, Shaft.
Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)
An American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake, and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally, and continues to inform the art of photography. Best known for his fashion photography,[8] Penn’s repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; Modernist still lifes of food, bones, bottles, metal, and found objects; and photographic travel essays
Eliot Porter Eliot Furness Porter (December 6, 1901 – November 2, 1990)
He was an American photographer best known for his color photographs of nature. Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places.
Herb Ritts (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002)
An American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture. From Madonna to Jack Nicholson to William Burroughs, Herb Ritts has photographed the most famous — and notorious — faces of our time. His Notorious collection showcases his best celebrity shots, while Africa offers a bold departure: photos of the people and landscape of the African continent that will be a revelation to his fans.
Alexander Rodchenko (December 5, [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956)
A Russian photographer whose strong graphic work was rarely seen outside the Soviet Union until after the Iron Curtain was torn down. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition.
Joseph John Rosenthal (October 9, 1911 – August 20, 2006)
An American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima. His picture became one of the best-known photographs of the war.
Galen Avery Rowell (August 23, 1940 – August 11, 2002)
He was a wilderness photographer and climber. Master nature photographer and teacher Galen Rowell’s work presents the splendor of the world’s natural beauty. As a columnist for Outdoor Photographer, Rowell has produced a prolific output of writing and images that will help a new generation of photographers to create the kind of interperative, adventure-filled images that Rowell is famous for.
Sebastiao Salgado (born February 8, 1944)
He is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. A photojournalist in the best sense of the word, he is fascinated with people who work hard in all parts of the world. From landless workers trying to claim property for themselves in Brazil to Oil workers putting out fires in Kuwait, Salgado’s lens captures the beauty in his subjects’ gritty reality.
John Sexton (born 1953)
John Sexton is an American fine art photographer who specializes in black and white photographs. A consummate craftsman and teacher, John Sexton offers tactile fine black and white nature imagery that utilizes the Zone System and large format for crisp, beautiful work. Sexton focuses the Desert Southwest US, using creative printing techniques to create uniquely expressive results. Sexton runs numerous workshops to share his knowledge with up-and-coming photographers. He worked for Ansel Adams.
Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954)
An American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. In 1995, she was the A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Sherman uses photography as a tool to manipulate images of women that have been spawned by popular culture, with herself as the leading character in most of the images she creates. Her photographs include some of the most expensive photographs ever sold.
W. Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978)
An American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs. A premier master of photojournalism, Smith passionately believed in the integrity of his subjects and the photographs that portrayed them. From his staged “Walk to Paradise Garden” to his graphic images of World War II and damning photos of the human tragedy brought on by industrial pollution at Minamata, Smith produced some of the most memorable images of his day. He worked for Life magazine.
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973)
An American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. As the curator of the photo collection for the New York Museum of Modern Art, Steichen was the man behind The Family Of Man, a late 1950’s photo exhibition and recently-republished book that was a watershed in the history of photography because it gave photography mass appeal as an expressive, fine art. His curatorship brought about a grand era for “Concerned” photography.
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946)
An American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz is known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century One of the great art-world arbiters of the 20th century, Stieglitz gained recognition for photography as a fine art and introduced the European avant-garde to America. A leader in the controversial Pictorialist movement, he offered a mix of literal and interperative images. He moved in a brilliant circle of artists and intellectuals and was the husband of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976)
An American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa. A white picket fence. A poor Adirondac family. Paul Strand’s pure vision and uncompromising technique gained him international accolades as a master of American photography, especially in the 1950s. His black and white photos are exquisite and memorable.
William Fox Talbot (February 11, 1800 – September, 17 1877)
He was a British inventor and photography pioneer who invented the calotype process, a precursor to photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Talbot was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium. One of the first two people to develop photographic techniques, known as one of the fathers of photography. He was the first to create negative and positive photographic images and the first to create a book of photographs.
Jerry Uelsmann (born June 11, 1934)
An American photographer, and was the forerunner of photomontage in the 20th century in America.
His enigmatic, surrealist collection darkroom combinations defy categorization. It is their mystery that has stumped critics and kept his fans coming back for more.
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968
A photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee worked in Manhattan, New York City’s Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and ‘40s, and he developed his signature style by following the city’s emergency services and documenting their activity. A crime news photographer in the 30s and 40s in New York, Weegee is possibly the most well known street photographer. Crude and direct, his photos have an immediacy and impact that affect the viewer to this day. His later work, distorted portraits that he called “photo caricatures,” have a similar in-your-face quality.
William Wegman (born December 2, 1943)
An artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses. Man Ray, then Fay Ray and her pups have posed for Wegman in a variety of often humorous and very human-like settings. His photographs are a tribute to the ultimate partnership between a man and his dogs.
Edward Weston March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958)
He was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…”and “one of the masters of 20th century photography.”] Over the course of his 40 year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes (his peppers are most famous), nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a “quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography”because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. Weston’s immaculately constructed images imbue forms of common objects with a sensuality that transcends the subject. Sharp, detailed and rich in tonality, his closeups, nudes and nature photographs brought the power of photography as an objective tool of observation to new heights.
Clarence Hudson White (April 8, 1871 – July 7, 1925)
An American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. Completely self-taught, within a few years he was internationally known for his pictorial photographs that captured the spirit and sentimentality of America in the early twentieth century.
Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976)
An American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1938, White moved to Portland, Oregon. There he began his career in photography, first joining the Oregon Camera Club, then taking on assignments from the Works Progress Administration and exhibiting at the Portland Art Museum. A teacher as well as a photographer, Minor White crafted works of beauty that were also explorations of his inner self. His best known work was made of the natural wonders in the American West. He experimented with alternative processes, non-narrative sequences and techniques that would stretch the bounds of photography..
Garry Winogrand (January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984)
A street photographer known for his portrayal of the United States in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation. Winogrand was known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. Many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes.
Art Wolfe (born 1951)
An American photographer and conservationist, best known for color images of wildlife, landscapes and native cultures.His photographs document scenes from every continent and hundreds of locations, and have been noted by environmental advocacy groups for their “stunning” visual impact.
An American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Quintessential American photography from the first half of the 20th century. Evans influenced a generation with his forceful images of a lonely country.
Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger (December 27, 1906 – February 18, 1999) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer and a writer on photographic technique. He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures of natural objects.
Rodger Fenton (March 28, 1819 – August 8, 1869) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art
Crimean War Photographs March- Just 1855
A pioneering British photographer, one of the first war photographers. He photographed the Crimean War.
She was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of the streetlife and architecture of New York City during the 1930s.
Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984)Wikipedia Entry, Official Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
One of the most widely-known photographers, Adams was a conservationist and an artist with a camera. His photos of Yosemite, the Southwestern US and portraits are equaled only by the techniques that he pioneered.
Eddie Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 18, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, NPR Entry, Newseum (video) Entry 1,Newseum (video) Entry 2, PSB Entry, An Unlikely Weapon Documentary
He was an American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) Wikipedia Entry, Biography.com Entry, Huffington Post Article,
Her controversial portraiture looked beyond the superficial and into her subjects often troubled souls. But her magazine work show she could have a split personality.
Eve Arnold (April 21, 1912 – January 4, 2012) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry,Magnum Photos,
An American photojournalist.[2][3] She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. Many of the iconic figures who shaped the second half of the twentieth century were photographed by her.
Eugéne Atget (12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization.
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American fashion and portrait photographer. His up close, show-every-hair-follicle approach to portraiture can be jarring, but his ability to render both his and his sitters’ personalities in each image he creates is uncanny. A movie musical was based loosely on his life called “Funny Face” in 1957.
Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A photographer and artist born in Germany. He was best known for his fashion photography published in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s and 1950s. An innovative, influential fashion photographer.
Phil Borges (born 1942) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
He is a social documentary photographer and filmmaker. Photographer of all things Tibetan, including the Dalai Lama.
Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the first female war correspondent (and the first woman permitted to work in combat zones) and the first female photographer for Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover. She was a pioneer in both photojournalism and women’s work roles. Her images of World War II — especially the liberation of concentration camps —were deceptively simple. Her images would often be the perfect combination of fact and beauty.
Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1822 – January 15, 1896) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
He was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism. Controversial because he did not take all the photos credited with his name.
Bill (Hermann Wilhelm) Brandt (May 2, 1904 – December 20, 1983) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A German-British photographer and photojournalist. He moved to England, where he became known for his high-contrast images of British society, his distorted nudes and landscapes, and is widely considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century.
Brassai (Gyula Halász) (September 9, 1899 — July 8, 1984) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the World Wars. His portraits and Paris street photos are touching and perceptive.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French photographer considered to be the father of photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. Considered the father of Photo Reportage and co-founder of the legendary Magnum photo agency, “HC-B” has influenced generations of photojournalists, documentary photographers and street photographers. Influenced and inspired by classical and impressionist art and freed by the portability of the Leica, He changed the way we look at the world around us.
Julia Margaret Cameron (11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary or heroic themes.
Paul Caponigro (born December 7, 1932) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Is an American photographer from Boston, Massachusetts. Caponigro studied with Minor White and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from the NEA. He is often regarded as one of America’s foremost landscape photographers.
Robert Capa (born Friedmann Endre) (October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris.
In 1947, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris.The organization was the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers.
Chim (born Dawid Szymin) (Nov. 20, 1911 – Nov. 10, 1956), Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Chim is pronounced shim, abbreviation of the surname “Szymin”
A Polish photographer and photojournalist known for his images from the Spanish Civil War, for co-founding Magnum Photos, and for his project “Children of War” with UNICEF that captured the plight of children in the aftermath of World War II.
Imogen Cunningham (April 12, 1883 – June 24, 1976) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer known for her botanical photography, nudes, and industrial landscapes. Cunningham’s professional career span over seven decades resulting in some of the most outstanding contributions to fine art photography. She is considered one of the most enduring figures in American photography in the 20th century. Even though her first love was portraiture, Imogen Cunningham is most known for her stunning and sensual close-ups of flowers. She was born in Portland, Oregon and worked for Edward Curtis in Seattle, Washington.
Edward Curtis (February 16, 1868 – October 19, 1952) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An ethnologist and photographer of the American West and of Native American peoples. Curtis built an illustrious career documenting Native Americans in the 1900s. The images resonate 100 years later. Had a studio in Seattle, Washington where Imogen Cunningham.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography which he sold to the French government. One of the first two people to develop photographic techniques, known as one of the fathers of photography.
Robert Doisneau (April 14, 1912 – April 1, 1994) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris. He and Henri Cartier-Bresson were pioneers of photojournalism. He is renowned for his 1950 image Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Town Hall), a photograph of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. Doisneau was appointed a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour in 1984. A street photographer whose decisive moments are imbued with warmth, feeling and wit, Diosneau’s work reveals the fragile moments of urban existence.
Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with making strobes common and is considered the pioneer of high-speed photography. He also was deeply involved with the development of sonar and deep-sea photography, and his equipment was used by Jacques Cousteau in searches for shipwrecks and even the Loch Ness monster. Famous for photographing a bullet through an apple, a droplet of milk that looks like a crown, a punctured balloon in mid-explosion using strobes as to create high-speed photographs.
Alfred Eisenstaedt (December 6, 1898 – August 24, 1995) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A German photographer and photojournalist. He is best known for his photograph of the V-J Day celebration and for his candid photographs, frequently made using a 35mm Leica camera. Eisenstaedt was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1989 by President George Bush.
Elliott Erwitt (b. 26 July 1928) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A French advertising and documentary photographer known for his black and white candid shots of ironic and absurd situations within everyday settings— a master of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment.” A perceptive street photographer with a sharp sense of humor, a sensitivity to the human condition, and an affinity for dogs.
Frederick Henry Evans (June 26, 1853, – June 24, 1943, ) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
A British photographer, primarily of architectural subjects. He is best known for his images of English and French cathedrals.Frederick Evans belonged to a group of photographers who described themselves as “Purist.” He studied light and shadow in cathedrals striving to make it look like the viewer was in the cathedral. He was looking to capture the soul of the cathedral.
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Francis Frith also spelled Frances Frith (October 31, 1822 – February 25,1898) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Classic Photographers Entry, Museum of Modern Art Entry,
An English photographer of the Middle East and many towns in the United Kingdom. He was one of the most successful commercial photographers from the 1860s onwards. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s photographs of historical and topographical sites were highly desirable.
Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider’s view of American society. Frank’s The Americans is a seminal development in the history of photography. He criss-crossed the US in the mid-50’s and produced a collection of subjective images that showed the dark side of the nation that was supposedly in the midst of a socio-economic boom.
Toni Frissell, Antoinette Frissell Bacon (March 10, 1907 - April 17, 1988) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
She started as a writer for Vogue when an editor turned her toward photography. She was known for her fashion photography, World War II photographs, portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, children, and women from all walks of life.
Anne Geddes (born 13 September 1956) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An Australian-born photographer, clothing designer and businesswoman who now lives and works in New Zealand. She is known for her stylized depictions of babies and motherhood. The ultimate children’s photographer. Her colorful, whimsical images leave you wondering how she got those infants to pose like that.
Ralph Gibson (born January 16, 1939) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American art photographer best known for his photographic books. His images often incorporate fragments with erotic and mysterious undertones, building narrative meaning through contextualization and surreal juxtaposition. Gibson’s high-contrast, minimalist black and white compositions have influenced a generation of photographers. By isolating the essential elements of a scene, his pictures show a style that is unique and immediately recognizable.
Philippe Halsman born Filips Halsmans (May 2, 1906 – June 25, 1979) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
Became an American was a portrait photographer born in Riga in the part of the Russian Empire which later became Latvia. Celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock, Martin and Lewis, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, and Pablo Picasso. Many of those photographs appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
Lewis W. Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States. By championing the cause of poor immigrants, child laborers and other downtrodden folks through his powerfully straightforward photos, Lewis Hine showed us how the “Other Half” lived. His passionate photographs enlightened the world and brought about legislation that has protected millions since his work appeared in the early 20th century.
Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakebayashi) (born 1930)
An American commercial photographer. He was born in Shanghai in 1930 to Japanese parents. A “photographer’s photographer,” Hiro has shown a very distinctive vision, and his work in fashion and still life from the mid-1960s onward has spawned many imitators and remains a lasting influence today.
George Hurrell (June 1, 1904 – May 17, 1992)
Made a significant contribution to the image of glamour presented by Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. During Hollywood’s Golden Era, publicity photos had the power to make or break stars. He perfected the “glamour” portrait, was the most sought after glamour photographer by the big names and the wanna-be’s.
Ikko Ikkō Narahara (born November 3, 1931)
A Japanese photographer. Born in Fukuoka. Narahara’s work often depicts isolated communities and extreme conditions. He makes much use of wide-angle lenses, even hemispherical-coverage (“circular”) fisheye lenses. In 1967 Narahara won the Photographer of the Year Award from the Japan Photo Critics Association.
William Henry Jackson (April 4, 1843 – June 30, 1942)
An American painter, Civil War veteran, geological survey photographer and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He joined the U.S. government survey and photographed the Yellowstone River and Rocky Mountains. He also was a member of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871which led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park.
Yousuf Karsh (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002)
He an Armenian-Canadian portrait photographer born in in Mardin, a city in the eastern Ottoman Empire (present Turkey). He grew up during the Armenian Genocide. Karsh had a gift for capturing the essence of his subject in the instant of his portrait. is work is in permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and many others.
André Kertész born Kertész Andor (July 2, 1894 – September 28, 1985)
A Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. Kertesz used the camera to transform the chaos of the street into lyrical scenes. He was considered a brilliant, influential teacher and artist. The 1984, purchase of 100 prints by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was its largest acquisition of work from a living artist
William Klein (born April 19, 1928)
An American-born French photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. He was ranked 25th on Professional Photographer’s list of 100 most influential photographers. His brief involvement with photography yielded an influential body of work that has been called confrontational and immediate. They seem to be a furious protest against the establishment. Uncompromising and bold, the images are mostly street photos that stare when others would avert their gaze. He almost dares you to look at them.
Josef Koudelka (born January 10, 1938)
A Czech photographer who witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact (USSR) as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech reforms in 1968. A protege of Carter-Bresson, the first printing of Koudelka’s book about Gypsies is a collector’s item. Koudelka’s documentary photos highlight the dignity of Eastern Europe’s Gypsies, despite their often squalid living conditions. Throughout his career, Koudelka has been praised for his ability to capture the presence of the human spirit amidst dark landscapes. Desolation, waste, departure, despair and alienation are common themes in his work. His characters sometimes seem to come out of fairytales.
David Lachapelle (born March 11, 1963)
An American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, film director, and artist. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as “hyper-real and slyly subversive” and as “kitsch pop surrealism.”A rising star on the celebrity portrait scene, Lachapelle’s photos of Drew Barrymore, Jim Carrey, k.d. lang and the Beastie Boys has earned him accolades from American Photo magazine and others. His first book is a showcase of his impressive talents.
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965)
An influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. Best known for her famous photos of the Depression, including Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, Lange was active from the 1920s to the early 1960s and was one of the most influential photographers in American history.
Edwin H. Land (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991)
An American scientist and inventor,[3] best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. Among other things, he invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and his retinex theory of color vision. His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue (June 13, 1894 – September 12, 1986)
A French photographer and painter, known for his photographs of automobile races, planes and Parisian fashion female models. He started taking photographs when he was seven. He photographed his friends and family at play – running and jumping; racing home-built race cars; making kites, gliders as well as aeroplanes; and climbing the Eiffel Tower. He thought of himself primarily as a painter and was only ‘discovered’ as a photographer in 1963, at the age of 69, when an exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Throughout the course of his life Lartigue created an amazing body of photographs, filling scores of albums with his prints and written diaries.
Annie Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949)
Classic Photographers Site
She started as a staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine in 1973 She became Chief Photographer for the magazine working there until 1983. One of today’s most influential and admired artists, renowned for her vivid and distinctive style, Annie Leibovitz is an American original and a master of self-promotion. Her portraits of Bruce Springsteen, Jody Foster, Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, Greg Louganis, Mikhail Baryshnikov, John Lennon, Lady Gaga, Queen Elizabeth and more combine a keen eye with a quick wit. On December 8, 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone. It was the last photograph of Lennon. He was killed five hours later. She also took Miley Cyrus’ Vanity Fair photo in which the child star appeared semi-nude, leading to a controversy.
Sally Mann (born May 1, 1951)
An American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.
Man Ray born Emmanuel Radnitzky (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976)
An American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself.
Mary Ellen Mark (born March 20, 1940)
An American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. Mark has published 17 books of photographs; contributed to publications including Life, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair; and her photographs have been exhibited worldwide.
Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989)
An American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, and still-life images of flowers. His sometimes graphic homo-erotic photos challenged the established morality of the times, but his flower photos were considerably less controversial works that showed a subtle genius unencumbered by the baggage of his more infamous work. His Flowers collection, photos taken as he was dying of AIDS, is a symbolic look at life, death and sensuality.
Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938)
A street photographer, and portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art.
He is considered a master of the color image. His exquisitely printed collections include his lyrical landscapes and detailed portraiture that share an autobiographical feel, and a strong sense of place.
Richard Misrach (born 1949)
An American photographer helped to introduction of color to ‘fine’ art photography in the 1970s with the use of large-format traditional cameras. Misrach’s technically perfect images portray American landscapes that have seen the heavy hand of developers, the military and polluters. The serene, understated approach Misrach often employs lies in stark contrast to the ecological damage his work depicts.
Eadweard Muybridge Edward James Muggeridge (April 9, 1830 – May 8,1904) )
An English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He started his career photographing the West.
Nadar Gaspard Félix Tournachon (April 6, 1820 – 23 March 1910)
A French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, and balloonist. Examples of Nadar’s photographic portraits are held by many of the great national collections of photographs.
Arnold Newman (March 3, 1918 - June 6, 2006)
An American photographer, noted for his “environmental portraits” of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. Although he photographed many personalities—Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Mantle, and Audrey Hepburn—he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.
Helmut Newton born Helmut Neustädter (October 31, 1920 – January 23,2004)
He was a German-Australian photographer. He was a “prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.” From big nudes to portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Salvador Dali, Newton has been on the cutting edge of fashion and glamour.
Nicholas Nixon (born 1947)
An American photographer, known for his work in portraiture and documentary photography, and for championing the use of the 8x10 inch view camera. His early work showed a remarkable mastery of large format photography in situations where one would expect to see 35mm cameras; his portrait work includes a series on four sisters taken over a 15-year period and images of people with AIDS.
Pedro Meyer (born October 6, 1935)
He was born in Madrid, Spain and is now based in Mexico.He is one of the pioneers of the digital revolution in contemporary photography. He was the founder and president of the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography) and organizer of the first three Latin American Photography Colloquiums.
David Muench (born June 25, 1936)
An American landscape and nature photographer known for portraying the American western landscape.His images of American national parks and the southwest celebrate the country’s primal beauty through magical patterns of light and form.
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (c. 1840 – January 14, 1882)
He was a photographer widely known for his work related to the American Civil War and the Western United States. He was employed by Mathew Brady at the beginning of his career.
Gordon Parks Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006)
An American photographer, musician, writer and film director. He is best remembered for his photographic essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film, Shaft.
Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)
An American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake, and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally, and continues to inform the art of photography. Best known for his fashion photography,[8] Penn’s repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; Modernist still lifes of food, bones, bottles, metal, and found objects; and photographic travel essays
Eliot Porter Eliot Furness Porter (December 6, 1901 – November 2, 1990)
He was an American photographer best known for his color photographs of nature. Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places.
Herb Ritts (August 13, 1952 – December 26, 2002)
An American fashion photographer who concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture. From Madonna to Jack Nicholson to William Burroughs, Herb Ritts has photographed the most famous — and notorious — faces of our time. His Notorious collection showcases his best celebrity shots, while Africa offers a bold departure: photos of the people and landscape of the African continent that will be a revelation to his fans.
Alexander Rodchenko (December 5, [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956)
A Russian photographer whose strong graphic work was rarely seen outside the Soviet Union until after the Iron Curtain was torn down. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition.
Joseph John Rosenthal (October 9, 1911 – August 20, 2006)
An American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima. His picture became one of the best-known photographs of the war.
Galen Avery Rowell (August 23, 1940 – August 11, 2002)
He was a wilderness photographer and climber. Master nature photographer and teacher Galen Rowell’s work presents the splendor of the world’s natural beauty. As a columnist for Outdoor Photographer, Rowell has produced a prolific output of writing and images that will help a new generation of photographers to create the kind of interperative, adventure-filled images that Rowell is famous for.
Sebastiao Salgado (born February 8, 1944)
He is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. A photojournalist in the best sense of the word, he is fascinated with people who work hard in all parts of the world. From landless workers trying to claim property for themselves in Brazil to Oil workers putting out fires in Kuwait, Salgado’s lens captures the beauty in his subjects’ gritty reality.
John Sexton (born 1953)
John Sexton is an American fine art photographer who specializes in black and white photographs. A consummate craftsman and teacher, John Sexton offers tactile fine black and white nature imagery that utilizes the Zone System and large format for crisp, beautiful work. Sexton focuses the Desert Southwest US, using creative printing techniques to create uniquely expressive results. Sexton runs numerous workshops to share his knowledge with up-and-coming photographers. He worked for Ansel Adams.
Cindy Sherman (born January 19, 1954)
An American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. In 1995, she was the A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Sherman uses photography as a tool to manipulate images of women that have been spawned by popular culture, with herself as the leading character in most of the images she creates. Her photographs include some of the most expensive photographs ever sold.
W. Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978)
An American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs. A premier master of photojournalism, Smith passionately believed in the integrity of his subjects and the photographs that portrayed them. From his staged “Walk to Paradise Garden” to his graphic images of World War II and damning photos of the human tragedy brought on by industrial pollution at Minamata, Smith produced some of the most memorable images of his day. He worked for Life magazine.
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973)
An American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. As the curator of the photo collection for the New York Museum of Modern Art, Steichen was the man behind The Family Of Man, a late 1950’s photo exhibition and recently-republished book that was a watershed in the history of photography because it gave photography mass appeal as an expressive, fine art. His curatorship brought about a grand era for “Concerned” photography.
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946)
An American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz is known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century One of the great art-world arbiters of the 20th century, Stieglitz gained recognition for photography as a fine art and introduced the European avant-garde to America. A leader in the controversial Pictorialist movement, he offered a mix of literal and interperative images. He moved in a brilliant circle of artists and intellectuals and was the husband of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976)
An American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa. A white picket fence. A poor Adirondac family. Paul Strand’s pure vision and uncompromising technique gained him international accolades as a master of American photography, especially in the 1950s. His black and white photos are exquisite and memorable.
William Fox Talbot (February 11, 1800 – September, 17 1877)
He was a British inventor and photography pioneer who invented the calotype process, a precursor to photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Talbot was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium. One of the first two people to develop photographic techniques, known as one of the fathers of photography. He was the first to create negative and positive photographic images and the first to create a book of photographs.
Jerry Uelsmann (born June 11, 1934)
An American photographer, and was the forerunner of photomontage in the 20th century in America.
His enigmatic, surrealist collection darkroom combinations defy categorization. It is their mystery that has stumped critics and kept his fans coming back for more.
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968
A photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee worked in Manhattan, New York City’s Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and ‘40s, and he developed his signature style by following the city’s emergency services and documenting their activity. A crime news photographer in the 30s and 40s in New York, Weegee is possibly the most well known street photographer. Crude and direct, his photos have an immediacy and impact that affect the viewer to this day. His later work, distorted portraits that he called “photo caricatures,” have a similar in-your-face quality.
William Wegman (born December 2, 1943)
An artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses. Man Ray, then Fay Ray and her pups have posed for Wegman in a variety of often humorous and very human-like settings. His photographs are a tribute to the ultimate partnership between a man and his dogs.
Edward Weston March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958)
He was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…”and “one of the masters of 20th century photography.”] Over the course of his 40 year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes (his peppers are most famous), nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a “quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography”because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. Weston’s immaculately constructed images imbue forms of common objects with a sensuality that transcends the subject. Sharp, detailed and rich in tonality, his closeups, nudes and nature photographs brought the power of photography as an objective tool of observation to new heights.
Clarence Hudson White (April 8, 1871 – July 7, 1925)
An American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. Completely self-taught, within a few years he was internationally known for his pictorial photographs that captured the spirit and sentimentality of America in the early twentieth century.
Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976)
An American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1938, White moved to Portland, Oregon. There he began his career in photography, first joining the Oregon Camera Club, then taking on assignments from the Works Progress Administration and exhibiting at the Portland Art Museum. A teacher as well as a photographer, Minor White crafted works of beauty that were also explorations of his inner self. His best known work was made of the natural wonders in the American West. He experimented with alternative processes, non-narrative sequences and techniques that would stretch the bounds of photography..
Garry Winogrand (January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984)
A street photographer known for his portrayal of the United States in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation. Winogrand was known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. Many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes.
Art Wolfe (born 1951)
An American photographer and conservationist, best known for color images of wildlife, landscapes and native cultures.His photographs document scenes from every continent and hundreds of locations, and have been noted by environmental advocacy groups for their “stunning” visual impact.
An American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Quintessential American photography from the first half of the 20th century. Evans influenced a generation with his forceful images of a lonely country.
Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger (December 27, 1906 – February 18, 1999) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry
An American photographer and a writer on photographic technique. He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures of natural objects.
Rodger Fenton (March 28, 1819 – August 8, 1869) Wikipedia Entry, Website, Masters Of Photography Entry, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art
Crimean War Photographs March- Just 1855
A pioneering British photographer, one of the first war photographers. He photographed the Crimean War.