Elementary Photography

Photographer Report

The next assignment is for a short ten minute presentation. Go through the photographers listed below, look at some of their work and pick out five that you are interested in reporting on. You can email me the list or bring it to class and we’ll pick which photographer you will report on from your list. In case of a tie, the person who let me know their five names first will take precedence.

The following is a list of some of the great and important photographers in the history of the medium.

There are some others I mention in the blog post “Modern Masters.” If you’d like to pick some photographers from there, feel free. If you find someone else you like, please let me know and I’ll consider it.

1. Berenice Abbott – An American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.
2. Ansel Adams – 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 equalled only by the techniques that he pioneered.
3. Eugène Atget – French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris.
4. Diane Arbus – 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. An American photographer noted for black-and-white square photographs of “deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal.”
5. Richard Avedon – 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.
6. Bill Brandt – An influential British photographer and photojournalist known for his high-contrast images of British society and his distorted nudes and landscapes.
7. Margaret Bourke-White – One of the original Life magazine staff photographers, Bourke-White was a pioneer in both photojournalism and womens’ 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.
8. Brassai – His portraits and Paris street photos are touching and perceptive.
9. Imogen Cunningham – Cunningham’s carreer spanned the first three quarters of the 20th century photographed many of her subjects draped in exotic clothes in images with moral themes and tableaux representing works of poets. Later nudes were shocking for their time, but rather tame now.
10. Edward Curtis – Curtis built an illustrius carreer documenting Native Americans in the 1900s. The images resonate 100 years later.
11. Robert Doisneau – A street photographer whose decisive moments are imbued with warmth, feeling and wit, Diosneau’s work reveals the fragile moments of urban existance.
12. Harold Edgerton – A bullet through an apple. A droplet of milk that looks like a crown. A punctured balloon in mid-explosion. These are just a few of the famous images by “Doc” Edgerton, the pioneer of high-speed photography.
13. Elliott Erwitt – A perceptive street photographer with a sharp sense of humor, a sensitivity to the human condition, and an affinity for dogs. It is almost impossible to be depressed after looking at his work!
14. Walker Evans – Quintisential American photography from the first half of the 20th century. Evans influenced a generation with his forceful images of a lonely country.
15. Lee Friedlander – An American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban “social landscape,” with many of the photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs.
16. Anne Geddes – The ultimate children’s photographer. Her colorful, whimsical images leave you wondering how she got those infants to pose like that.
17. Ralph Gibson – 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.
18. Nan Goldin – Known for documenting her surrogate family of friends as they engage in intimate, uninhibited, or illicit activities. These unusually lit images are frank confrontations with personal experience, frequently presented in poses that mimic the styles of the fashion world.
19. Lewis Hine – 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.
20. George Hurrell – During Hollywood’s Golden Era, publicity photos had the power to make or break stars. George Hurrell, who perfected the “glamour” portrait, was the most sought after glamour photographer by the big names and the wanna-be’s.
21. Andre Kertesz – Kertesz used the camera to transform the chaos of the street into lyrical scenes. A brilliant, influential teacher and artist.
22. William Klein – 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.
23. Josef Koudelka – A protege of Henri 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.
24. Danny Lyon – Self-taught in photography, Danny Lyon studied history at the University of Chicago. As a photographer and filmmaker, Lyon has shown insight into the worlds of those who live outside the mainstream of society. In 1967, for instance he was given unrestricted permission to photograph the lives of convicts in Texas prisons, resulting in the portfolio “Conversations with the Dead” (1971).
25. Dorothea Lange – 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 tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.
26. Jacques Henri Lartigue – Born in France in 1894. He took his first photographs at the age of six, using his father’s camera, and started keeping what would become a lifelong diary. In 1904 he began making photographs and drawings of family games and childhood experiences, also capturing the beginnings of aviation and cars and the smart women of the Bois de Boulogne as well as society and sporting events.
27. Annie Leibovitz – 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 and more combine a keen eye with a quick wit.
28. Helen Levitt- Was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for “street photography” around New York City, and has been called “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.”
29. Robert Mapplethorpe – 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 genious 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.
30. Mary Ellen Mark – American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. She has had 16 collections of her work published and has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. She has received numerous accolades, including three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
31. Joel Meyerowitz – Joel Meyerowitz is 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.
32. Duane Michals – An American photographer. Michals is largely self-taught; his work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.
33. James Nachtwey – An American photojournalist and war photographer. He has been awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal five times.
34. Arnold Newman – Was an American photographer, noted for his “environmental portraits” of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images.
35. Nicholas Nixon – 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.
36. Pedro Meyer – This landscape photographer’s images of American national parks and the southwest celebrate the country’s primal beauty through magical patterns of light and form.
37. Helmut Newton – From big nudes to portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Salvador Dali, Newton has been on the cutting edge of fashion and glamour.
38. Gordon Parks – A groundbreaking American photographer, he was the first African American to work at Life magazine and a musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.
39. Irving Penn – An American photographer known for his portraiture and fashion photography.
40. Eugene Richards – Richards’ published photographs are mostly intended as a means of raising social awareness, have been characterized as “highly personal” and are both exhibited and published in a series of books.
41. Herb Ritts – From Madonna to Jack Nicholson to William Burroughs, Herb Ritts has photographed the most famours–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 revalation to his fans.
42. Galen Rowell – 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.
43. Sebastiao Salgado – A photojournalist in the best sense of the word, Sebasiao Salgado 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.
44. John Sexton – A consumate 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.
45. Cindy Sherman – 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.
46. W. Eugene Smith – 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.
47. Edward Steichen – 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.
48. Alfred Stieglitz – 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.
49. Paul Strand – 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.
50. Pete Turner – An American photographer. He is perhaps best known as one of the first masters of color photography. PDN voted him as one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time and in 1981 the A.S.M.P. awarded him the prestigious Outstanding Achievement in Photography honor.
51. Jerry Uelsmann – Before there was Photoshop, there was Uelsmann. His enigmatic, surrealist collection darkroom combinations defy categorization. It is their mystery that has stumped critics and kept his fans coming back for more.
52. Albert Watson – Scottish photographer well known for his fashion, celebrity and art photography, and whose work is featured in galleries and museums worldwide. He has shot over 200 covers of Vogue around the world and 40 covers of Rolling Stone magazine since the mid-1970s. Photo District News named Watson one of the 20 most influential photographers of all time, along with Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, among others
53. Weegee – 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 charicatures”, have a similar in-your-face quality..
54. Edward Weston – 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. You’ll never look at a pepper quite the same way again.
55. Minor White – 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.
56. Garry Winogrand – 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.
57. Joel-Peter Witkin – Few living photographers are as consistently controversial and provocative as Joel-Peter Witkin, whose work elicits hostility and admiration in equal measure. Shocking and compelling, the photographs in this retrospective collection reach to the outer limits of human nature. Voted least likely to be invited to photograph childrens’ birthday parties by Modern Photography in 1989.
58. Jay Maisel – We saw from the link on the website a little bit about Jay. Jay’s eye is similar to what you might see from Pete Turner. An absolute genius.
59. Greg Heisler – Heisler’s work can be found in SI, Time Mag as well as advertising. He is a lighting God in my book. I think a lot of what I learned about lighting was inspired by Heisler.

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