Artist Profiles
#15 Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus is known for her images of the more abnormal members of society that included dwarfs, circus members, transgenders, and nudists. Arbus began her photography career shooting commercial images with her husband. They had work in Vogue, Seventeen, and Harper's Bizarre despite both of them despising the fashion industry. Unhappy with her career she quit her job and started shooting images independently. Her first major body of work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.
#14 W. Eugene Smith
W. Eugene Smith started out as a photographer at the early age of 14 and was eventually hired by Life magazine to cover many of the major wars. He saw himself as an advocate against war by taking these images to convey the true state of devastation that war creates. After an injury that resulted in 32 surgeries and a break from his photography Smith began creating photo essays that looked intimately into the lives of individuals. As his photographs began to take on a painful sense of rawness he decided to leave Life magazine to do freelancing work instead, continuing to tell the painful stories of individuals and working on photo essays.
#13 Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an extremely influential fashion photographer famously known for his extremely large and intimate portraits. He first began photographing for the Marines when he took ID photos of the men. After this he branched out into fashion photography where he tried to convey emotion and motion through his subjects, things that were not prominent in fashion photography at the time. Avedon had a great curiosity for human condition and believed that many of his photographs were truly reflections on himself.
#12 Henri Cartier Bresson
Bresson was a French photographer who has inspired countless other photographers through his pioneering work in street photography. He shot with a 50mm Leica camera for years after its purchase in his early career. Although initially a painter Bresson soon became a photographer after he discovered the power that capturing a moment in time could have. In order to be as anonymous as possible when photographing his street work Bresson painted all shiny surfaces of his camera black as to not draw attention to it. In 1947 Bresson was part of a group that opened Magnum Photos which was a cooperative photograph agency owned by all of the founders.
Europe, Life Magazine, and f64 Group
#11 Europe - Brassai
Brassai
Brassai was good friends with Picasso as he was initially trained as a painter in both Budapest and Berlin. He eventually moved to Paris in 1924 and became a journalist in order to make a living. This is where Brassai discovered the medium of photography. He took pictures for his articles and eventually became enthralled with photography. He enjoyed going out late and night and taking images of prostitutes, street cleaners, and other candid street photographs. He compiled many of these images into a book called Paris After Dark, which was slightly controversial at the time because of some provocative subject matter.
Life Magazine - Alfred Eisentaedt
Life magazine had a clear transition in appearance and material after the great depression in the 1930's. Specifically after D-Day the material had images and stories of war, this was a way for the general public to hear about what was happening. Advertisements, covers, and stories tend to picture more patriot images such as soldiers, images including the American flag, or even beautiful women.
Alfred Eisentaedt
Originally born in West Prussia, Eisentaedt immigrated to the United States in 1935. He was one of the first four photographers hired by Life Magazine and contributed 2,500 images of which 90 were covers. In fact his image was on the cover of the second copy of Life Magazine ever published. Because of this he was one of the first and most famous photojournalists of his time. He photographed a range of people, from the general public to kings, queens, and dictators.
f64 Group - Brett Weston
The f/64 group consisted of 11 photographers who wanted to create a body of work that promoted a completely new direction in photography. f/64 refers to the smallest aperture opening that a large formatted camera can have. They believed that photography allowed us to see the world even more purely than the human eye and we could not project our own personal prejudice into an image that we take. By using the largest depth of field in their images they could get the greatest area of the photograph in focus. The theme or central idea that many of these photographs centered around was life in whatever way that can be projected through a photographed image. Eventually all of the images taken were compiled into a book titled f64.
Brett Weston
Brett Weston was the son of a famous photographer, and since birth was almost destined himself to follow a similar path. Because he was the closest out of the four children to his father at the age of 13 he traveled down to Mexico with his father and began an apprenticeship under him. Barely a teen he was surrounded by some of the most influential artists of the time such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Because of his constant interaction with these other artists at an early age he began understanding the form and composition of his photographs. The almost abstract quality, focusing on this form composition, that his photographs have is something that creates distinction in his work. He received international attention for his photography at the mere age of 17 when his work was presented in an exhibit in Germany. From there on his career, talent, and bodies of work continued to grow as he became an influential photographer as a part of the f64 group.
FSA Photography -
Farm Security Association:
The FSA was brought about as a part of the New deal and its main purpose of the was to combat poverty in the US that was brought about by the depression. The primary population that the FSA targeted was people who lived in rural areas, farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers. All of these poor rural people were relocated to group farms. Photography was utilized throughout this time to show the poverty and challenges that these rural people faced. Photographers were actually hired to shoot images from 1935-1944 of the struggling people. Thanks to these photographers and their work, they produced such beautiful and poetic imagery which attempted to portray what life was like in the Depression, in total there were 11 photographers who were hired.
Jack Delano -
Jack Delano
Jack Delano graduated from the Pennsylvania Academt of Fine Arts in 1932 where he had studied illustration. Upon graduation he applied to work with the FSA and be a photographer. He was then sent to Puerto Rico in 1940 as a part of a FSA project. After the FSA was cut as a governemnt program he move to Puerto Rico in 1946 after enjoying it during his FSA work there.
Gordon Parks-
Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks was a pioneer in the area of film and photography as the first black man to produce and direct a major motion picture. He was an influencial photographer of the FSA and was able to produce images that portrayed the life of slaves and struggling African American's within the time period of the depression.
Modern Photographer-
Brenda Ann Kennealy
Brenda is a photojournalists who works in Upstate New York documenting the impoverished families and children. By taking these photos she gives voices to those who don't have any, and for those who seemingly go unheard so often. She has received numerous awards for her moving photographs including The W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, The Mother Jones Documentary Award, and many more. Her photographs are similar to those of the FSA in that they shed light on the poverty striken, frequently working in black and white photography, often her images are raw and almost provocative.
Biography-
Growing up in Arizona, the sight of debris filled landscapes was a constant in the life of David Emitt Adams. However, the significance and beauty of these desert landscapes that fill the state of Arizona are also what inspire Adams, and the idea of the photographers that came before him who documented these places through the medium of photography. Emitt Adams collects old cans, some that are up to 4 centuries old, and using the photographic process from the 19th century, known as wet plate collodion, prints images from the desert on areas of the cans. He ultimately connects the objects to their history and place of origin. Adams is an emerging artist who is recognized for taking this old process and turning it into contemporary and conceptual work. His photographs can see across the country in multiple museums and galleries such as the SOHO Photo Gallery and the Studio in London.
The evident age of the cans can be seen in the rich browns and reds of the can's rust which add the the concept and beauty of the 19th century technique. The images are very simplistic and natural, pertaining from the locations in which the cans originated.
Adams made these portraits on the actual film canisters of his students. Although different from his collodion prints, the clear connection to the history of photography and old processes can be seen by the antiquated aesthetic he creates in these portraits.
Clarence White
Clarence White grew up in Ohio and took up photography after seeing an exhibition in 1893 in Chicago. He was almost exclusively self taught, but even so he became internationally known for his photographs. He was a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement and made strides in making photography a form of fine art and worked with Alfred Steiglitz to do so. He founded the Clarence H. White School of Photography which became the first educational institution to teach photography as an art form.
Most of White's photographs are black and white images that focus on the subject are of the individual, as many are portraits. His images convey a very personal representation of the individual in intimate settings, whether that be reading a book, greeting an individual, or if his subject matter was nude. Because of this his images contain a sense of realness to them, making the viewer feel an connection with the subject of the photograph.
Edward Steichen
Biography-
Edward Steichen was not only just a photographer, but a painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He bought himself his first camera at the age of 15 and went on to create the Milwaukee Arts Students League in a rented out in an office building. He is best well known for being the first modern fashion photographer ever published. He shot images for high end magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. During the peak in his career he was the highest paid photographer in the world. Along with this he also had success in film making as the documentary The Fighting Lady, that he directed, won an academy award for Best Documentary. His career really boomed once he met Alfred Stieglitz, and sold him 3 of his photographs for more than he ever had. Through Stieglitz he became a part of the Photo Secession and the most featured artist in Stieglitz's magazine Camera Works. Much of what his work are black and white portraits of individuals, many of them fashion photographs, along with darker and moodier natural settings.
Fashion Photography-
Even in his fashion photography his use of light and shadow still conveys a moody tone in the image with the use of black and white highlight the contrast the lighting creates. With such commanding and centralized subjects in many of his images, these beautiful photographs helped to pioneer the world of fashion photography.
Nature Photography-
In many of his landscape images there is an extremely dark mood that is created through his use of technique and subject matter. The setting of these trees and and wet earth, presumably taken in the evening, adds to the almost coldness that is sensed from looking at these pictures. This darker imagery can similarly be seen in not just his photographs, but paintings as well.
Photographers Inspired by Steichen-
Bruce Weber-
Influence of Steichen's photography can be seen in the works of Bruce Weber as many of his photographs are fashion photography for Vanity Fair, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Vogue. Similar to Edward Steichen there is a clear use of black and white to create mood in the photograph, light and shadows adding to the contrast of black and white, and isolated and centralized subjects to draw the viewer attention.
Biography-
Julia Cameron didn't start photography until the later age of 48 when she received a camera as a present and her photography career was a mere 11 years. Her photographs were often viewed as mistakes or flawed because of the soft focus she used along with her manipulation of the wet collodion process to achieve her aesthetic. She was also viewed as the 'ugly duckling' in a family of beautiful individuals, which may be why many of the portraits and works of hers were of beautiful women. Her works contain some of the finest portraits photographs of early photography. In her images the use of a soft focus which blurs away harsh lines, the strong use of women and children as subjects, and the evading eyes of the subject creates an innocent and distant mood of the photographs. The almost fairy tale like quality of her images portray the beauty of the individual as the close cropping and simple backgrounds completely centralize and isolate the subjects.
Portraiture-
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Photographers Inspired by Cameron-
Connie-
As I continued to read on about Julia Margaret Cameron it became aparant that because of other photographs disdain towards her 'mistakes' of photographs very few people continued to be inspired by her aesthetic. However, after some searching I did come across this woman's beautiful portrait of her children inspired by Julia Margaret Cameron. It was posted on her blog along with a brief history on the photographer. Although she is not a well known photographer, Connie clearly replicates the distant gaze, soft lines, and youth that Cameron's photographs also captured.
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