I would like to invite you to present your art work on my blog Exposition. Please, send me pictures of your work on my e-mail address : milenaolesinska77@gmail.com Description should include; your name, some details about your work. All art work will be published on the blog free of charge.
Dmytro Kozacky "Oresta" - "Place of death and my life". Defenders of Azovstal in photos
Dmytro Kozatski, Azov Regiment fighter and photographer, documented the siege of the Azovstal metalworks. Before his capture he posted his pictures on social media, asking that they be shared as widely as possible. This is some of his work showing the realities of life during the battle
Now a prisoner of war, a Ukrainian Photographer-soldier Dmytro Kozatsky has captured the horrific ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His photos are his legacy. Kozatsky posted several images from his collection on his Twitter handle before he joined the troops from the Ukraine side. (Dmytro Kozatski/Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office via AP) Now a prisoner of war, a Ukrainian
Photographer-soldier Dmytro Kozatsky has captured the horrific
ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His photos are his
legacy. Kozatsky posted several images from his collection on his
Twitter handle before he joined the troops from the Ukraine side. He
was one of hundred soldiers who marched out of the Azovstal mill in
Mariupol carrying the wounded and picking up pieces amid the Russian
attack. Amid a fiercely Russian offensive, nearly 2,000 Ukrainian
soldiers surrendered in the week before the city’s fall, Russian
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu saidAn unknown number of soldiers continued
to remain inside the mill, putting up a strong resistance and not
willing to give up their piece to the enemy.For nearly three months,
Azovstal’s garrison clung on, refusing to be winkled out from the
tunnels and bunkers under the ruins of the labyrinthine mill.It was
during this time that the Ukrainian soldiers got a window into the
powerful and hopeful resistance put forth by the Ukrainains through
Kazotsky's pictures.In this photo provided by Azov Special Forces
Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office, a Ukrainian
soldier injured during fighting against Russian forces, poses for a
photographer inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine. A
Ukrainian soldier plays crossword as he takes rest in his shelter in
Mariupol, Ukraine, May 7, 2022. Ukrainian soldiers inside the ruined
Azovstal steel plant in their shelter in Mariupol, Ukraine, May 7,
2022. (Dmytro Kozatski/Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian
National Guard Press Office via AP)
Dmytro Kozatsky, a fighter of the Azov Regiment, published his last photo from “Azovstal” before leaving. “Well, that’s all. Thank you for the shelter, Azovstal. The place of my death and my life.” Keep strong! See you! Twitter: @Kozatsky_D
George Woodman
"George Woodman (1932 – 2017) was a photographer and painter whose career spanned more than sixty years and included forays into diverse visual media. Woodman was deeply influenced by classical and modernist traditions. He was committed to explorations of color and abstraction in a variety of forms - landscape, geometric, and patterned - before pivoting toward the figure, sculpture, and architecture.Woodman was born in Concord, New Hampshire. He graduated from Harvard in 1954 with honors in philosophy and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico in 1956. He married the artist Betty Abrahams in 1953 and after two years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1956 where he taught painting and philosophy of art at the University of Colorado for thirty years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1995. He was an influential professor and artist in the Colorado scene in the 1960s and 70s, associated for many years with the Criss-Cross Art Communication movement and a founding member of the seminal Spark Gallery.Woodman began his career as an abstract painter, best known for his formally inventive tessellations and complex understanding of color. In the 1980s, Woodman’s paintings turned toward classical figuration, and he began making black and white photographs of nudes in classical architectural and sculptural settings. At this time his work with patterns developed into compositions in painted ceramic tile, with major public commissions in Detroit, Michigan; Denver, Colorado; and Buffalo, New York. After retiring from teaching in 1995, he lived half of each year in Antella and half in New York."(woodmanfoundation.org)
Oliver Gagliani - Master of Large Format Photography
Oliver Gagliani (1917 - 2002) was a master of large format photography. His darkroom work and proficiency of the Zone System great skill and technique. In 1945, Gagliani viewed a retrospective of the work of Paul Strand at the San Francisco Museum of Art. From this point on, Gagliani saw photography as a fine art and began his journey of being mostly a self-taught photographer. Gagliani studied under and worked with some of the most influential photographers of the 20th century including, Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Minor White, Paul Caponigro, Cole Weston and Paul Strand. In his later years he conducted photographic workshops in Virginia City, Nevada.
Michel Mandurino - Artistic Photography
More artist's works
Darío Villalba Flores
Darío Villalba Flores ( 1939 –2018) was a Spanish painter, photographer.
"Darío Villalba lives and works in Madrid. He comes from a family with an artistic, intellectual and liberal profile, and at the age of eighteen decided to hold his first exhibition in the Alfil gallery in Madrid in the same year – 1957 – as he embarked on his studies at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, combining them with other courses in Law and Philosophy and Letters. It was during this period that he began to devote himself to his first photographs.
In the mid-1960s, Darío Villalba began using photography in his works, although he does not consider himself to be a photographer as, for him, photography is a medium, a technique he uses as a vehicle for transmitting attitudes and emotions. This decontextualization of photography was a pioneering attitude for this age, a medium through which the artist reflects on the return to the spirit of painting through photographic technique. In the words of the artist himself, “In my work, painting is photography and photography is painting “.
In 1970 he presented some photos of figures inside transparent pink methacrylate at the XXXV Venice Biennial, the “encapsulados rosas”, emulsified with paint, which marked his artistic career. His work became increasingly intimate, his process increasingly complex, developing into a self-analysis with a desire for introspection. Currently his artistic production includes painting, photography, objects, installations, sculptures, style opposed to the non-style characteristic of his work.His work is present in both Spanish and foreign collections.."(.esbaluard.org)
Sascha Weidner
Sascha Weidner (1974 - 2015) was a German photographer and artist, who lived and worked in Belm and Berlin. Weidner's work deals with the creation of a radical subjective pictorial world. His photographs are characterized by perceptions, aspirations and illuminate the world of the subconscious. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.
Weidner described himself as a "romantically moved traveler" and his photographs as highly subjective.For him the medium of photography was the artistic means of expression in order to weave together real worlds with the own internal images. From his mostly biographical photo expeditions, picture essays arose about essential questions of human existence.Over a decade of creating images, an ever-evolving picture library came together in which, as the photographer said, "everything is important: Cultural events, disasters, clichés, banalities, Political things" Weidner composed his works from a large pool, which was composed of family photographs, own work and found or mass media and borrowed images from the history of art. Thereby boundaries between staging and authenticity blurred, to highlight the often unreal, sometimes suggestive atmosphere of reality.His motives as well as the titles of his works and exhibitions refer to biographical references and metaphors of his own experiences. For example: "Until it hurts", "What remains", "The presence of absence", "Staying is nowhere" or "Beauty remains".Weidner's canon of images sprang from the way of life of young people and tells of the "perceptions, longings and visions of those generations who experienced their youth in the 80s, 90s and 2000s." Therefore, Weidner's approach was very relevant for these periods and gave evidence both of an artistic consideration of actual and imaginary spaces.In essence, a melancholic perspective on the world marked Weidner’s point of view. The basic patterns in his image systems are attributed to his very own relationships. He contrasts subjects such as life and death, beauty and transience as well as questioning origin, identity and self-determination. In this sense, Weidner was not limited to portraying his own environment, but spoke of life itself. Wikipedia
Jimmy DeSana - Anti-Art
Jimmy DeSana ( 1949 –1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art scene of the 1970s and 1980s.DeSana's photography has been described as "anti-art" in its approach to capturing images of the human body, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit to purely symbolic"., William S. Burroughs wrote the introduction to his collection of photographs Submission which was self-published in 1980. His work includes the album cover for the Talking Heads album More Songs about Buildings and Food. DeSana was born in Detroit in 1950, but grew up in Atlanta. He began to take photographs being a teen, mostly photographing his friends and acquaintances naked. His early photographs were of his friends striking silly and sexy poses in houses and gardens. He moved to New York in 1973. DeSana continued to picture the human body as the primary subject. He worked in black and white till 1980, when he began to experiment with color photography. DeSana died in 1990 from AIDS related illness.Wikipedia
Laura Aguilar
Human Nature
Laura Aguilar ( 1959 – 2018) was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributes her start in photography to her brother who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College where her second solo exhibition Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell was held. She is well known for her portraits, mostly of herself and also focused upon people in marginalized communities - Latino subjects and obese people.
"Her work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Sunshine et Noir: Art in L.A. at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party” In Feminist Art History at the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; In a Different Light at the University of California, Berkeley; and Bad Girls at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She also participated in the Aperto Section of the 1993 Venice Biennale.
Photographer Laura Aguilar has investigated portraiture since she emerged in the late 1980s. Her stark black-and-white photographs document subjects whose images and stories are under-represented in mainstream culture—people of color, gays and lesbians and large people. Her portraits are known for their collaborative sensibility—the subjects are encouraged to investigate and negotiate with the artist from both sides of the lens. In the late 1990s, Aguilar turned the camera on herself, making dramatic nude self-portraits in which her body is contrasted with the rough terrain of the desert landscape and in which the body and landscape become one. The works continue her efforts to challenge societal assumptions about beauty, offering an alternative to the airbrushed, artificial depictions of women generated by advertising and media."(artpace.org/artists)
Prabuddha Dasgupta
Prabuddha Dasgupta ( 1956 – 2012) was a noted fashion and fine-art photographer from India.Known for his iconic black and white imagery, he had an extended career, primarily as a fashion photographer, spanning more than three decades. Amongst his books, he is most known for Women (1996), a collection of portraits and nudes of urban Indian women.
"Prabuddha turned a regressive situation into an opportunity to reflect on his own role as an artist. His later inquiries took the form of spiritual quests, first in his melancholic landscapes for Ladakh (2000), and then in the detailed portraits of the Goan Catholic community in Edge of Faith (2007). His approach to his subjects was full of grace, and in his lifetime, Prabuddha himself seemed like a certain embodiment of this word. The empathy that he shared with his subjects was taken to a new level with his most ambitious – though unfinished – project, The Longing, an intimate yet abstract journal of his life."(thewire.in)
"Every photograph is an elaborate conversation in itself, but Prabuddha is only listening. It is because of this that the photographer’s gaze, while soaking in these time-worn interiors and photographing these time-ridden protagonists, is non-judgmental, with great dignity. It’s almost protecting, the way he seems to look at them, the vulnerability of this community meeting his own vulnerability as an artist. His craft is carefully studied, but his vision, intuitive, without pretence. The consciousness with which every subject is photographed is palpably.
His craft is carefully studied, but his vision, intuitive, without pretence. The consciousness with which every subject is photographed is palpably engrained within every frame. And yet, this is a work that brings forth the subconscious. It’s about memory and loss, both theirs and his, and maybe our own. It is intriguing to correlate the multiple strands that run within Edge of Faith, the portraits, the interiors, the presence, the absence. Two men pose together, as do two women, they are identical seeming people posing identically, almost Arbusian in nature, and yet, both photographs completely unrelated to each other, shot at different villages at different times.
Like different stanzas of the same poem, as he had once said, or like serendipity, that beautiful, intangible occurrence, which is also the name of the art festival, where this work will be shown this month. Sensuality and grace, sensitivity and beauty, are platitudes that are often used to look back at the remarkable legacy that is PDG. But beyond it all, his journey, both in his personal projects and in his commissioned work, has always explored the delicate nature of fragility. In Edge of Faith, it is their memories that are fragile, as past tussles with present, and a generation that has lived through Portugal and India, liberation and today, ponders over its cultural identity. If the documentary nature of the project may seem a little prosaic, it is Prabuddha’s response to it that makes it poetic, whether it is the character on their faces or that, in their spaces. A wall in one photograph with its artifacts, in conversation with another wall of another photograph, both, again, unconnected, both, with their own sea of stories."(betterphotography.in)
Michael Wolf
Architecture of Density
Michael Wolf (1954 –2019) was a German artist and photographer whose work focused on daily life in big cities. Wolf won first prize in the Contemporary Issues category of the 2004 World Press Photo competition for his photographs of workers in several types of factories for an article in Stern. He lived and worked in Hong Kong and Paris.Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. He attended the North Toronto Collegiate Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he obtained a degree in visual communication at the University of Essen, Germany, where he studied with Otto Steinert
Photographer who concentrated on the high-density architecture of Hong Kong
"After moving on from a successful career in photojournalism in 2003 to pursue his personal work, the photographer Michael Wolf, who has died unexpectedly aged 64, devoted himself to exploring the complex nature of life in some of the world’s largest cities. Michael was best known for his series Architecture of Density (2003-14), which focused on the facades of Hong Kong’s landmark postwar tower blocks.
These ominous concrete structures have none of the dazzling sheen of Hong Kong’s iconic harbour skyline, but rather reflect the difficult living conditions of the working class in one of the world’s densest cities. By cropping out the sky and occluding the horizon – a “no-exit” approach that he would use throughout his work – Wolf turned these buildings into seemingly infinite formal abstractions while inviting the viewer to reflect on the lives that they contain."(theguardian.com)
“Michael Wolf’s work on life in cities was always driven by a profound concern for the people living in these environments and for the consequences of massive urbanisation on contemporary civilisation,” his family said, announcing his death. “This commitment and engagement remained central throughout his career, first as a photojournalist and then as an artist.”(bjp-online.com)
Maud Sulter
Maud Sulter (19 September 1960 – 27 February 2008) was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She died in Dumfries, Scotland, in 2008 and is survived by two daughters and a son. Born in Glasgow to a Scots mother and a Ghanaian father, Maud Sulter attained a master's degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Derby.Sulter's photographic practice included contemporary portraiture and montage. Her work typically referenced historical and mythical subjects. Her photography was exhibited in across the UK and internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1987; the Johannesburg Biennial (1996); and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2003. She received a number of awards and residencies, including the British Telecom New Contemporaries Award 1990 and the Momart Fellowship at Tate Liverpool, also in 1990.Wikipedia
The settlement of Slavs and Vikings Wolin Poland
"Anyone who would like to learn about Wolin’s history and listen to the echoes of bygone days is welcome to enter the gates of the Slavs and Vikings’ Center, one of Poland’s most interesting tourist attractions. This recreated settlement offers a glimpse into the everyday life of Wolin’s inhabitants in the period from the 9th to the 12th century. Its buildings have been painstakingly recreated on the basis of archaeological research from the area of Wolin. It currently features a defensive gate with a palisade, craftsmen's shelters, a wooden wharf for boat replicas and 27 reconstructions of early medieval houses. These cottages are created in five different styles, their structure heavily inspired by the abundance of wood in the local forests and historical events, such as raids and the burning of the city. The center presents the Slavic and Scandinavian cultures, which had the most impact on the development of the city. Make no mistake, this is not a traditional museum. There are no historical items on display here, only reconstructions and stylizations of cottages, along with their furnishings. This lets you freely roam around the area, go everywhere, touch everything, sit on a bench at a table, lie down on a bed, try on costumes or armor, train archery or taste the products of old cuisine. Photos taken in such scenery are truly unique and make for wonderful souvenirs."(exarc.net)
Wang Wusheng - Black-And-White photographs of Mount Huangshan
Wang Wusheng (1945 – 2018) was a Chinese photographer known for his black-and-white photographs of Mount Huangshan.
Wang Wusheng was born 1945 in Wuhu. Anhui, China and graduated from the Department of Physics of Anhui University.Beginning in 1973, Wang worked as a photographer for a news magazine in Anhui Province, Anhui Newsphoto and Pictorial. In 1974, he started shooting Mounts Huangshan in Anhui.In 1981 he moved to Japan. He became a research member at the Japan Foundation in 1983. He studied at the Art Institute of Nihon University in Japan as he won grant from the Japan Foundation’s endowment for Japanese art studies. Beginning in 1986, he studied for three years at the Tokyo Arts University.
In 1990, he moved to the U.S, spent a year in New York City and in the 90s his career blossomed at last. In 1998, Wang Wusheng held a solo exhibition titled "Himmelsberge" at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was the first exhibition of photography and the first solo exhibition for a living artist at the museum. Then in 2005, the Permanent Missions of China and Japan to the United Nations presented Spirit of the East a two-person exhibition of Wang Wusheng’s photographs along with paintings by the late Japanese master artist Kaii Higashiyama, in the United Nations General Assembly’s Visitor’s Lobby. This exhibition was held in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. Wikipedia
Toyo Tsuchiya - Digital Photograph - Rivington School art movement
Rivington School was a movement that emerged from the East Village art scene in the 1980s in New York City. Most of the artists of the Rivington School were either involved in welding, forging, performance or street painting.The group started in 1983 and named themselves after an abandoned public school house building located on Rivington Street. The school was located across from a club No Se No where many artists would meet and performances were held. The group is most noted for "massive junk sculpture installations on the Lower East Side," and other forms of metal public sculpture.
Toyo Tsuchiya (1948 – 23 November 2017) was a Japanese born artist and photographer and one of the early artists involved in the Rivington School art movement of the East Village art scene of New York City of the 1980s.Toyo Tsuchiya moved from Japan to New York City in 1980.He was a director of many of the performances and exhibitions at the club No Se No, which was the club that many of the Rivington School artists would meet and perform and show their art work. As a photographer, Tsuchiya was able to document much of the early history of the Rivington School. He was a member of the NO!Art movement.Wikipedia
Irving Penn
Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)was 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.
Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family[2] on June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. Penn's younger brother, Arthur Penn, was born in 1922 and would go on to become a film director and producer. Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar which published several of Penn's drawings. Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs before taking Brodovitch's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn remained at Saks Fifth Avenue for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US. When Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department. Penn worked on layout for the magazine before Liberman asked him to try photography....Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and he effectively used this simplicity. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, and Igor Stravinsky.
Penn's still life compositions are sparse and highly organized,assemblages of food or objects that articulate the abstract interplay of line and volume. Penn's photographs are composed with a great attention to detail, which continues into his craft of developing and making prints of his photographs.[citation needed] Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminum sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth that untoned silver prints lacked. His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp look.While steeped in the Modernist tradition, Penn also ventured beyond creative boundaries. The exhibition Earthly Bodies consisted of series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump; while the photographs were taken in 1949 and 1950, they were not exhibited until 1980.Wikipedia
Len Lye - Experimental Photography
Leonard Charles Huia Lye (/laɪ/; 5 July 1901 – 15 May 1980), was a Christchurch, New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture.
"Len Lye is an artist from New Zealand who is known for his experimental films, photograms and kinetic sculpture.
In the beginning he worked with the idea of motion being an artistic language and was heavily influenced by the arts of South Pacific and African countries when he visited there. He began to make experimental films without a camera by using manipulated and often destroyed film.
He used methods such as scratching the emulsion, dyes, stencil-work, air-brushes, pens, stamps, combs, surgical instruments, etc. to manipulate and texturize the film and celluloid. His film stills put together created a blur and motion of flashing lines and marks. Some of his famous films include: A Colour Box, Colour Flight, and Free Radicals.
Later in his work, he experimented with photograms in his films, and then began making separate photogram work. He started a series of photographic portraits using photograms including some well-known artists such as Georgia O'Keefe, Joan Miro and Le Corbusier. Exposing the light-senstive paper with the "sitter", as he calls them, in front of it, a lovely silhouette is left. With not much information or detail about the sitter in the silhouette, he added other elements to provide clues as to who the sitter is which often created new layers of meaning.Lye often was more concerned with the motion of an object or person than it's actual appearance. He was intrigued by the "notion of individuality" and "the physical factors" that inform each person's makeup. Many consider his work to be meditations on identity and some say that he bases his abstract art on intuition and feeling, revealing parts of the subconscious."(unccphotography.blogspot.com)
Saul Leiter - Painted Photographs
Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York school of photography
In the early 2000s, Saul Leiter came to the fore as one of the most accomplished and surprising colour photographers of the 20th century. Books were published, films made and exhibitions launched. While it was never a secret, few of those who are familiar with Leiter’s photography are aware that over the years he created, in his own unhurried way, a yet–to–be appreciated and equally formidable body of paintings and painted photographs."In his paintings Saul Leiter managed to convey the deep sense of observation characteristic of his photography. His works on paper are relatively small in scale. Most of them are abstract and somewhat flat, although occasionally a discernible figure emerges. Leiter used water-based paints (watercolor, gouache or casein) in loose and at times quasi-transparent brushstrokes, superimposing cold and warm hues to compose his fragile images....
Acknowledging these different approaches and using color as his driving force, Saul Leiter embraced photography with a painter's eye, creating honest depictions that translate his perceptions into a perceivable palette of emotions for the viewer to absorb."(.zigzags.be)
Philip Jean Hyde
"Philip Jean Hyde (1921-2006)
Born in San Francisco in 1921, Philip Hyde was a pioneer of the West Coast landscape tradition, he made his first back country fine art landscape photograph in 1942. His photographs helped protect such national treasures as the Grand Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Denali, Tongass National Forest, Canyonlands, the Coast Redwoods, Point Reyes, King’s Canyon, the North Cascades, Oregon Cascades, High Sierra Wilderness, Big Sur, the Wind River Range, Islands off Puerto Rico and many others. Philip Hyde trained under Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model and other definers of the medium at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. Because of the historical significance of his work, a common misconception is that Philip Hyde was a photographer of a bygone era. In reality, he photographed for 58 years until he was 79 years old, into the new millennium. His work was always ahead of its time and went far beyond the classical landscapes for which he is known. His unique photographic vision and novel compositions are widely emulated today. He is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential of all outdoor photographers. Two of his most noted images are his 1964 color conservation icon, “Cathedral In The Desert, Glen Canyon,” that American Photo Magazine named one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th Century and “The Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza,” a vintage black and white photograph, made in what is now the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ansel Adams said that he liked this 1950 photograph of the Minarets better than his own."(lumieregallery.net)
Edward Sheriff Curtis - Photographs of Native Americans
Edward Sheriff Curtis (February 16, 1868 – October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American peoplesIn 1906, J. P. Morgan provided Curtis with $75,000 to produce a series on Native Americans. This work was to be in 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs. Morgan's funds were to be disbursed over five years and were earmarked to support only fieldwork for the books, not for writing, editing, or production of the volumes. Curtis received no salary for the project, which was to last more than 20 years. Under the terms of the arrangement, Morgan was to receive 25 sets and 500 original prints as repayment.Once Curtis had secured funding for the project, he was able to hire several employees to help him. For writing and for recording Native American languages, he hired a former journalist, William E. Myers.For general assistance with logistics and fieldwork, he hired Bill Phillips, a graduate of the University of Washington. Perhaps the most important hire for the success of the project was Frederick Webb Hodge, an anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution, who had researched Native American peoples of the southwestern United States. Hodge was hired to edit the entire series.Eventually 222 complete sets were published. Curtis's goal was not just to photograph but also to document as much of Native American traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared. He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907, "The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost." Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American language and music. He took over 40,000 photographic images of members of over 80 tribes. He recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs. He wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders. His material, in most cases, is the only written recorded history, although there is still a rich oral tradition that preserves history.His work was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France in 1973. Wikipedia
Blue Photography by Paul Burty Haviland
Paul Burty Haviland (17 June 1880 – 21 December 1950) was an early French-American 20th-century photographer, writer and arts critic who was closely associated with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession.
"The heir of a wealthy American family and the son of a French mother, Paul Burty Haviland studies in Paris as well as New York where he lives the life of a dandy aesthete and supports Alfred Steiglitz’s art gallery with a strong interest in the Dada and Cubist movements and participates to the avant-garde publication, Camera Work. Having been himself painted by Auguste Renoir, in 1884, he is fascinated by artistic bohemian circles and fulfills his passion for theatre, poetry and photography. Inspired by James McNeill Whistler and Japonism, the American photographer depicts foggy urban scenes but also and mostly melancholic nudes of a particular model, Florence Peterson, that evoke the work of Clarence Hudson White. In 1917, he marries René Lalique’s daughter, Suzanne and settles in the French countryside where he captures views of ruins and artists’ portraits, far from Florence’s intimate and delicate silhouette."(theredlist.com)
The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork - Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe.
The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork (Polish: zamek w Malborku; German: Ordensburg Marienburg) is a 13th-century Teutonic castle and fortress located near the town of Malbork, Poland. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.It was originally constructed by the Teutonic Knights, a German Roman Catholic religious order of crusaders, in a form of an Ordensburg fortress. The Order named it Marienburg in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. In 1466, during the division of Prussia into eastern and western parts, the castle and town became part of western Royal Prussia, a region of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It served as one of the several Polish royal residences, interrupted by several years of Swedish occupation, and fulfilling this function until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the land was reassigned to Poland. Heavily damaged during World War II, the castle was renovated under the auspices of modern-day Poland in the second half of the 20th century and most recently in 2016. Nowadays, the castle hosts exhibitions and serves as a museum.The castle is a classic example of a medieval fortress and, on its completion in 1406, was the world's largest brick castle.[3] UNESCO designated the "Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork" and the Malbork Castle Museum a World Heritage Site in December 1997.It is one of two World Heritage Sites in the region, together with the "Medieval Town of Toruń", which was founded in 1231.
Castle is also one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated on 16 September 1994. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland. Wikipedia
Jan Groover
Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American photographer who spent the last part of her life in Montpon-Menesterol, France, with her husband, a painter and critic named Bruce Boice. Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and died in 2012 at Montpon-Ménestérol.Groover received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1965 from Pratt Institute, and a Master of Arts in 1970 from Ohio State University.Groover was noted for her use of emerging color technologies. In 1979, Groover began to use platinum prints for portraits and still lifes, transforming everyday items into beautiful, formal still lifes. In 1987, critic Andy Grundberg noted in The New York Times, “In 1978 an exhibition of her dramatic still-life photographs of objects in her kitchen sink caused a sensation. When one appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine, it was a signal that photography had arrived in the art world - complete with a marketplace to support it.”Groover also used early 20th century camera technology, such as the banquet camera, for elongated, horizontal presentations of otherwise pedestrian items. In a New York Times review of Groover’s work exhibited at Janet Borden Inc., New York, in 1997, critic Roberta Miller called Groover’s work “beautiful and masterly in the extreme.”Jan Groover’s work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1987, for which an accompanying catalogue was printed. Her work has also been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.Wikipedia
Experimental Photography Todd Walker
Todd Walker (1917 – September 13, 1998) was an American photographer, printmaker and creator of artists' books who is known for his manipulated images and for his use of offset lithography to produce individual prints and limited-edition books of his work.Walker began teaching at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in 1966. His interest in creative photographic processes brought him to the attention of Robert Heinecken and Robert W. Fichter at UCLA, and the three co-taught classes for a brief time. In 1970 Walker accepted a one-year teaching position at the University of Florida. There he worked with photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Douglas Prince as well as printmaker Ken Kerslake, who was at that time using photo-etching techniques in intaglio printmaking. Walker taught a photo-printmaking class and a silkscreen class. In an interview in the late 1970s Walker said, "The contact with the ideas of the printmaker have greatly altered my attitudes toward photography, and how each discipline deals with an image." Seven years later he moved to Tucson and taught at the University of Arizona before retiring in 1985.
While in Arizona, Walker began working with some of the first Apple computers, and he used his technical skills to create some early 3-D images of his work and to create a book in which the text was mostly generated by the computer (Enthusiasm Strengthens, 1987). According to his daughter, Walker never used Photoshop or other commercial imaging software. He wrote his own computer programs and later made use of software primarily designed for cartography. With these techniques he was able to create digital works that blurred, inverted and obscured the original image, making it into an expressive rather than detailed representation of reality.Wikipedia
Ricardo Reis
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Ren Hang
Ren Hang (March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet. He was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province, in northeastern China.During Ren's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. His work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society. For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide notoriety.
Ren first began taking pictures of his roommates and friends in 2007, shooting them in the nude as all were close and seeking excitement. In an interview, he also admitted: “I usually shoot my friends, because strangers make me nervous.” He arranged his subjects' naked limbs in his photographs.Ren did not consider his work inappropriate: “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.” This may account for his reticence to limit his work to indoor settings. He said there were no preferred places for him to work, as he believed anywhere was beautiful and worthy to be shot, including sparse studios, parks forests, and atop buildings. Ren's photos employ nude groups and solo portraits of men and women often contorted into highly performative positions.For example, hands reach down milky thighs, a limp penis flops onto a watermelon and a series of backsides imitate a mountain range.Questioning the purpose of his work, he once stated that his creation was a way to seek fun for both photographer and the photographed. However, once he had reached fame on an international level, he began to think deeply about his work. The British Journal of Photography quoted him as once saying: "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all." Ren also focused on marginalised people in Chinese society with gender identity disorders by 'indeterminating' sex and gender in some of his work: a group of naked bodies stacked together, men wearing silk stockings and wearing lipstick. He denied having a preference in models: “Gender… only matters to me when I’m having sex.” The international quarterly photography journal Aperture used his photo as the cover for its "Queer" theme. Commentators also see his work, the naked body and the starched penis, as evolving sexual mores and the struggle for creative and sexual freedom in a conservative, tightly controlled society.But Ren also announced "I don't try to get a message across, I don't give my works names, I don't date them. I don’t want to instill them with any vocabulary. I don't like to explain my photos or work as a whole".
Ren used a point-and-shoot camera. He would direct the models as to how to place their bodies and shoot in quick succession. Genitalia, breasts and anuses were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were rich and high in contrast, increasing visual impact. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the impact of his photographs more impressive. His work communicated a raw, stark aesthetic that countered taboos and celebrated sexuality. Someone[according to whom?] concluded it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context in which Ren expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death.Nudity is not a theme in art which can be widely accepted by the Chinese older generation. Ren's works are sometimes misinterpreted by the public as pornography. Although some[according to whom?] have written that Ren used his photographs to challenge Chinese cultural norms of shame around nudity, Ren didn't believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution. For him, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he used in his work. "Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions." He said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that the Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Ren talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, he said: "I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time after I grow up was already over that period, it was already different like everyone was already more relaxed."Wikipedia
Steven F. Arnold
Steven F. Arnold (1943-1994) was an American artist and protégé of Salvador Dalí. He was a filmmaker, photographer, painter, illustrator, set and costume designer, and assemblage artist.After graduating from high school in the spring of 1961, Arnold won a full scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. In the spring of 1964, after earning perfect grades for two years at the Institute, Arnold took a break to study abroad in Paris and enrolled at Ecole Des Beaux Arts. Feeling confined by the stiff, traditional curriculum at Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Arnold and a group of American classmates rented villas on the small island of Formentera off the coast of Spain. For the next several months the group lived communally, taking LSD every day, experimenting with paints and costumes, taking up residence in caves, and exploring the small island. Arnold recalls: “This new drug was so euphoric and visionary, so positive and mind expanding… I ascended to another dimension, one so beautiful and spiritual that I was never the same.” Arnold also began keeping sketchbooks around this time, a practice he maintained throughout his life.Returning to San Francisco in the spring of 1965, Arnold resumed his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, turning his eye on film-making.
He wrote, directed, and designed three short films over the next two years. By late 1967 Arnold was about to receive his BFA, and his final student film, Messages, Messages, was drawing critical attention. The film went on to win invites to Cannes’ Directors' Fortnight, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Due to the critical success of their film, Arnold and collaborator Michael Wiese decided that Messages, Messages was worthy of a more elaborate hometown premiere than the San Francisco Art Institute could provide. So in February 1968, shortly before their graduation, the pair rented the Palace Theatre in San Francisco’s North Beach for the occasion. In addition to Messages, Messages, Arnold also curated “a rare collection of early surrealist films by Man Ray, Melies, and old French animations.” The evening was such a success that the theater owner offered to allow Arnold to continue holding screenings. This led to the March 1968 inauguration of Arnold’s Nocturnal Dreamshows, the first of the weekly midnight movie showcases that became nationally popular in the 1970s. The Nocturnal Dreamshows also launched The Cockettes, a psychedelic San Francisco drag troupe, into underground fame. Since 1967, Arnold had also been illustrating posters for local businesses, and was among the original group of rock poster artists in San Francisco, creating some of the first rock posters for the famed Matrix nightclub, which was later credited for originating the “San Francisco sound” of the psychedelic ’60s
After returning to California, and failing to make any progress on other film projects, Arnold was driven to find new modes of expression. So he established his Los Angeles photography studio and west coast salon, Zanzibar.[20] From 1982-89, Arnold found his niche, designing and shooting tableau-vivants for four books;[21] he left thousands of living tableau photographs and negatives unpublished. He nurtured close friendships with kindred spirits such as actress Ellen Burstyn and Simon Doonan of Barneys New York. Arnold adored the vast cross-section of society represented at his nightly Salons, but also culled inspiration from his dreams, world religions, sexuality, fine art masterpieces, Jungian archetypes, social attitudes, excess, and artifice, working all night, and waking each afternoon to sketch dreams and visions into his growing collection of sketchbooks. In addition to his photography, Arnold also translated these his drawings into a large body of paintings and assemblage sculpture between 1990 and his death in 1994.Wikipedia
Harold Eugene Edgerton
"Edward Steichen (American, 1879–1973), photographer and former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, described the work of Harold Edgerton (American, 1903–1990) as significant not only for creating a new scientific perspective, but also because it established a new photographic genre. An electrical engineer, prolific inventor, and Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Edgerton used photography to extend the capabilities of the human eye to microsecond vision, revealing aspects of reality never before seen or even imagined. His impact on photographic technology and influence on photographers can still be seen in the contemporary sphere of photography.In 1931, as a graduate student at MIT, Edgerton combined the camera with the stroboscope, a device invented in 1831 for studying objects in motion. Edgerton’s device, which formed the basis for the development of the modern electric flash, emitted a series of high-speed bursts of light from electrically controlled neon tubes that could record on film a series of stopped-action sequential images.
These extremely short flashes of light overcame the mechanical restrictions of the camera shutter, illuminating events or portions of events as brief as one three-millionth of a second in duration. This invention, states Edgerton, allowed “time itself to be chopped up into small bits and frozen so that it suits our needs and wished.”“Don’t make me out to be an artist,” stated Edgerton. “I am an engineer. I am after the facts. Only the facts.”2 It is the startling beauty of these facts discovered by Edgerton that astonishes us. Using his improved stroboscope, he could photograph motion as a single image, or in multiples of up to 600 per second. Linked to a motion picture camera, this device would produce greatly improved slow motion film footage.
The images Edgerton created celebrate the union of art and science: the crown of droplets created by a splash of milk, the perfect geometric patterns formed by a somersaulting diver before he slices into the water, a speeding bullet frozen in space as it explodes through an apple, and a football caving in from the impact of an athlete’s foot. These images all reveal the harmony and logic of natural laws, the invisible symmetry of everyday phenomena."(news.artnet.com)
John Gerald Zimmerman
John Gerald Zimmerman (30 October 1927 in Pacoima, California – 3 August 2002 in Monterey, California) was an American magazine photographer.He was among the first sports photographers to use remote controlled cameras for unique camera placements, and was "a pioneer in the use of motor-driven camera sequences, slit cameras and double-shutter designs to show athletes in motion.Zimmerman was interested in photography from an early age. His father, John L. Zimmerman, a gaffer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, taught him the basics and bought him a 4×5 view camera. He joined a photographic hobby club in junior high school and spent afternoons developing film with friends in their mothers’ kitchens.Zimmerman took a three-year photography course at John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles, where he was taught by Hollywood cinematographer Clarence Bach.After graduating high school, Zimmerman was a Navy photographer. In 1950, he landed a job as a staff photographer at the Time bureau in Washington D.C. On his first assignment on November 1, 1950, Zimmerman was driving away from the White House with a group of photographers when two Puerto Rican nationalists stormed nearby Blair House, attempting to assassinate President Truman. Hearing gunshots, the photographers rushed out of the car. Zimmerman had a camera around his neck where as the others had locked theirs in the trunk. Zimmerman got the first photos of the attack, which were published in both Time and Life.
In 1952, Zimmerman moved to Atlanta. During his time there he shot a series of noteworthy assignments for Ebony depicting the experiences of African Americans in the Jim Crow South and the Midwest.
From 1964 until his retirement in 1991, Zimmerman worked for all the major magazines, covering notable subjects from every aspect of American popular culture.Four of his Time covers are in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery: politician Jerry Brown,baseball player Rod Carew,actress Diane Lane[13] and Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill.
Photographing the Olympic Games was a constant throughout his career. He covered six Summer Olympic Games, starting with Melbourne in 1956 and ending in 1984, with four Winter Olympic Games in between. One of Zimmerman’s favorite Olympic assignments was taking the "Big Picture" for the LA Olympics in 1984. The "Big Picture" was a group portrait of 18,000 people, ranging from Mayor Tom Bradley, local community leaders, celebrities, the City Ballet and L.A. Dodgers to the UCLA Football team. It was displayed as a 30 × 80 ft. billboard at various places around the city, to welcome visitors and athletes to the Games.
On meeting Zimmerman in 1972 sports photographer Rich Clarkson said:
had known and admired him for years, watching how he did things technically that no one had ever tried before - such as modifying a Hulcher to produce beautiful pictures of runners with colors streaking from behind them as they ran. John did this at the Olympic trials in Eugene, Or. and believe it or not, he put up a black background and lights on a curve and did this very stylized illustration during an actual competition. The pictures were beautiful.Beginning in the 1970s, Zimmerman worked in the more lucrative arena of print advertising and photographed advertising campaigns for Marlboro, Ford, Chrysler, AT&T, Exxon, G.E., Pepsi and Coca-Cola, among others.Wikipedia
Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt (born Elio Romano Erwitt, 26 July 1928) is an American 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".Erwitt served as a photographer's assistant in the 1950s in the United States Army while stationed in France and Germany. He was influenced by meeting the famous photographers Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker. Stryker, the former Director of the Farm Security Administration's photography department, hired Erwitt to work on a photography project for the Standard Oil Company. He then began a freelance photographer career and produced work for Collier's, Look, Life and Holiday. Erwitt was invited to become a member of Magnum Photos by the founder Robert Capa. One of the subjects Erwitt has frequently photographed in his career is dogs: they have been the subject of five of his books, Son of Bitch (1974), To the Dogs (1992), Dog Dogs (1998), Woof (2005), and Elliott Erwitt's Dogs (2008).
Erwitt has created an alter ego, the beret-wearing and pretentious "André S. Solidor" (which abbreviates to "ass") — "a contemporary artist, from one of the French colonies in the Caribbean, I forget which one" — in order to "satirise the kooky excesses of contemporary photography." His work was published in a book, The Art of André S. Solidor (2009), and exhibited in 2011 at the Paul Smith Gallery in London.
Erwitt was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and an honorary fellowship (HonFRPS) in 2002 in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.and the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award, Lifetime Achievement category, in 2011.Wikipedia
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) 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."Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara "Claire" (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner.[2] His family was Jewish.[3] Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neuländer Simon) from 1936.
The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles; he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Newton's parents fled to South America. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18 and left Germany on 5 December 1938. At Trieste he boarded the Conte Rosso (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis), intending to journey to China. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer
More artist's works
Darío Villalba Flores
Darío Villalba Flores ( 1939 –2018) was a Spanish painter, photographer.
"Darío Villalba lives and works in Madrid. He comes from a family with an artistic, intellectual and liberal profile, and at the age of eighteen decided to hold his first exhibition in the Alfil gallery in Madrid in the same year – 1957 – as he embarked on his studies at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, combining them with other courses in Law and Philosophy and Letters. It was during this period that he began to devote himself to his first photographs.
In the mid-1960s, Darío Villalba began using photography in his works, although he does not consider himself to be a photographer as, for him, photography is a medium, a technique he uses as a vehicle for transmitting attitudes and emotions. This decontextualization of photography was a pioneering attitude for this age, a medium through which the artist reflects on the return to the spirit of painting through photographic technique. In the words of the artist himself, “In my work, painting is photography and photography is painting “.
In 1970 he presented some photos of figures inside transparent pink methacrylate at the XXXV Venice Biennial, the “encapsulados rosas”, emulsified with paint, which marked his artistic career. His work became increasingly intimate, his process increasingly complex, developing into a self-analysis with a desire for introspection. Currently his artistic production includes painting, photography, objects, installations, sculptures, style opposed to the non-style characteristic of his work.His work is present in both Spanish and foreign collections.."(.esbaluard.org)
Sascha Weidner
Sascha Weidner (1974 - 2015) was a German photographer and artist, who lived and worked in Belm and Berlin. Weidner's work deals with the creation of a radical subjective pictorial world. His photographs are characterized by perceptions, aspirations and illuminate the world of the subconscious. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.
Weidner described himself as a "romantically moved traveler" and his photographs as highly subjective.For him the medium of photography was the artistic means of expression in order to weave together real worlds with the own internal images. From his mostly biographical photo expeditions, picture essays arose about essential questions of human existence.Over a decade of creating images, an ever-evolving picture library came together in which, as the photographer said, "everything is important: Cultural events, disasters, clichés, banalities, Political things" Weidner composed his works from a large pool, which was composed of family photographs, own work and found or mass media and borrowed images from the history of art. Thereby boundaries between staging and authenticity blurred, to highlight the often unreal, sometimes suggestive atmosphere of reality.His motives as well as the titles of his works and exhibitions refer to biographical references and metaphors of his own experiences. For example: "Until it hurts", "What remains", "The presence of absence", "Staying is nowhere" or "Beauty remains".Weidner's canon of images sprang from the way of life of young people and tells of the "perceptions, longings and visions of those generations who experienced their youth in the 80s, 90s and 2000s." Therefore, Weidner's approach was very relevant for these periods and gave evidence both of an artistic consideration of actual and imaginary spaces.In essence, a melancholic perspective on the world marked Weidner’s point of view. The basic patterns in his image systems are attributed to his very own relationships. He contrasts subjects such as life and death, beauty and transience as well as questioning origin, identity and self-determination. In this sense, Weidner was not limited to portraying his own environment, but spoke of life itself. Wikipedia
Jimmy DeSana - Anti-Art
Jimmy DeSana ( 1949 –1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art scene of the 1970s and 1980s.DeSana's photography has been described as "anti-art" in its approach to capturing images of the human body, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit to purely symbolic"., William S. Burroughs wrote the introduction to his collection of photographs Submission which was self-published in 1980. His work includes the album cover for the Talking Heads album More Songs about Buildings and Food. DeSana was born in Detroit in 1950, but grew up in Atlanta. He began to take photographs being a teen, mostly photographing his friends and acquaintances naked. His early photographs were of his friends striking silly and sexy poses in houses and gardens. He moved to New York in 1973. DeSana continued to picture the human body as the primary subject. He worked in black and white till 1980, when he began to experiment with color photography. DeSana died in 1990 from AIDS related illness.Wikipedia
Masterpieces of Nature
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| NGC 7293 "This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye. The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. When sun-like stars die, they puff out their outer gaseous layers. These layers are heated by the hot core of the dead star, called a white dwarf, and shine with infrared and visible-light colors. Our own sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years."(spitzer.caltech.edu)NASA |
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| The Cat's Eye Nebula or NGC 6543, is a relatively bright planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN). It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray.Wikipedia ( Composite image using optical images from the HST and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory ) |
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| SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, was a Type Ia supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Appearing in 1604, it is the most recent supernova in our galaxy to have been unquestionably observed by the naked eye, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs (20,000 light-years) from Earth. Prior to the adoption of the current naming system for supernovae, it was named for Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who described it in De Stella Nova.(Kepler's Supernova remnant. Crédito: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/M.Burkey et al; Optical: DSS. Release date: March 18, 2013.) |
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| The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus. The current name is due to William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. Corresponding to a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054, the nebula was observed later by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical supernova explosion. Wikipedia (Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000) |
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| The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.Wikipedia / NASA / The entire Orion Nebula in a composite image of visible light and infrared; taken by Hubble Space Telescope/ |
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| NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula, Sharpless 162, or Caldwell 11, is an H II regionemission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It lies close to the direction of the open cluster Messier 52. The "bubble" is created by the stellar wind from a massive hot, 8.7 magnitude young central star, SAO 20575 (BD+60°2522). The nebula is near a giant molecular cloud which contains the expansion of the bubble nebula while itself being excited by the hot central star, causing it to glow. It was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel. The star BD+60°2522 is thought to have a mass of about 44 M☉. |
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| The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion.The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming H II region called IC 434.The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 422 parsecs or 1375 light years from Earth.It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of its resemblance to a horse's head.Wikipedia (The Horsehead Nebula. The reflection nebula NGC 2023 is in the bottom left corner and the nebula itself near the center, in the shape of the head of a horse. - Interstellar dust of the Horsehead Nebula as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope.) |
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| NGC 6302 "Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302 This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour -- fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri."/(nasa.gov) Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team/ |
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| The Andromeda Galaxy also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224 and originally the Andromeda Nebula (see below), is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (770 kiloparsecs) from Earth, and the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way.The galaxy's name stems from the area of the Earth's sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda. The virial mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is of the same order of magnitude as that of the Milky Way, at 1 trillion solar masses (2.0×1042 kilograms). The mass of either galaxy is difficult to estimate with any accuracy, but it was long thought that the Andromeda Galaxy is more massive than the Milky Way by a margin of some 25% to 50%. This has been called into question by a 2018 study which cited a lower estimate on the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy, combined with preliminary reports on a 2019 study estimating a higher mass of the Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy has a diameter of about 220,000 ly (67 kpc), making it the largest member of the Local Group at least in terms of extension, if not mass. Wikipedia |
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| Arp 273 is a pair of interacting galaxies, 300 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. It was first described in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in 1966. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, is about five times more massive than the smaller galaxy. It has a disc that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. The smaller galaxy shows distinct signs of active star formation at its nucleus, and "it is thought that the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one.Wikipedia |
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| Mayall's Object (also classified under the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 148) is the result of two colliding galaxies located 500 million light years away within the constellation of Ursa Major. It was discovered by American astronomer Nicholas U. Mayall of the Lick Observatory on 13 March 1940, using the Crossley reflector. When first discovered, Mayall's Object was described as a peculiar nebula, shaped like a question mark. Originally theorized to represent a galaxy reacting with the intergalactic medium, it is now thought to represent the collision of two galaxies, resulting in a new object consisting of a ring-shaped galaxy with a tail emerging from it. It is thought that the collision between the two galaxies created a shockwave that initially drew matter into the center which then formed the ring.Wikipedia |
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| Interacting peculiar galaxies. NGC 3808A is the face-on spiral to the right. Material bridging the galaxies can be seen and is evidence these two galaxies have passed close to each other.Edge-on spiral is a background galaxy. This image was featured on APOD Dec 9, 2015 and the APOD page has been translated into a few languages.(remote-astrophotography.com) |
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| The Tadpole Galaxy is a disrupted barred spiral galaxy located 420 million light-years from Earth in the northern constellation Draco. Its most dramatic feature is a massive trail of stars about 280,000 light-years long; the size of the galaxy has been attributed to a merger with a smaller galaxy that is believed to have occurred about 100 million years ago. The galaxy is filled with bright blue star clusters. Wikipedia |
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| The Cartwheel Galaxy (also known as ESO 350-40 or PGC 2248) is a lenticular galaxy and ring galaxy about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is an estimated 150,000 light-years diameter, and has a mass of about 2.9–4.8 × 109 solar masses; its outer ring has a circular velocity of 217 km/s. It was discovered by Fritz Zwicky in 1941. Zwicky considered his discovery to be "one of the most complicated structures awaiting its explanation on the basis of stellar dynamics." An estimation of the galaxy's span resulted in a conclusion of 150,000 light years, which is slightly smaller than the Milky Way.Wikipedia |
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| The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be 23 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195,are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions. |
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| Stephan's Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies of which four form the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. The group, visible in the constellation Pegasus, was discovered by Édouard Stephan in 1877 at the Marseille Observatory.The group is the most studied of all the compact galaxy groups. The brightest member of the visual grouping is NGC 7320 that is shown to have extensive H II regions, identified as red blobs, where active star formation is occurring. Four of the five galaxies in Stephan's Quintet form a physical association, Hickson Compact Group 92, and will likely merge with each other. Radio observations in the early 1970s revealed a mysterious filament of emission which lies in inter-galactic space between the galaxies in the group. This same region is also detected in the faint glow of ionized atomic hydrogen seen in the visible part of the spectrum as a green arc. Wikipedia |
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| Centaurus A or NGC 5128 is a galaxy in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop from his home in Parramatta, in New South Wales, Australia. There is considerable debate in the literature regarding the galaxy's fundamental properties such as its Hubble type (lenticular galaxy or a giant elliptical galaxy) and distance (10–16 million light-years).NGC 5128 is one of the closest radio galaxies to Earth, so its active galactic nucleus has been extensively studied by professional astronomers.The galaxy is also the fifth-brightest in the sky, making it an ideal amateur astronomy target, although the galaxy is only visible from low northern latitudes and the southern hemisphere. Wikipedia |
Hypervelocity Stars
As the name might suggest, these stars are incredibly fast, flying through space at speeds of up to two million miles per hour. They are thought to be a result of a close encounter with a black hole.
Laura Aguilar
Human Nature
Laura Aguilar ( 1959 – 2018) was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributes her start in photography to her brother who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College where her second solo exhibition Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell was held. She is well known for her portraits, mostly of herself and also focused upon people in marginalized communities - Latino subjects and obese people.
"Her work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Sunshine et Noir: Art in L.A. at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party” In Feminist Art History at the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; In a Different Light at the University of California, Berkeley; and Bad Girls at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She also participated in the Aperto Section of the 1993 Venice Biennale.
Photographer Laura Aguilar has investigated portraiture since she emerged in the late 1980s. Her stark black-and-white photographs document subjects whose images and stories are under-represented in mainstream culture—people of color, gays and lesbians and large people. Her portraits are known for their collaborative sensibility—the subjects are encouraged to investigate and negotiate with the artist from both sides of the lens. In the late 1990s, Aguilar turned the camera on herself, making dramatic nude self-portraits in which her body is contrasted with the rough terrain of the desert landscape and in which the body and landscape become one. The works continue her efforts to challenge societal assumptions about beauty, offering an alternative to the airbrushed, artificial depictions of women generated by advertising and media."(artpace.org/artists)
Prabuddha Dasgupta
Prabuddha Dasgupta ( 1956 – 2012) was a noted fashion and fine-art photographer from India.Known for his iconic black and white imagery, he had an extended career, primarily as a fashion photographer, spanning more than three decades. Amongst his books, he is most known for Women (1996), a collection of portraits and nudes of urban Indian women.
"Prabuddha turned a regressive situation into an opportunity to reflect on his own role as an artist. His later inquiries took the form of spiritual quests, first in his melancholic landscapes for Ladakh (2000), and then in the detailed portraits of the Goan Catholic community in Edge of Faith (2007). His approach to his subjects was full of grace, and in his lifetime, Prabuddha himself seemed like a certain embodiment of this word. The empathy that he shared with his subjects was taken to a new level with his most ambitious – though unfinished – project, The Longing, an intimate yet abstract journal of his life."(thewire.in)
"Every photograph is an elaborate conversation in itself, but Prabuddha is only listening. It is because of this that the photographer’s gaze, while soaking in these time-worn interiors and photographing these time-ridden protagonists, is non-judgmental, with great dignity. It’s almost protecting, the way he seems to look at them, the vulnerability of this community meeting his own vulnerability as an artist. His craft is carefully studied, but his vision, intuitive, without pretence. The consciousness with which every subject is photographed is palpably.
His craft is carefully studied, but his vision, intuitive, without pretence. The consciousness with which every subject is photographed is palpably engrained within every frame. And yet, this is a work that brings forth the subconscious. It’s about memory and loss, both theirs and his, and maybe our own. It is intriguing to correlate the multiple strands that run within Edge of Faith, the portraits, the interiors, the presence, the absence. Two men pose together, as do two women, they are identical seeming people posing identically, almost Arbusian in nature, and yet, both photographs completely unrelated to each other, shot at different villages at different times.
Like different stanzas of the same poem, as he had once said, or like serendipity, that beautiful, intangible occurrence, which is also the name of the art festival, where this work will be shown this month. Sensuality and grace, sensitivity and beauty, are platitudes that are often used to look back at the remarkable legacy that is PDG. But beyond it all, his journey, both in his personal projects and in his commissioned work, has always explored the delicate nature of fragility. In Edge of Faith, it is their memories that are fragile, as past tussles with present, and a generation that has lived through Portugal and India, liberation and today, ponders over its cultural identity. If the documentary nature of the project may seem a little prosaic, it is Prabuddha’s response to it that makes it poetic, whether it is the character on their faces or that, in their spaces. A wall in one photograph with its artifacts, in conversation with another wall of another photograph, both, again, unconnected, both, with their own sea of stories."(betterphotography.in)
Michael Wolf
Architecture of Density
Michael Wolf (1954 –2019) was a German artist and photographer whose work focused on daily life in big cities. Wolf won first prize in the Contemporary Issues category of the 2004 World Press Photo competition for his photographs of workers in several types of factories for an article in Stern. He lived and worked in Hong Kong and Paris.Wolf was born in 1954 in Munich, Germany, and was raised in the United States, Europe, and Canada. He attended the North Toronto Collegiate Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he obtained a degree in visual communication at the University of Essen, Germany, where he studied with Otto Steinert
Photographer who concentrated on the high-density architecture of Hong Kong
"After moving on from a successful career in photojournalism in 2003 to pursue his personal work, the photographer Michael Wolf, who has died unexpectedly aged 64, devoted himself to exploring the complex nature of life in some of the world’s largest cities. Michael was best known for his series Architecture of Density (2003-14), which focused on the facades of Hong Kong’s landmark postwar tower blocks.
These ominous concrete structures have none of the dazzling sheen of Hong Kong’s iconic harbour skyline, but rather reflect the difficult living conditions of the working class in one of the world’s densest cities. By cropping out the sky and occluding the horizon – a “no-exit” approach that he would use throughout his work – Wolf turned these buildings into seemingly infinite formal abstractions while inviting the viewer to reflect on the lives that they contain."(theguardian.com)
“Michael Wolf’s work on life in cities was always driven by a profound concern for the people living in these environments and for the consequences of massive urbanisation on contemporary civilisation,” his family said, announcing his death. “This commitment and engagement remained central throughout his career, first as a photojournalist and then as an artist.”(bjp-online.com)
Maud Sulter
Maud Sulter (19 September 1960 – 27 February 2008) was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She died in Dumfries, Scotland, in 2008 and is survived by two daughters and a son. Born in Glasgow to a Scots mother and a Ghanaian father, Maud Sulter attained a master's degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Derby.Sulter's photographic practice included contemporary portraiture and montage. Her work typically referenced historical and mythical subjects. Her photography was exhibited in across the UK and internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1987; the Johannesburg Biennial (1996); and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2003. She received a number of awards and residencies, including the British Telecom New Contemporaries Award 1990 and the Momart Fellowship at Tate Liverpool, also in 1990.Wikipedia
The settlement of Slavs and Vikings Wolin Poland
"Anyone who would like to learn about Wolin’s history and listen to the echoes of bygone days is welcome to enter the gates of the Slavs and Vikings’ Center, one of Poland’s most interesting tourist attractions. This recreated settlement offers a glimpse into the everyday life of Wolin’s inhabitants in the period from the 9th to the 12th century. Its buildings have been painstakingly recreated on the basis of archaeological research from the area of Wolin. It currently features a defensive gate with a palisade, craftsmen's shelters, a wooden wharf for boat replicas and 27 reconstructions of early medieval houses. These cottages are created in five different styles, their structure heavily inspired by the abundance of wood in the local forests and historical events, such as raids and the burning of the city. The center presents the Slavic and Scandinavian cultures, which had the most impact on the development of the city. Make no mistake, this is not a traditional museum. There are no historical items on display here, only reconstructions and stylizations of cottages, along with their furnishings. This lets you freely roam around the area, go everywhere, touch everything, sit on a bench at a table, lie down on a bed, try on costumes or armor, train archery or taste the products of old cuisine. Photos taken in such scenery are truly unique and make for wonderful souvenirs."(exarc.net)
Wang Wusheng - Black-And-White photographs of Mount Huangshan
Wang Wusheng (1945 – 2018) was a Chinese photographer known for his black-and-white photographs of Mount Huangshan.
Wang Wusheng was born 1945 in Wuhu. Anhui, China and graduated from the Department of Physics of Anhui University.Beginning in 1973, Wang worked as a photographer for a news magazine in Anhui Province, Anhui Newsphoto and Pictorial. In 1974, he started shooting Mounts Huangshan in Anhui.In 1981 he moved to Japan. He became a research member at the Japan Foundation in 1983. He studied at the Art Institute of Nihon University in Japan as he won grant from the Japan Foundation’s endowment for Japanese art studies. Beginning in 1986, he studied for three years at the Tokyo Arts University.
In 1990, he moved to the U.S, spent a year in New York City and in the 90s his career blossomed at last. In 1998, Wang Wusheng held a solo exhibition titled "Himmelsberge" at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It was the first exhibition of photography and the first solo exhibition for a living artist at the museum. Then in 2005, the Permanent Missions of China and Japan to the United Nations presented Spirit of the East a two-person exhibition of Wang Wusheng’s photographs along with paintings by the late Japanese master artist Kaii Higashiyama, in the United Nations General Assembly’s Visitor’s Lobby. This exhibition was held in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. Wikipedia
Toyo Tsuchiya - Digital Photograph - Rivington School art movement
Rivington School was a movement that emerged from the East Village art scene in the 1980s in New York City. Most of the artists of the Rivington School were either involved in welding, forging, performance or street painting.The group started in 1983 and named themselves after an abandoned public school house building located on Rivington Street. The school was located across from a club No Se No where many artists would meet and performances were held. The group is most noted for "massive junk sculpture installations on the Lower East Side," and other forms of metal public sculpture.
Toyo Tsuchiya (1948 – 23 November 2017) was a Japanese born artist and photographer and one of the early artists involved in the Rivington School art movement of the East Village art scene of New York City of the 1980s.Toyo Tsuchiya moved from Japan to New York City in 1980.He was a director of many of the performances and exhibitions at the club No Se No, which was the club that many of the Rivington School artists would meet and perform and show their art work. As a photographer, Tsuchiya was able to document much of the early history of the Rivington School. He was a member of the NO!Art movement.Wikipedia
Irving Penn
Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)was 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.
Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family[2] on June 16, 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry Penn and Sonia Greenberg. Penn's younger brother, Arthur Penn, was born in 1922 and would go on to become a film director and producer. Penn attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1934 to 1938, where he studied drawing, painting, graphics, and industrial arts under Alexey Brodovitch. While still a student, Penn worked under Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar which published several of Penn's drawings. Penn worked for two years as a freelance designer and making his first amateur photographs before taking Brodovitch's position as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn remained at Saks Fifth Avenue for a year before leaving to spend a year painting and taking photographs in Mexico and across the US. When Penn returned to New York, Alexander Liberman offered him a position as an associate in the Vogue magazine Art Department. Penn worked on layout for the magazine before Liberman asked him to try photography....Penn was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and he effectively used this simplicity. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, and Igor Stravinsky.
Penn's still life compositions are sparse and highly organized,assemblages of food or objects that articulate the abstract interplay of line and volume. Penn's photographs are composed with a great attention to detail, which continues into his craft of developing and making prints of his photographs.[citation needed] Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminum sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth that untoned silver prints lacked. His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp look.While steeped in the Modernist tradition, Penn also ventured beyond creative boundaries. The exhibition Earthly Bodies consisted of series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump; while the photographs were taken in 1949 and 1950, they were not exhibited until 1980.Wikipedia
Len Lye - Experimental Photography
Leonard Charles Huia Lye (/laɪ/; 5 July 1901 – 15 May 1980), was a Christchurch, New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture.
"Len Lye is an artist from New Zealand who is known for his experimental films, photograms and kinetic sculpture.
In the beginning he worked with the idea of motion being an artistic language and was heavily influenced by the arts of South Pacific and African countries when he visited there. He began to make experimental films without a camera by using manipulated and often destroyed film.
He used methods such as scratching the emulsion, dyes, stencil-work, air-brushes, pens, stamps, combs, surgical instruments, etc. to manipulate and texturize the film and celluloid. His film stills put together created a blur and motion of flashing lines and marks. Some of his famous films include: A Colour Box, Colour Flight, and Free Radicals.
Later in his work, he experimented with photograms in his films, and then began making separate photogram work. He started a series of photographic portraits using photograms including some well-known artists such as Georgia O'Keefe, Joan Miro and Le Corbusier. Exposing the light-senstive paper with the "sitter", as he calls them, in front of it, a lovely silhouette is left. With not much information or detail about the sitter in the silhouette, he added other elements to provide clues as to who the sitter is which often created new layers of meaning.Lye often was more concerned with the motion of an object or person than it's actual appearance. He was intrigued by the "notion of individuality" and "the physical factors" that inform each person's makeup. Many consider his work to be meditations on identity and some say that he bases his abstract art on intuition and feeling, revealing parts of the subconscious."(unccphotography.blogspot.com)
Saul Leiter - Painted Photographs
Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York school of photography
In the early 2000s, Saul Leiter came to the fore as one of the most accomplished and surprising colour photographers of the 20th century. Books were published, films made and exhibitions launched. While it was never a secret, few of those who are familiar with Leiter’s photography are aware that over the years he created, in his own unhurried way, a yet–to–be appreciated and equally formidable body of paintings and painted photographs."In his paintings Saul Leiter managed to convey the deep sense of observation characteristic of his photography. His works on paper are relatively small in scale. Most of them are abstract and somewhat flat, although occasionally a discernible figure emerges. Leiter used water-based paints (watercolor, gouache or casein) in loose and at times quasi-transparent brushstrokes, superimposing cold and warm hues to compose his fragile images....
Acknowledging these different approaches and using color as his driving force, Saul Leiter embraced photography with a painter's eye, creating honest depictions that translate his perceptions into a perceivable palette of emotions for the viewer to absorb."(.zigzags.be)
Philip Jean Hyde
"Philip Jean Hyde (1921-2006)
Born in San Francisco in 1921, Philip Hyde was a pioneer of the West Coast landscape tradition, he made his first back country fine art landscape photograph in 1942. His photographs helped protect such national treasures as the Grand Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument, Denali, Tongass National Forest, Canyonlands, the Coast Redwoods, Point Reyes, King’s Canyon, the North Cascades, Oregon Cascades, High Sierra Wilderness, Big Sur, the Wind River Range, Islands off Puerto Rico and many others. Philip Hyde trained under Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model and other definers of the medium at the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. Because of the historical significance of his work, a common misconception is that Philip Hyde was a photographer of a bygone era. In reality, he photographed for 58 years until he was 79 years old, into the new millennium. His work was always ahead of its time and went far beyond the classical landscapes for which he is known. His unique photographic vision and novel compositions are widely emulated today. He is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential of all outdoor photographers. Two of his most noted images are his 1964 color conservation icon, “Cathedral In The Desert, Glen Canyon,” that American Photo Magazine named one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th Century and “The Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza,” a vintage black and white photograph, made in what is now the Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ansel Adams said that he liked this 1950 photograph of the Minarets better than his own."(lumieregallery.net)
Edward Sheriff Curtis - Photographs of Native Americans
Edward Sheriff Curtis (February 16, 1868 – October 19, 1952) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and on Native American peoplesIn 1906, J. P. Morgan provided Curtis with $75,000 to produce a series on Native Americans. This work was to be in 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs. Morgan's funds were to be disbursed over five years and were earmarked to support only fieldwork for the books, not for writing, editing, or production of the volumes. Curtis received no salary for the project, which was to last more than 20 years. Under the terms of the arrangement, Morgan was to receive 25 sets and 500 original prints as repayment.Once Curtis had secured funding for the project, he was able to hire several employees to help him. For writing and for recording Native American languages, he hired a former journalist, William E. Myers.For general assistance with logistics and fieldwork, he hired Bill Phillips, a graduate of the University of Washington. Perhaps the most important hire for the success of the project was Frederick Webb Hodge, an anthropologist employed by the Smithsonian Institution, who had researched Native American peoples of the southwestern United States. Hodge was hired to edit the entire series.Eventually 222 complete sets were published. Curtis's goal was not just to photograph but also to document as much of Native American traditional life as possible before that way of life disappeared. He wrote in the introduction to his first volume in 1907, "The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost." Curtis made over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Native American language and music. He took over 40,000 photographic images of members of over 80 tribes. He recorded tribal lore and history, and he described traditional foods, housing, garments, recreation, ceremonies, and funeral customs. He wrote biographical sketches of tribal leaders. His material, in most cases, is the only written recorded history, although there is still a rich oral tradition that preserves history.His work was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France in 1973. Wikipedia
Blue Photography by Paul Burty Haviland
Paul Burty Haviland (17 June 1880 – 21 December 1950) was an early French-American 20th-century photographer, writer and arts critic who was closely associated with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession.
"The heir of a wealthy American family and the son of a French mother, Paul Burty Haviland studies in Paris as well as New York where he lives the life of a dandy aesthete and supports Alfred Steiglitz’s art gallery with a strong interest in the Dada and Cubist movements and participates to the avant-garde publication, Camera Work. Having been himself painted by Auguste Renoir, in 1884, he is fascinated by artistic bohemian circles and fulfills his passion for theatre, poetry and photography. Inspired by James McNeill Whistler and Japonism, the American photographer depicts foggy urban scenes but also and mostly melancholic nudes of a particular model, Florence Peterson, that evoke the work of Clarence Hudson White. In 1917, he marries René Lalique’s daughter, Suzanne and settles in the French countryside where he captures views of ruins and artists’ portraits, far from Florence’s intimate and delicate silhouette."(theredlist.com)
The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork - Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe.
The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork (Polish: zamek w Malborku; German: Ordensburg Marienburg) is a 13th-century Teutonic castle and fortress located near the town of Malbork, Poland. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.It was originally constructed by the Teutonic Knights, a German Roman Catholic religious order of crusaders, in a form of an Ordensburg fortress. The Order named it Marienburg in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. In 1466, during the division of Prussia into eastern and western parts, the castle and town became part of western Royal Prussia, a region of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It served as one of the several Polish royal residences, interrupted by several years of Swedish occupation, and fulfilling this function until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the land was reassigned to Poland. Heavily damaged during World War II, the castle was renovated under the auspices of modern-day Poland in the second half of the 20th century and most recently in 2016. Nowadays, the castle hosts exhibitions and serves as a museum.The castle is a classic example of a medieval fortress and, on its completion in 1406, was the world's largest brick castle.[3] UNESCO designated the "Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork" and the Malbork Castle Museum a World Heritage Site in December 1997.It is one of two World Heritage Sites in the region, together with the "Medieval Town of Toruń", which was founded in 1231.
Castle is also one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated on 16 September 1994. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland. Wikipedia
Jan Groover
Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American photographer who spent the last part of her life in Montpon-Menesterol, France, with her husband, a painter and critic named Bruce Boice. Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and died in 2012 at Montpon-Ménestérol.Groover received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1965 from Pratt Institute, and a Master of Arts in 1970 from Ohio State University.Groover was noted for her use of emerging color technologies. In 1979, Groover began to use platinum prints for portraits and still lifes, transforming everyday items into beautiful, formal still lifes. In 1987, critic Andy Grundberg noted in The New York Times, “In 1978 an exhibition of her dramatic still-life photographs of objects in her kitchen sink caused a sensation. When one appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine, it was a signal that photography had arrived in the art world - complete with a marketplace to support it.”Groover also used early 20th century camera technology, such as the banquet camera, for elongated, horizontal presentations of otherwise pedestrian items. In a New York Times review of Groover’s work exhibited at Janet Borden Inc., New York, in 1997, critic Roberta Miller called Groover’s work “beautiful and masterly in the extreme.”Jan Groover’s work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1987, for which an accompanying catalogue was printed. Her work has also been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.Wikipedia
Experimental Photography Todd Walker
Todd Walker (1917 – September 13, 1998) was an American photographer, printmaker and creator of artists' books who is known for his manipulated images and for his use of offset lithography to produce individual prints and limited-edition books of his work.Walker began teaching at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in 1966. His interest in creative photographic processes brought him to the attention of Robert Heinecken and Robert W. Fichter at UCLA, and the three co-taught classes for a brief time. In 1970 Walker accepted a one-year teaching position at the University of Florida. There he worked with photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Douglas Prince as well as printmaker Ken Kerslake, who was at that time using photo-etching techniques in intaglio printmaking. Walker taught a photo-printmaking class and a silkscreen class. In an interview in the late 1970s Walker said, "The contact with the ideas of the printmaker have greatly altered my attitudes toward photography, and how each discipline deals with an image." Seven years later he moved to Tucson and taught at the University of Arizona before retiring in 1985.
While in Arizona, Walker began working with some of the first Apple computers, and he used his technical skills to create some early 3-D images of his work and to create a book in which the text was mostly generated by the computer (Enthusiasm Strengthens, 1987). According to his daughter, Walker never used Photoshop or other commercial imaging software. He wrote his own computer programs and later made use of software primarily designed for cartography. With these techniques he was able to create digital works that blurred, inverted and obscured the original image, making it into an expressive rather than detailed representation of reality.Wikipedia
Ricardo Reis
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Ren Hang
Ren Hang (March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet. He was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province, in northeastern China.During Ren's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. His work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society. For these erotic undertones, he was arrested by PRC authorities several times. He received the backing of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who included Ren in his 2013 Netherlands show, Fuck Off 2 The Sequel, and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France. Ren's erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression gained him worldwide notoriety.
Ren first began taking pictures of his roommates and friends in 2007, shooting them in the nude as all were close and seeking excitement. In an interview, he also admitted: “I usually shoot my friends, because strangers make me nervous.” He arranged his subjects' naked limbs in his photographs.Ren did not consider his work inappropriate: “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.” This may account for his reticence to limit his work to indoor settings. He said there were no preferred places for him to work, as he believed anywhere was beautiful and worthy to be shot, including sparse studios, parks forests, and atop buildings. Ren's photos employ nude groups and solo portraits of men and women often contorted into highly performative positions.For example, hands reach down milky thighs, a limp penis flops onto a watermelon and a series of backsides imitate a mountain range.Questioning the purpose of his work, he once stated that his creation was a way to seek fun for both photographer and the photographed. However, once he had reached fame on an international level, he began to think deeply about his work. The British Journal of Photography quoted him as once saying: "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all." Ren also focused on marginalised people in Chinese society with gender identity disorders by 'indeterminating' sex and gender in some of his work: a group of naked bodies stacked together, men wearing silk stockings and wearing lipstick. He denied having a preference in models: “Gender… only matters to me when I’m having sex.” The international quarterly photography journal Aperture used his photo as the cover for its "Queer" theme. Commentators also see his work, the naked body and the starched penis, as evolving sexual mores and the struggle for creative and sexual freedom in a conservative, tightly controlled society.But Ren also announced "I don't try to get a message across, I don't give my works names, I don't date them. I don’t want to instill them with any vocabulary. I don't like to explain my photos or work as a whole".
Ren used a point-and-shoot camera. He would direct the models as to how to place their bodies and shoot in quick succession. Genitalia, breasts and anuses were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were rich and high in contrast, increasing visual impact. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the impact of his photographs more impressive. His work communicated a raw, stark aesthetic that countered taboos and celebrated sexuality. Someone[according to whom?] concluded it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context in which Ren expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death.Nudity is not a theme in art which can be widely accepted by the Chinese older generation. Ren's works are sometimes misinterpreted by the public as pornography. Although some[according to whom?] have written that Ren used his photographs to challenge Chinese cultural norms of shame around nudity, Ren didn't believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution. For him, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he used in his work. "Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions." He said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that the Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Ren talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, he said: "I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time after I grow up was already over that period, it was already different like everyone was already more relaxed."Wikipedia
Steven F. Arnold
Steven F. Arnold (1943-1994) was an American artist and protégé of Salvador Dalí. He was a filmmaker, photographer, painter, illustrator, set and costume designer, and assemblage artist.After graduating from high school in the spring of 1961, Arnold won a full scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. In the spring of 1964, after earning perfect grades for two years at the Institute, Arnold took a break to study abroad in Paris and enrolled at Ecole Des Beaux Arts. Feeling confined by the stiff, traditional curriculum at Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Arnold and a group of American classmates rented villas on the small island of Formentera off the coast of Spain. For the next several months the group lived communally, taking LSD every day, experimenting with paints and costumes, taking up residence in caves, and exploring the small island. Arnold recalls: “This new drug was so euphoric and visionary, so positive and mind expanding… I ascended to another dimension, one so beautiful and spiritual that I was never the same.” Arnold also began keeping sketchbooks around this time, a practice he maintained throughout his life.Returning to San Francisco in the spring of 1965, Arnold resumed his studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, turning his eye on film-making.
He wrote, directed, and designed three short films over the next two years. By late 1967 Arnold was about to receive his BFA, and his final student film, Messages, Messages, was drawing critical attention. The film went on to win invites to Cannes’ Directors' Fortnight, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Due to the critical success of their film, Arnold and collaborator Michael Wiese decided that Messages, Messages was worthy of a more elaborate hometown premiere than the San Francisco Art Institute could provide. So in February 1968, shortly before their graduation, the pair rented the Palace Theatre in San Francisco’s North Beach for the occasion. In addition to Messages, Messages, Arnold also curated “a rare collection of early surrealist films by Man Ray, Melies, and old French animations.” The evening was such a success that the theater owner offered to allow Arnold to continue holding screenings. This led to the March 1968 inauguration of Arnold’s Nocturnal Dreamshows, the first of the weekly midnight movie showcases that became nationally popular in the 1970s. The Nocturnal Dreamshows also launched The Cockettes, a psychedelic San Francisco drag troupe, into underground fame. Since 1967, Arnold had also been illustrating posters for local businesses, and was among the original group of rock poster artists in San Francisco, creating some of the first rock posters for the famed Matrix nightclub, which was later credited for originating the “San Francisco sound” of the psychedelic ’60s
After returning to California, and failing to make any progress on other film projects, Arnold was driven to find new modes of expression. So he established his Los Angeles photography studio and west coast salon, Zanzibar.[20] From 1982-89, Arnold found his niche, designing and shooting tableau-vivants for four books;[21] he left thousands of living tableau photographs and negatives unpublished. He nurtured close friendships with kindred spirits such as actress Ellen Burstyn and Simon Doonan of Barneys New York. Arnold adored the vast cross-section of society represented at his nightly Salons, but also culled inspiration from his dreams, world religions, sexuality, fine art masterpieces, Jungian archetypes, social attitudes, excess, and artifice, working all night, and waking each afternoon to sketch dreams and visions into his growing collection of sketchbooks. In addition to his photography, Arnold also translated these his drawings into a large body of paintings and assemblage sculpture between 1990 and his death in 1994.Wikipedia
Harold Eugene Edgerton
"Edward Steichen (American, 1879–1973), photographer and former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, described the work of Harold Edgerton (American, 1903–1990) as significant not only for creating a new scientific perspective, but also because it established a new photographic genre. An electrical engineer, prolific inventor, and Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Edgerton used photography to extend the capabilities of the human eye to microsecond vision, revealing aspects of reality never before seen or even imagined. His impact on photographic technology and influence on photographers can still be seen in the contemporary sphere of photography.In 1931, as a graduate student at MIT, Edgerton combined the camera with the stroboscope, a device invented in 1831 for studying objects in motion. Edgerton’s device, which formed the basis for the development of the modern electric flash, emitted a series of high-speed bursts of light from electrically controlled neon tubes that could record on film a series of stopped-action sequential images.
These extremely short flashes of light overcame the mechanical restrictions of the camera shutter, illuminating events or portions of events as brief as one three-millionth of a second in duration. This invention, states Edgerton, allowed “time itself to be chopped up into small bits and frozen so that it suits our needs and wished.”“Don’t make me out to be an artist,” stated Edgerton. “I am an engineer. I am after the facts. Only the facts.”2 It is the startling beauty of these facts discovered by Edgerton that astonishes us. Using his improved stroboscope, he could photograph motion as a single image, or in multiples of up to 600 per second. Linked to a motion picture camera, this device would produce greatly improved slow motion film footage.
The images Edgerton created celebrate the union of art and science: the crown of droplets created by a splash of milk, the perfect geometric patterns formed by a somersaulting diver before he slices into the water, a speeding bullet frozen in space as it explodes through an apple, and a football caving in from the impact of an athlete’s foot. These images all reveal the harmony and logic of natural laws, the invisible symmetry of everyday phenomena."(news.artnet.com)
John Gerald Zimmerman
John Gerald Zimmerman (30 October 1927 in Pacoima, California – 3 August 2002 in Monterey, California) was an American magazine photographer.He was among the first sports photographers to use remote controlled cameras for unique camera placements, and was "a pioneer in the use of motor-driven camera sequences, slit cameras and double-shutter designs to show athletes in motion.Zimmerman was interested in photography from an early age. His father, John L. Zimmerman, a gaffer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, taught him the basics and bought him a 4×5 view camera. He joined a photographic hobby club in junior high school and spent afternoons developing film with friends in their mothers’ kitchens.Zimmerman took a three-year photography course at John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles, where he was taught by Hollywood cinematographer Clarence Bach.After graduating high school, Zimmerman was a Navy photographer. In 1950, he landed a job as a staff photographer at the Time bureau in Washington D.C. On his first assignment on November 1, 1950, Zimmerman was driving away from the White House with a group of photographers when two Puerto Rican nationalists stormed nearby Blair House, attempting to assassinate President Truman. Hearing gunshots, the photographers rushed out of the car. Zimmerman had a camera around his neck where as the others had locked theirs in the trunk. Zimmerman got the first photos of the attack, which were published in both Time and Life.
In 1952, Zimmerman moved to Atlanta. During his time there he shot a series of noteworthy assignments for Ebony depicting the experiences of African Americans in the Jim Crow South and the Midwest.
From 1964 until his retirement in 1991, Zimmerman worked for all the major magazines, covering notable subjects from every aspect of American popular culture.Four of his Time covers are in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery: politician Jerry Brown,baseball player Rod Carew,actress Diane Lane[13] and Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill.
Photographing the Olympic Games was a constant throughout his career. He covered six Summer Olympic Games, starting with Melbourne in 1956 and ending in 1984, with four Winter Olympic Games in between. One of Zimmerman’s favorite Olympic assignments was taking the "Big Picture" for the LA Olympics in 1984. The "Big Picture" was a group portrait of 18,000 people, ranging from Mayor Tom Bradley, local community leaders, celebrities, the City Ballet and L.A. Dodgers to the UCLA Football team. It was displayed as a 30 × 80 ft. billboard at various places around the city, to welcome visitors and athletes to the Games.
On meeting Zimmerman in 1972 sports photographer Rich Clarkson said:
had known and admired him for years, watching how he did things technically that no one had ever tried before - such as modifying a Hulcher to produce beautiful pictures of runners with colors streaking from behind them as they ran. John did this at the Olympic trials in Eugene, Or. and believe it or not, he put up a black background and lights on a curve and did this very stylized illustration during an actual competition. The pictures were beautiful.Beginning in the 1970s, Zimmerman worked in the more lucrative arena of print advertising and photographed advertising campaigns for Marlboro, Ford, Chrysler, AT&T, Exxon, G.E., Pepsi and Coca-Cola, among others.Wikipedia
Elliott Erwitt
Elliott Erwitt (born Elio Romano Erwitt, 26 July 1928) is an American 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".Erwitt served as a photographer's assistant in the 1950s in the United States Army while stationed in France and Germany. He was influenced by meeting the famous photographers Edward Steichen, Robert Capa and Roy Stryker. Stryker, the former Director of the Farm Security Administration's photography department, hired Erwitt to work on a photography project for the Standard Oil Company. He then began a freelance photographer career and produced work for Collier's, Look, Life and Holiday. Erwitt was invited to become a member of Magnum Photos by the founder Robert Capa. One of the subjects Erwitt has frequently photographed in his career is dogs: they have been the subject of five of his books, Son of Bitch (1974), To the Dogs (1992), Dog Dogs (1998), Woof (2005), and Elliott Erwitt's Dogs (2008).
Erwitt has created an alter ego, the beret-wearing and pretentious "André S. Solidor" (which abbreviates to "ass") — "a contemporary artist, from one of the French colonies in the Caribbean, I forget which one" — in order to "satirise the kooky excesses of contemporary photography." His work was published in a book, The Art of André S. Solidor (2009), and exhibited in 2011 at the Paul Smith Gallery in London.
Erwitt was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and an honorary fellowship (HonFRPS) in 2002 in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography.and the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award, Lifetime Achievement category, in 2011.Wikipedia
Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) 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."Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara "Claire" (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner.[2] His family was Jewish.[3] Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neuländer Simon) from 1936.
The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles; he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Newton's parents fled to South America. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18 and left Germany on 5 December 1938. At Trieste he boarded the Conte Rosso (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis), intending to journey to China. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer
Newton was interned by British authorities while in Singapore and was sent to Australia on board the Queen Mary, arriving in Sydney on 27 September 1940.[4] Internees travelled to the camp at Tatura, Victoria by train under armed guard. He was released from internment in 1942 and briefly worked as a fruit picker in Northern Victoria. In April 1942, he enlisted with the Australian Army and worked as a truck driver. After the war in 1945, he became a British subject and changed his name to Newton in 1946. In 1948, he married actress June Browne, who performed under the stage name June Brunell. She later became a successful photographer under the ironic pseudonym Alice Springs (after Alice Springs, the central Australian town).
In 1946, Newton set up a studio in fashionable Flinders Lane in Melbourne and worked on fashion and theatre photography in the affluent postwar years. He shared his first joint exhibition in May 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers, a German refugee like himself who had also served in the same company. The exhibition of 'New Visions in Photography' was displayed at the Federal Hotel in Collins Street and was probably the first glimpse of New Objectivity photography in Australia. Newton went into partnership with Henry Talbot, a fellow German Jew who had also been interned at Tatura, and his association with the studio continued even after 1957, when he left Australia for London. The studio was renamed 'Helmut Newton and Henry Talbot'Newton's growing reputation as a fashion photographer was rewarded when he secured a commission to illustrate fashions in a special Australian supplement for Vogue magazine, published in January 1956. He won a 12-month contract with British Vogue and left for London in February 1957, leaving Talbot to manage the business. Newton left the magazine before the end of his contract and went to Paris, where he worked for French and German magazines. He returned to Melbourne in March 1959 to a contract for Australian Vogue.
Newton settled in Paris in 1961 and continued to work as a fashion photographer. His images appeared in magazines including the French edition of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylised scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts. A heart attack in 1970 reduced Newton's output, but his profile continued to increase, especially with his 1980 "Big Nudes" series, which marked the pinnacle of his erotic-urban style, underpinned with excellent technical skills. Newton also worked in portraiture and more fantastical studies.In 2009, June Browne Newton conceptualised a tribute exhibition to Newton, based on three photographers who had trained extensively under Newton: Mark Arbeit, Just Loomis, and George Holz. All three had been photography students at The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1979 when they became Newton's longtime assistants, and all three went on to independent careers. The exhibit premiered at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and combined the work of all three with personal snapshots, contact sheets, and letters from their time with Newton..Wikipedia
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle; 11 June 1815 Calcutta – 26 January 1879 Kalutara, Ceylon) was 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.Cameron's photographic career was short, spanning eleven years of her life (1864–1875). She took up photography at the relatively late age of 48, when she was given a camera as a present.Her style was not widely appreciated in her own day: her choice to use a soft focus and to treat photography as an art as well as a science, by manipulating the wet collodion process, caused her works to be viewed as "slovenly", "mistakes" and bad photography. She found more acceptance among pre-Raphaelite artists than among photographers. Her work has influenced modern photographers, especially her closely cropped portraits. Her house, Dimbola Lodge, on the Isle of Wight is open to the public.
In 1863, when Cameron was 48 years old, her daughter gave her a camera as a present, thereby starting her career as a photographer. Within a year, Cameron became a member of the Photographic Societies of London and Scotland. She remained a member of the Photographic Society, London, until her death. In her photography, Cameron strove to capture beauty. She wrote, "I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me and at length the longing has been satisfied."
"Annie, my first success", 29 January 1864. Cameron's first print with which she was satisfiedThe basic techniques of soft-focus "fancy portraits", which she later developed, were taught to her by David Wilkie Wynfield. She later wrote that "to my feeling about his beautiful photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my success".[
Lord Tennyson, her neighbour on the Isle of Wight, often brought friends to see the photographer and her works.
At the time, photography was a labour-intensive art that also was highly dependent upon crucial timing. Sometimes Cameron was obsessive about her new occupation, with subjects sitting for countless exposures in the blinding light as she laboriously coated, exposed, and processed each wet plate. The results were unconventional in their intimacy and their particular visual habit of created blur through both long exposures, where the subject moved, and leaving the lens intentionally out of focus. Other photographers strove for vastly different applications. This led some of her contemporaries to complain and even ridicule the work, but her friends and family were supportive, and she was one of the most prolific and advanced amateurs of her time. Her enthusiasm for her craft meant that her children and others sometimes tired of her endless photographing, but it also left us with some of the best of records of her children and of the many notable figures of the time who visited her.
During her career, Cameron registered each of her photographs with the copyright office and kept detailed records. Her shrewd business sense is one reason that so many of her works survive today. Another reason that many of Cameron's portraits are significant is because they are often the only existing photograph of historical figures, becoming an invaluable resource. Many paintings and drawings exist, but, at the time, photography was still a new and challenging medium for someone outside a typical portrait studio.Wikipedia
Barbara Morgan
Barbara Morgan (July 8, 1900 – August 17, 1992) was an American photographer best known for her depictions of modern dancers. She was a co-founder of the photography magazine Aperture.Morgan is known in the visual art and dance worlds for her penetrating studies of American modern dancers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and others. Morgan’s drawings, prints, watercolors and paintings were exhibited widely in California in the 1920s, and in New York and Philadelphia in the 1930s.With two young children, Douglas born in 1932 and Lloyd in 1935, Barbara sought a workable way to be both a mother and an artist. To abandon painting in favor of photography seemed extreme, but for two saving factors; first, the emergence of an idea for a future book, and second, not requiring the uninterrupted daylight hours that painting does, and one could work at night in the darkroom. Although Barbara had exposed thousands of images, she still did not consider herself a photographer because she had not completed a cycle of developing and printing her own work. Thus she set up a new studio with a darkroom at 10 East 23rd Street, overlooking Madison Square, and began experimenting with the technical and darkroom aspects of photography in 1931. Barbara learned processing from Willard and worked on other gaps in her technique, chiefly with the 4x5 Speed Graphic camera and Leica with all lenses. She worked with Harold Harvey as he was perfecting his all temperature Replenishing Fine Grain Developer 777. During this time she started to explore photomontage
In 1935 Barbara attended a performance of the young Martha Graham Dance Company. She was immediately struck with the historical and social importance of the emerging American Modern Dance movement:
“The photographers and painters who dealt with the Depression, often, it seemed to me, only added to defeatism without giving courage or hope. Yet the galvanizing protest danced by Martha Graham, Humphrey-Weidman, Tamiris and others was heartening. Often nearly starving, they never gave up, but forged life affirming dance statements of American society in stress and strain. In this role, their dance reminded me of Indian ceremonial dances which invigorate the tribe in drought and difficulty.”
Morgan conceived of her 1941 book project Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs- the year she met Graham. From 1935 through the 1945 she photographed more than 40 established dancers and choreographers, and she described her process:“To epitomize…a dance with camera, stage performances are inadequate, because in that situation one can only fortuitously record. For my interpretation it was necessary to redirect, relight, and photographically synthesize what I felt to be the core of the total dance.”
Graham and Morgan developed a relationship that would last some 60 years. Their correspondence attests to their mutual affection, trust and respect. In 1980, Graham stated:
“It is rare that even an inspired photographer possesses the demonic eye which can capture the instant of dance and transform it into timeless gesture. In Barbara Morgan I found that person. In looking at these photographs today, I feel, as I felt when I first saw them, privileged to have been a part of this collaboration. For to me, Barbara Morgan through her art reveals the inner landscape that is a dancer’s world.”
In 1945, with sponsorship by the National Gallery and the State Department, Morgan mounted the exhibition La Danza Moderna Norte-Americana: Fotografias por Barbara Morgan – 44 panel mounted enlargements, exhibited first at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, then for a South American tour.Wikipedia
William Altitude
Walter Chappell
Walter Chappell (1925 – 2000) is known for intensely provocative photographs of the human body, landscapes, and his Metaflora photographs of the auras of plant and spiritual objects.
Soon after we opened a photography space in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we heard through Dick Thibideau, a wonderful man who ran a motel/hostel and was our single source of archival mat board, that the photographer Walter Chappell was living in Northern New Mexico. Dick was willing to arrange a meeting for us with Walter at the motel in the beautiful village of Pilar, on the Rio Grande.
Having known the work of Walter Chappell, mostly through past issues of Aperture Magazine and by reputation, we were amazed to hear that somebody of his renown and stature within the photography world was living so close to Santa Fe and it seemed that this was not common knowledge. With excitement we made our trip up to Pilar to meet with Walter for an afternoon. Entering a darkened motel room, work laid out on the bed, we immediately felt Walter’s intensity, kindness, and deep spiritual nature. Of course, this carried through to the photographs he showed us, the stories he told and the conversations that began that afternoon and spanned approximately the next 20 years.
From that day forward there was never a moment that we spent with Walter that wasn’t both challenging and in ways, enlightening at the same time. There are many stories written and told about Walter’s unique life style and chosen approaches to living. But beyond all the related narratives, it must be said that Walter stands out as one of the 20th century’s important photographers. From his innovative and ground breaking works dealing with the human form in the 50’s through the spiritually charged Metaflora images, Walter was always pushing the boundaries of photographic “seeing”.
One of our greatest experiences as gallerists was sequencing the photographs for an exhibition of Walter’s work. It is said that one of the definitions of great art is that it can both transcend time and subject matter. This was true for Walter’s work. We were amazed on that afternoon that photographs as varied as nudes, water studies, rock abstractions, and Metaflora’s hung seamlessly irrespective of dates or subjects. His vision, like his life, is both unique and transcendent. Although trying at times, we were pleased and honored to have counted Walter as friend and colleague.
From 1957-1958, he studied with Minor White in Rochester, New York, and introduced White to the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Together they published a series of articles in Aperture on reading the hidden meaning of things through photographs. Chappell was curator of exhibitions and prints at the George Eastman House from 1957-1961 and helped establish the Association of Heliographers, a cooperative photography gallery on Madison Avenue.
Walter Chappell lived in New Mexico at various times in his life: the 60’s, the 80’s and then back again in the 90’s where he lived in his wonderful home in El Rito, New Mexico until his death in 2000.(photographydealers.com)
Marilyn Monroe - Black Series 1956 - Milton H. Greene
Milton H. Greene (March 14, 1922 – August 8, 1985) was an American fashion and celebrity photographer and film and television producer, best known for his photo shoots with Marilyn Monroe.Greene initially established himself in high fashion photography in the 1940s and 1950s. His fashion shots appeared in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Greene then turned to portraits of celebrities. He photographed many high-profile personalities in the 1950s and 1960s, including Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Sammy Davis, Jr., Catherine Deneuve, Marlene Dietrich, and Judy Garland.
Greene's work with Marilyn Monroe (whom he first met after shooting her for a layout for Look in 1953) changed the course of his career. The two struck up a friendship and, when Monroe left Los Angeles to study acting with Lee Strasberg in New York City, she stayed with Greene, his wife Amy and young son Joshua in Connecticut. Together with Greene, Monroe formed Marilyn Monroe Productions, a production company in an effort to gain control of her career. Greene would go on to produce Bus Stop (1956) and The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). The two also collaborated on some 53 photo sessions, some of which became well known, including "The Black Sitting". Greene's photograph for one such sitting in 1954 featuring Monroe in a ballet tutu was chosen by Time Life as one of the three most popular images of the 20th century.[6] Monroe and Greene's friendship ended after the production of The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957, and Monroe fired Greene.Wikipedia
Black and white photography Pedro Luis Raota
"Pedro Luis Raota was one of the 20th century's most important photographers. Since his first recognition in 1958, he garnered over 150 international awards and honors for his exceptional work in the humanitarian genre. His photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and are included in public and private collections around the world.
Raota's unique and memorable talent for capturing the depth of human spirit in his photographs has brought him comparisons to other legendary photographers. Like Dorothea Lange or W. Eugene Smith, this Argentinian master presents haunting portraits of a stricken humanity. Other photographs are filled with joy or comical confrontations, spontaneous "decisive moments" akin to Cartier-Bresson or Robert Doisneau. There is a rare focused intensity of spirit in nearly all Raota's portraits, which has been compared to the work of Paul Strand. In the final analysis however, these extraordinary images step beyond comparisons to other photographers and stand apart as powerful masterpieces, unique and singularly moving.
This is a personal collection of work that comes from the heart of a Latin tradition stretching back through Goya to Ribera, and forward to contemporary Spainish cinema. Emotion is conveyed through an isolated face; gestures of people pictured together bind them into interdependent relationships; suffering is contained in dignity. Raota's artistry ranges from the sweetness of young innocence to raw realism. His compositions are as classical as the lighting is dramatic, yet without artifice. Each photograph becomes a direct, spontaneous glimpse into the life of his subject. The image lingers in our memory long after viewing. This unusal body of work adds a quality of personal feeling to the contemporary world of photography.
Raota has been called "one of the ten best photographers in the world" for the significant number of distinguished honors and awards he received from juries on five continents. Raota's images possess an unmistakable and distinctive style forged from a spirit of infinite tenderness, raw realism and deep humanity. His visual trademark - light highlights against a dark background - are recognizable at first glance and leave a powerful signature across virtually all his work. Today he stands apart from the rest of the world's renowned documentary photographers for the brilliant clarity of his darkroom craft as well as the engaging humanity and sophistication of his compositions. To the end of his life, Raota painstakingly made each print individually by his own hand.
Pedro Raota was born in Argentina on April 26, 1934 in a modest country home in the Province of El Chaco. At a young age he sold his bicycle to buy a camera, determined to learn the art of photography. He quickly took up portrait photography in Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz and later moved to Villaguary where he enthusiastically set up his own studio.
In 1966, he won First Place from Spanish World magazine, which he regarded as his first major award. In 1967, he won a competition held during the Cannes Film Festival, placing second out of 2,500 photographers from around the world. Greatly encouraged, from 1968 on, his awards began to rapidly multiply, including The Condor Trophy from the Argentine Federation of Photography in Buenos Aires and The Best Graphic Photographer in the World, given at La Haya, Holland. He was invited as a Guest of Honor to South Africa, Holland, Venezuela and Spain. In 1972, he received the First Place at the London International Exhibition of Photographic Art. In 1972, he won the Charles Pompidou in Paris, France and the Charles Kingsley trophy in the World Photographic Contest in 1972 and 1976. In 1975, Raota received the Golden Medal at the International Exhibition of Photographic Journalism in the United States, and more importantly, the Pracda 75 in Moscow. This final award gave him the opportunity to spend 45 days photographing in 28 different countries. The resulting work was exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Buenos Aires eventually his images were shown around the world in countless international group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1975, he won the World Biennial EUROPA-75.
Two books of Raota's photography were published in Switzerland. The first, in 1977, was printed in five languages. He printed his first portfolio in 1979. The National Library in Paris has 60 of his photographs in their gallery. His work is included in the Hall of Fame by the Photographic Society of America. In 1981, Raota founded the Buenos Aires Institute of Photographic Art and oversaw the faculty until his death at the age of 52.In his native country Raota was already revered as the "Ansel Adams of Argentina" at the time of his death. Today Raota's original signed prints are extemely rare; each one hand printed by himself on Clorobromide paper. "(photographywest.com)
Artistic and experimental photography Zofia Rydet
"Her photographs are deceptively simple, taking an intimate, direct approach to her subject, trailing main tropes of Pictorialism, painting during the Young Poland period, abstraction and surrealism, and applying them to photography. ofia Rydet's images of children and rural families in Poland from the 1960s and 1970s are among the insightful and well-executed photographic series of postwar Poland. Born on the 5th of May 1911 in Stanisławowo, she became a member of the Gliwice Photography Association in 1954. There she met Jerzy Lewczyński link opens page in new window , Władysław Jasieński and Piotr Janik, photographers who were active in documenting changes of postwar Poland and the implementation of socialist ideals in urban planning and society.
Her first major exhibition took place in 1961, with the Little Man series of middle-class children in Poland and other socialist nations. The series was published as an album of over 140 photographs in 1965, edited by Wojciech Zamecznik, in 1965, and the book is considered one of the important albums of 20th-century Polish photography. Rydet described her approach in the series, saying she 'wanted to move away from the stereotype of a care-free angelic childhood and show the multifaceted complexity of childhood experiences and reactions. Through appropriate synthesis, I wanted to say something about mankind, because as Korczak once said 'everything that happens in the dirty adult world also happens in the children's world', alluding to the teacher and author Dr. Janusz Korczak link opens page in new window . Rydet shifted her focus to the broader sphere of children and adults between 1978 and 1989, in her Sociological Record. The series consists of tens of thousands of negatives taken in rural regions of Poland comprise the series, and present people from all walks of life in their typical surroundings. These works were characterised by particular senses of emotion, spanning the spectrum from loneliness, fear and loss, to happiness and hope. Rydet's Sociological Record has been compared to August Sander's work throughout German society in the 1920s, and to other socially minded documentary photographers.
Rydet lectured in photography at the Department of Architecture of the Silesian School of Engineering during this period. She also shifted to a more conceptual approach, manifested in the series Infinity of Long Roads and in the Silesian Suite. These works of the 1980s and 1990s were in large measure collage projects, building on and extending her earlier work.The centennial of Rydet's birth and the 50th anniversary of her first solo show occurred in 2011. Renewed interest in her work continued through 2012, with exhibitions in Polish galleries including the Asymetria Gallery in Warsaw. Asymetria represented Zofia Rydet at prestigious photography fairs between 2010 and 2012, including Paris Photo link opens page in new window . In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw held the largest exhibition of Zofia Rydet's monumental photographic project Sociological Record. The cumulative effort of the four partners (the Foundation for Visual Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Zofia Rydet Foundation, and the Museum in Gliwice) has created the possibility to digitise Sociological Record and to make the cycle available to the public almost in its entirety, complete with numerous source materials, within the online archive www.zofiarydet.com. The year 2016 will feature an international academic conference and two books related to Sociological Record (Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw/Chicago University Press and the Museum in Gliwice) published.."(Author: Agnieszka Le Nart, update: January 2016, GS. culture.pl
Sociological Record - Zofia Rydet
Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer.Bernhard was born in Berlin and studied at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1925–27.[1] As an only child, she was raised by two schoolteacher sisters and their mother. Bernhard's father, Lucian Bernhard, was known for his poster and typeface design, many of which bear his name and are still in use.
Bernhard studied art history and typography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin before moving to New York to join her father.She began teaching on an ongoing basis at the University of California in 1958, while also giving lectures, classes and workshops all over the United StatesIn 1927 Bernhard moved to New York City, where her father was already living. She worked as an assistant to Ralph Steiner in Delineator magazine, but he terminated her employment for indifferent performance. She used her severance pay to finance her own photographic equipment. By the late-1920s, while living in Manhattan, Bernhard was heavily involved in the lesbian sub-culture of the artistic community, becoming friends with photographer Berenice Abbott and her lover, critic Elizabeth McCausland. She wrote about her "bisexual escapades" in her memoir. In 1934 Bernhard began photographing women in the nude.It would be this art form for which she would eventually become best known. In 1935, she chanced to meet Edward Weston on the beach in Santa Monica. She would later say;
" I was unprepared for the experience of seeing his pictures for the first time. It was overwhelming. It was lightning in the darkness...here before me was indisputable evidence of what I had thought possible—an intensely vital artist whose medium was photography"
Bernhard was so inspired by Weston’s work that, after meeting him in 1935, she moved to California (where he lived). In 1939, Bernhard moved back to New York for eight years, during which time she met photographer Alfred Stieglitz
By 1944 she had met and became involved with artist and designer Eveline (Evelyn) Phimister. The two moved in together, and remained together for the next ten years. They first moved to Carmel, California, where Bernhard worked with Group f/64. Soon, finding Carmel a difficult place in which to earn a living, they moved to Hollywood where she fashioned a career as a commercial photographer. In 1953, they moved to San Francisco[8] where she became a colleague of photographers such as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, and Wynn Bullock.
Most of Bernhard's work is studio-based, ranging from simple still lifes to complex nudes. In the 1940s she worked with the conchologist Jean Schwengel.She worked almost exclusively in black-and-white, though there are rumours that she had done some color work as well. She also is known for her lesbian themed works, most notably Two Forms (1962). In that work, a black woman and a white woman who were real-life lovers are featured with their nude bodies pressed against one another.
A departure was a collaboration with Melvin Van Peebles (as "Melvin Van"), then a young cable car gripman (driver) in San Francisco. Van Peebles wrote the text and Bernhard took the unposed photographs for The Big Heart, a book about life on the cable cars.In the early 1980s, Bernhard started to work with Carol Williams, owner of Photography West Gallery in Carmel, California. Bernhard told Williams that she knew there would be a book of her photography after her death, but hoped one could be published during her lifetime. Williams approached New York Graphics Society, and several other photographic book publishers, but was advised that "only Ansel Adams could sell black-and-white photography books." Bernhard and Williams decided to sell five limited edition prints to raise the necessary funds to publish a superior quality of book of Ruth Bernhard nudes. The ensuing edition was produced by David Gray Gardner of Gardner Lithograph, (also the printer of Adams's books) and was called The Eternal Body. It won Photography Book of the Year in 1986 from Friends of Photography. This book was often credited by Ruth Bernhard as being an immeasurable help to her future career and public recognition. The Eternal Body was reprinted by Chronicle Books and later as a deluxe limited Centennial Edition in celebration of Ruth Bernhard's 100th birthday in October, 2005. Carol Williams credited Ruth Bernhard with encouraging her to venture into book publishing, and later published several other photographic monographs.
In the 1980s Bernhard also started to work with Joe Folberg. Folberg bought Vision Gallery from Douglas Elliott (who founded it in 1979) in San Francisco in 1982. Bernhard and Folberg worked together until Folberg's death. The gallery split with Debra Heimerdinger taking over operations in North America and Folberg's son Neil moving the "Vision Gallery" to Jerusalem. Heimerdinger has worked with Bernhard to introduce platinum prints to her portfolio. Heimerdinger sells Bernhard's prints even today.
In 1967, Bernhard began a teaching career. This same year, Bernhard met United States Air Force Colonel Price Rice, an African American man ten years younger than her, and the two became lovers. They would remain together until his death in 1999. In her 90s, Bernhard cooperated with biographer Margaretta K. Mitchell in the book Ruth Bernhard, Between Art and Life, publicly revealing her many affairs with women and men throughout her lifetime.In 1984 Ruth worked with filmmaker Robert Burrill on her autobiographic film entitled, Illuminations: Ruth Bernhard, Photographer. The film premièred in 1989 at the Kabuki theater in San Francisco and on local PBS station KQED in 1991.Bernhard was inducted into the National Women's Caucus for Art in 1981. Bernhard was hailed by Ansel Adams as "the greatest photographer of the nude"Wikipedia
Conceptual art and photography Sarah Charlesworth
Sarah Edwards Charlesworth (March 29, 1947 – June 25, 2013) was an American conceptual artist and photographer. She is considered part of The Pictures Generation, a loose-knit group of artists working in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of whom were concerned with how images shape our everyday lives and society as a whole.Charlesworth was born in East Orange, New Jersey. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1969. Her undergraduate thesis project, a work of conceptual art devoid of text, was a 50-print study of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Prior to that she studied under Douglas Huebler at Bradford College. After completing her degree, she studied briefly under the photographer Lisette Model at The New School. After college, she worked as a freelance photographer and became active in downtown Manhattan art circles
Charlesworth worked in photographic series, but stated in a 1990 interview that she had not really thought of herself as a photographer. She stated, rather, that she viewed her work as investigating questions about the world and her role in it, but realized as of that point that she had been investigating those questions through the medium of photography for the past twelve years.In 1975, Charlesworth and fellow conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth founded The Fox, a magazine dedicated to art theory, but the magazine only remained in publication until 1976.Along with Glenn O'Brien, Betsy Sussler, Liza Bear, and Michael McClard, she co-founded BOMB magazine in 1981.Charlesworth also created the cover art for the very first edition of BOMB magazine.
Charlesworth worked in series, exploring one idea to its conclusion.For a series called Modern History (1977–79), she photographed, at actual size, the front pages of 29 American and Canadian newspapers and blanked out everything except for their photographs and mastheads. For Movie-Television-News-History (1979), a part of the series, Charlesworth selected a specific event — the shooting of American journalist Bill Stewart by the Nicaraguan National Guard — and presented it as it was reported on June 21, 1979, in 27 American newspapers. All images in the final work were printed at the same size as the original newspapers.
In February 1980, Charlesworth created Stills, a series of harrowing, six-and-a-half-foot-tall photographs depicting bodies falling from buildings.When Stills was first shown in 1980 in Tony Shafrazi’s East Village apartment, it consisted of seven images. To create the series, Charlesworth scoured news wires and the archives of the New York Public Library for images of people plunging through the air, having jumped out of a windows to commit suicide or because of a catastrophe like fire. After appropriating the photograph, she would crop or tear it, often leaving the edges ragged so that it appeared to be haphazardly torn like a homemade clipping. She would then rephotograph the image and enlarge it. Charlesworth later expanded the series, printing an eighth work from her original source material in 2009 and – as a commission of the Art Institute of Chicago – creating a set of six new ones from the original transparencies that were never printed. Each gelatin silver print was made and mounted to the exact specifications of those she created in 1980.
In her “Objects of Desire” series (1983-1988), Cibachrome prints of appropriated images – typically a cutout picture of a single object, including a gold bowl and a statue of a Buddha – are photographed against bright, laminated monochrome backgrounds that match their lacquered frames.In the series Renaissance Paintings and Renaissance Drawings (both 1991), Charlesworth combined imagery from disparate Italian Renaissance paintings and drawings to make new, often ironic paintings and drawings.
Charlesworth began to photograph actual objects only in the early 1990s.Her series The Academy of Secrets is Charlesworth's attempt to convey her emotions through using abstracted images of objects that have symbolic associations. She illustrated how the way light falls on objects affects our perceptions of them as the subject of her own 2012 solo exhibition Available Light.Charlesworth held various teaching positions at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, and Hartford University. Before her death she taught Master Critique in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Program and The School of Visual Arts. A major influence on a new generation of artists, including Sara VanDerBeek and Liz Deschenes, she was appointed to the faculty of Princeton University in 2012.Wikipedia
Black and White photography Elio Ciol
Elio Ciol (born 1929) is an Italian photographer and publisher who was born in Casarsa della Delizia in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the region where he has principally lived and worked. His father was a photographer who kept a studio in their hometown and Elio was fascinated by the technical aspects and worked in the darkroom as a boy. A formative experience was when, during the Nazi occupation, a German doctor brought in films with photographs of the countryside rather than of people, "photographs that I myself should have been able to do and which I had not done or even imagined." He began practising photography at fifteen, worked full-time in the studio from nineteen, and spent an increasing amount of his free time taking photographs for his own interests. A trip to Assisi in 1951 made a great impression; Ciol subsequently spent much time there, taking many photographs.
Dissatisfied with the conventions demanded in Italian photographic contests, Ciol ambitiously entered contests abroad; in 1955 and 1956 he was encouraged by favorable mentions in the American magazine Popular Photography.
Ciol was greatly influenced by the ideas of Luigi Crocenzi, emphasizing sequence rather than single images when illustrating a book or other story (an example had been Crocenzi's Conversazione in Sicilia, with text by Elio Vittorini). Ciol moved to Milan in 1963 to work on projects for the firm of Altimani; this soon ran into financial difficulties and Ciol returned to Casarsa, but invigorated with new ideas for the illustration and layout of books. He has illustrated dozens of books since that time.
Ciol has concentrated on creating a photographic record and archive of Italian works of art, architecture, landscapes, and archaeological sites and artefacts, particularly in Friuli. His works are black and white, sometimes employing infrared-sensitive film. Some of his photographs show people so close as to be recognizable, but more often people appear as small figures within landscapes. More often still the landscapes are devoid of people.Wikipedia
Cole Weston
"Cole Weston, born on January 30, 1919 in Los Angeles, was the fourth and youngest son of famed 20th Century photographer, Edward Henry Weston. Cole received his first camera, a 4 by 5 Autograflex, from his brother Brett in 1935. Cole graduated with a degree in theater arts from the Cornish School in Seattle in 1937 and then served in the Navy during World War II as a welder and photographer. After his discharge from the Navy in 1945 Cole worked for Life Magazine. In 1946 he moved to Carmel to assist his father Edward. During this time Eastman Kodak started sending their new color film, Kodachrome, for Edward to try out. Cole took this opportunity to experiment with this new medium and eventually became one of the world’s great masters of fine art color photography.In 1957 Cole began shooting his first color photographs of the magnificent Big Sur coast, Monterey Peninsula and central California. At this time he carried on his own portrait business while assisting his ailing father, who passed away in 1958. Edward had authorized Cole to print from Edward’s negatives after his death, so Cole continued printing Edward’s work while pursuing his own fine art photography.
In 1975 Cole began lecturing and conducting workshops on his father’s photography as well as his own. With his work in the theater arts Cole was a natural when it came to teaching and lecturing and his many students still comment on what a great workshop he gave. He traveled throughout the United States, England, Europe, Russia, Mexico, New Zealand and the South Pacific photographing and inspiring others with his characteristic enthusiasm and charm.In 1988 after three decades devoted to printing his father’s work, Cole at last set aside his responsibility to Edward’s legacy and refocused on his own photography. Cole had his first solo exhibition in San Francisco in 1971. Since then, his work has been featured in more than sixty exhibitions worldwide and has been collected by museums throughout the United States and Europe. His work has been featured in numerous gallery shows and publications with three monographs and numerous articles having been published on his exquisite photography. Michael Hoffman from Aperture Publications once quoted, “In the history of photography there are but a few masters of color photography, Cole Weston is assuredly one of these masters of the medium whose dramatic powerful images are a source of great joy and pleasure”. Cole passed away from natural causes on April 20th, 2003.Like Cole, who once carried on the legacy of his father’s photography, his children have decided, as a tribute to their father, to carry on printing and to offer Trust prints of Cole’s fine color photographs. Cole Weston was a dedicated artist and master of fine photography. Hopefully the availability of modern prints will make it possible for photographic enthusiasts everywhere to continue to enjoy his life’s work."(edward-weston.com/cole-weston)
Artist and photographer Erwin Blumenfeld
Erwin Blumenfeld (1897 – 1969) was a famous American photographer of German origin.In the 1930s, he published collages mocking Adolf Hitler. In 1936, he emigrated to Paris. With the German occupation, he was interned in a concentration camp in 1940 because he was Jewish. In 1941, he somehow made his way to the United States.
In the 1940s and 1950s he became very famous for his fashion photography, working for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and also for artistic nude photography. In the 1960s, he worked on his autobiography which found no publisher because it was considered to be too ironic towards society, and was published only after his death.
Erwin Blumenfeld was a renowned photographer whose work originally appeared between 1930 and his death in 1969. He was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897, moved to the Netherlands in late 1918, and started a professional career in photography in 1934. He moved to France in 1936. From 1937 to 1939, his photographs were published in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. When the Second World War broke out, he was interned in the French camps Monthbard-Marmagne and Le Vernet as an alien, but was eventually allowed to leave for Morocco and then onto New York in 1941. He became a US citizen in 1946. His more personal work is in black and white; his commercial work in fashion, much for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, is mostly in color. In both media he was a great innovator. In black and white he did all his work personally in the dark room. In color he drew on his extensive background in classical and modern painting.He married Lena Citroen (b. 1897-d. 1994), who was a cousin of his best friend Paul Citroen, in the Netherlands in 1921, and had three children there: Lisette (May 1922-August 2011), Henry (1925-2011), and Yorick (b. 1933). Erwin's daughter Lisette was also put into a camp at Gurs when she was about 18. Erwin Blumenfeld died in Rome on 4 July 1969, and his widow Lena outlived him by twenty-five years. His son Henry recorded an oral history of his father and the family's life shortly before he died in 2011. The audio can be found online.Wikipedia
The World Bodypainting Festival
The World Bodypainting Festival (abbreviated WBF) is an annual bodypainting festival and competition used to be held in Pörtschach, Austria on lake Wörthersee. Now the WBF has changed its location and since 2017 the Festival is taking place in Klagenfurt, Austria. It attracts artists from 50 nations and attracts over 30,000 plus spectators
The WBF is held during the summer months of June/July. It attracts artists from 50 nations and attracts 30.000 plus spectators. It consists of a pre-week followed by 3 main days of the festival/competition. The pre-week consists of workshops and side events.
The workshops offer many educational programs and lessons by leading artists in brush & sponge, airbrush, special effects, beauty make-up, head dressing including colour theory and history. All workshops are run and handled under the WB Academy and are also scheduled throughout the year in various cities worldwide. Side events include parties such as the Surreal Costume Ball (Body Circus) and the newly added (Zombie Crawl) with international DJs and musical stage performances. Also included are exhibitions, gatherings, meeting points and industry discussions.
The three main days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday are open to the general public in a park also known as "Bodypaint City" where the World, Special and Amateur Awards are held. The festival is open to both adults and children and is considered a family-friendly environment. Spectators and visitors alike are able to step "into the surreal" filled with a unique world of art that excites the senses and the imagination. Visitors can also take part and express themselves in various activities throughout Bodypaint City. Artists compete on all three days with a given theme in the categories of brush & sponge, airbrush and special effects for the World Champion Award & title announced on Sunday with the special UV bodypainting World Champion Fluoro Award held and announced on Friday night. Also included is the World Facepainting Award, Armature Award, Installation Award, Special Effects Face Make-up, Make-up Battle Award and the Photo Award. All categories have separate prizes and trophies. Artists can use either male or female models. The festival is open for both adults and children, and many families come there together.The three main days of the festival also plays host to a VIP area, a bodypainting manufacture & suppliers' market, fashion & crafts market, food & beverage vendors, headline stage bands, performers and international DJs throughout various musical zones of Bodypaint City as well as the sun drenched pristine waters and beaches of lake Wörthersee. "There is something for everyone" including the closing Paint Party.
The festival was first created and launched in 1998 in Seeboden, Austria as the European Bodypainting Festival in order to promote summer tourism to the region by then tourism manager Alex Barendregt. It was a small gathering of artists and the first "boutique event" of its kind in the world. Also launched in conjunction was the WB Academy, which in 2008 was offered worldwide. As the Bodypainting Movement was growing, in 2001 Mr. Barendregt launched the WB Association followed by the launch of the WB Production in 2010.
Due to the increasing attendance of international artists and supporters to the festival, in 2004 the festival was renamed to "The World Bodypainting Festival" and in 2011 Mr. Barendregt left his position at the tourist office and moved the festival to its new home in Pörtschach, Austria on lake Wörthersee. Today it is the biggest annual event in the bodypainting culture, community and industry at large. It has become the "Center of Bodypainting" and "Home" to many. Combined with Mr. Barendregt's efforts, the WB Association, WB Production and the WB Academy are considered and responsible for providing a worldwide platform and introduction into the Art of Bodypainting.Wikipedia
Herman Leonard
Herman Leonard (March 6, 1923, in Allentown, Pennsylvania – August 14, 2010, in Los Angeles, California) was an American photographer known for his unique images of jazz icons.
"President Bill Clinton has called Herman Leonard, "The greatest jazz photographer in the history of the genre." Born March 6, 1923 and raised in Allentown, PA, at age 9, Herman Leonard witnessed an image being developed in his brother's darkroom and became enthralled with the magic of photography. As the official photographer for his high school, Herman quickly learned that with a camera in hand, he had an "open sesame" to people and events, that his shyness might have prevented him from experiencing. When it came time for college, Herman chose Ohio University, “The only university at the time that could offer me a degree in Photography”. His college studies were interrupted from 1943-1945, as Herman joined the United States Army and was sent to Burma with the 13th Mountain Medical Battalion. He had hoped to be a field photographer, but was ironically assigned as a combat anesthetist when he failed a test which required him to identify the chemical ingredients of film developer. After the war, Herman returned to college and graduated in 1947 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.
Herman's most influential teacher was master portrait photographer, Yousuf Karsh, with whom Herman spent a year as an apprentice to in Ottawa, Canada from 1947-1948. Herman assisted Karsh in the darkroom and with photographic sittings including, Martha Graham, Harry Truman, and Albert Einstein.
In 1948, Herman's passion for jazz brought him to New York City's Greenwich Village, where he set up a small studio at 220 Sullivan Street. He made his way into the swinging clubs of Broadway, 52nd Street and Harlem. With the camera as his free ticket, he offered to shoot publicity stills of the jazz artists for admission. While shooting at The Royal Roost and Birdland, he photographed and developed friendships with some of the greats of jazz history, including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and many more. Many of his photos eventually ended up on the covers of jazz albums while working for producer Norman Granz, as well as in Downbeat and Metronome magazines.In 1956 Leonard was chosen by Marlon Brando to be his personal photographer for an extensive research trip throughout the Far East. At the conclusion of the trip, Leonard had been bitten by the travel bug and headed for Paris, France. He continued to photograph the prolific jazz scene, with many of the American jazz artists now living there. Working for French recording label Barclay Records, he also photographed many French recording artists such as Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, Eddy Mitchell and Johnny Hallyday. He also became the European photographer for Playboy Magazine. Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s his work focused primarily on fashion and advertising at his studio in Paris’ chic Neuilly-sur-Seine neighborhood.
In 1980, Herman left Paris and moved to the Spanish island of Ibiza, where he remained with his family until 1988. During that time he rediscovered his jazz negatives that had been stored in a box under his bed, and in 1985 released his first book, The Eye of Jazz, published by Hachette/Filipachi Publications. In 1988 he moved to London where he had the first exhibition of his jazz photographs at the Special Photographers Company to great critical acclaim. In the first month, over 10,000 people came to view the exhibit of unseen images. The following year he premiered his first US show, which toured nationally.
After an exhibit in New Orleans in 1991, he fell in love with the city and moved there to immerse himself in its lively jazz and blues scene. He continued to exhibit his work around the world in numerous solo shows. In 1995, Herman released his second book, Jazz Memories, published by Editions Filipacchi, and in that same year was awarded an “Honorary Masters of Science in Photography” from The Brooks Institute of Photography. Other awards received at this time included the "Milt Hinton Award for Excellence in Jazz Photography," from Jazz Photographer's Association, the "Excellence in Photography Award" from the Jazz Journalists Association, and a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Downbeat Magazine in 2004.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed Herman's home and studio. The storm claimed some 8,000 silver gelatin photographs that had been hand printed by him, a master printer in his own right. As the storm blew in, Herman's crew gathered the negatives and placed them in the care of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, where they were stored in an upper level vault. Following the devastation of Katrina, Leonard moved to Studio City, California, and re-established his life and business there. In 2006, he released his third book, "Jazz, Giants, And Journeys: The Photography of Herman Leonard", published by Scala Publishers, Ltd. In the forward to the book, Quincy Jones wrote, "When people think of jazz, their mental picture is likely one of Herman's."
Herman's jazz photographs, now collector's items, are a unique record of the jazz scene of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The Smithsonian claims 155 original Herman Leonard photographic prints in its permanent collection, where they are considered as essential to American music history as Benny Goodman's clarinet or Louis Armstrong's horn. Herman's work is also represented in numerous public collections including, Jazz at Lincoln Center, NY, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA, and the George Eastman House, NY, as well as the private collections of Sir Elton John, Bruce Bernard, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and President Bill Clinton. The Herman Leonard Jazz Archive was established in 2007 and in 2008 was awarded a GRAMMY® Foundation grant for archiving and preservation. This project was successful in digitally archiving Leonard's vast catalog of over 35,000 negatives, comprising a visual documentation of America's original art form, and preserving it for future generations. Later in 2008, Herman was presented with the coveted Lucie Award for Portraiture from his dear friend Tony Bennett at an awards ceremony at Lincoln Center in NYC. Tony remarked, "He is my favorite artist of any technique, he's a painter with a camera." Herman also appeared on NBC's The Today Show, and in a BBC documentary SAVING JAZZ, which chronicled his experiences following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Leonard returned to his alma mater of Ohio University as the commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2009, and was presented with an Honorary Doctorate. (hermanleonard.com)
J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere
Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere (1930 – 2 February 2014), known as J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, was a Nigerian photographer who is known for his work with unique hairstyles found in Nigeria.Ojeikere was born in 1930 in Ovbiomu-Emai, a rural village in south-western Nigeria. He worked and lived in Ketu, Nigeria. At the age of 20 he pursued photography, which was out of the ordinary Ojeikere for people in Nigeria, especially those in his village. Cameras were not in high demand and were of low priority as they were considered a luxury. However in 1950 bought a modest Brownie D camera without flash, and had a friend teach him the fundamentals of photography.
Ojeikere started out as a darkroom assistant in 1954 at the Ministry of Information in Ibadan. After Nigeria gained its independence in 1960, Ojeikere pursued his first job as a photographer. In 1961 he became a studio photographer, under Steve Rhodes, for Television House Ibadan. From 1963 to 1975 Ojeikere worked in publicity at West Africa Publicity in Lagos. In 1967 he joined the Nigerian Arts Council. In 1968 he began one of his largest projects as he documented Nigerian hairstyles. This was a hallmark of Ojeikere's work and he printed approximately a thousand pictures of different African women's hair.A large selection of Ojeikere's work was included in the arsenale section of the 55th Venice Biennale d'arte, "Il Palazzo Enciclopedia" curated by Massimiliano Gioni in 2013.Ojeikere died on 2 February 2014, at the age of 83. He is the subject of a documentary film by Tam Fiofori entitled J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere: Master Photographer.Wikipedia
Harry Callahan
“Harry Callahan (1912-1999) is
regarded as one of the most innovative and influential artists in the
history of 20th-century US photography. Deichtorhallen Hamburg is
taking the artist’s creative intensity, the aesthetic standing his
oeuvre enjoys in the context of 20th-century US photography and the
fact that 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of his birth as an
opportunity to present his oeuvre in an extensive retrospective with
over 280 works from March 22 through June 9, 2013. The exhibition is
to date the most extensive show of his work, and includes both his
black-and-white gelatin silver prints and his color works produced
using the dye-transfer process.
Harry Callahan was one of the first to
overcome the prevailing aesthetics of Realism by advancing the New
Vision, which László Moholy-Nagy had established in the New Bauhaus
in Chicago, and Ansel Adams’ so-called “straight photography”
in an innovative, highly sensitive way. Between 1946 and 1997 the
Museum of Modern Art in New York alone honored Callahan’s
photographic oeuvre in a total of 38 exhibitions. Together with the
painter Richard Diebenkorn, Callahan represented the USA at the 1978
Venice Biennale, the first photographer ever to do so. Nonetheless,
in Europe Callahan’s multifaceted work is still considered a rarity
in the history of photography.
In addition to photographs of nature
and landscapes, Callahan’s oeuvre, spanning a period of nearly 60
years as of 1938, embraces pictures of his daily strolls through
cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Providence, Atlanta, and New York.
Portrayed frequently in very intense light, his leitmotifs were
streets, shop windows, buildings and pedestrians hurrying past. Very
early on he regarded photography as a purely artistic medium, and saw
himself as an art photographer rather than a representative of
applied photography. In later years other works, in which his wife
Eleanor and daughter Barbara were the focal point, were superseded by
another major experiment: the photographs he took on numerous trips
to France, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, and Ireland. His works document
the emergence of Modernism, which was taking an ever-greater hold on
everyday life. Relating to his three main themes, nature, the
familiar figure of his wife Eleanor, and cities, Callahan’s images
reflect his life in ever-new references that become increasingly less
interwoven with one another. At the same time they trace the social
and cultural transformation in the USA discreetly, elegantly, and
with a tendency to abstraction, recording the changes as a
seismograph does earth tremors. In his images Callahan consistently
reflects on both his own and the camera’s way of seeing.
Compiled by Sabine Schnakenberg, the
exhibition at the House of Photography continues the series of major
photographic retrospectives of internationally renowned
representatives of photographic history previously staged at the
Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, including Martin Munkacsi (2005), Lillian
Bassman, Paul Himmel (2009), and Saul Leiter (2012). The exhibition
is based on loans from two generous lenders, namely the Estate of
Harry Callahan together with the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York,
and the extensive selection of Callahan’s images from F.C.
Gundlach’s photographic collection, both those on permanent loan to
Deichtorhallen as well as those in the collection of the F.C.
Gundlach Foundation.”(artblart.com/tag)
Industrial photography Ogle Winston Link
Ogle Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer. He is best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk & Western in the United States in the late 1950s. A commercial photographer, Link helped establish rail photography as a hobby. He also pioneered night photography, producing several well known examples including Hotshot Eastbound, a photograph of a steam train passing a drive-in movie theater, and Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole showing a train crossing a bridge above children bathing.
Link and his siblings, Eleanor and Albert Jr., spent their childhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, where they lived with their parents, Albert Link, Sr. and Anne Winston Jones Link. Link's given names honor ancestors Alexander Ogle and John Winston Jones, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 19th century.Al Link taught woodworking in the New York City Public School system, and encouraged his children's interest in arts and crafts and first introduced Winston to photography.Link's early photography was created with a borrowed medium format Autographic Kodak camera. By the time he was in high school he had built his own photographic enlarger. After completing high school, Link attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, receiving a degree in civil engineering. Before his graduation in 1937, he spoke at a banquet for the institute's newspaper, where he served as photo editor. An executive from Carl Byoir's public relations firm was present and was impressed by Link's speaking ability. He offered Link a job as a photographer.
Link worked for Carl Byoir and Associates for five years, learning his trade on the job. He adapted to the technique of making posed photographs looking candid, as well as creatively emphasizing a point. On his first major assignment, to photograph part of the state of Louisiana in the summer of 1937, he found himself in New Iberia, the location where Cecil B. DeMille's 1938 movie "The Buccaneer", about Jean LaFitte was being filmed. Here he met his future first wife, a former Miss Ark-La-Tex, now actress/model/body double, Vanda Marteal Oglesby, who stood-in for lead actress Franciska Gaal. They 'took a shine' to one another and later that year she posed for some of his photographs in the French Quarter of New Orleans. They eventually married in 1942, but later divorced.[8] Some of Link's photographs from this time included an image of a man aiming a gun at a pig wearing a bulletproof vest, and one eventually known as "What Is This Girl Selling?" or "Girl on Ice," which was widely published in the United States and later featured in Life as a "classic publicity picture." According to Thomas Garver, a later assistant to Link, during his employment at Byoir's firm, Link "clearly defined a point of view and developed working methods that were to shape his entire career."
While in Staunton, Virginia, for an industrial photography job in 1955, Link's longstanding love of railroads became focused on the nearby Norfolk and Western Railway line. N&W was the last major (Class I) railroad to make the transition from steam to diesel motive power and had refined its use of steam locomotives, earning a reputation for "precision transportation." Link took his first night photograph of the road on January 21, 1955, in Waynesboro, Virginia. On May 29, 1955 the N&W announced its first conversion to diesel and Link's work became a documentation of the end of the steam era. He returned to Virginia for about twenty visits to continue photographing the N&W. His last night shot was taken in 1959 and the last of all in 1960, the year the road completed the transition to diesel, by which time he had accumulated 2400 negatives on the project.
Although it was entirely self-financed, Link's work was encouraged and facilitated by N&W officials, from President Robert Hall Smith downwards. Besides the locomotives, he captured the people of the N&W performing their jobs on the railroad and in the trackside communities. Some of his images were of the massive Roanoke Shops, where the company had long built and maintained its own locomotives.Link's images were always meticulously set up and posed, and he chose to take most of his railroad photographs at night. He said "I can't move the sun — and it's always in the wrong place — and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting." Although others, including Philip Hastings and Jim Shaughnessy, had photographed locomotives at night before, Link's vision required him to develop new techniques for flash photography of such large subjects. For instance, the movie theater image Hotshot Eastbound (Iaeger, West Virginia), photographed on August 2, 1956 [negative NW1103], used 42 #2 flashbulbs and one #0 fired simultaneously. Link, with an assistant such as George Thom, had to lug all his equipment into position and wire it up: this was done in series so any failure would prevent a picture being taken at all; and in taking night shots of moving trains the right position for the subject could only be guessed at. Link used a 4 x 5 Graphic View view camera with black and white film, from which he produced silver gelatin prints.Wikipedia
Alabama - William Christenberry
William Christenberry Jr. (November 5, 1936 – November 28, 2016) was a photographer, painter, and sculptor who worked with personal and somewhat mythical themes growing out of his childhood experiences in Hale County, Alabama
Christenberry received his bachelor's (1958) and master's (1959) degrees in fine arts from the University of Alabama, studying under abstract expressionist Melville Price. Beginning in 1968 he taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C.His artistic career began with the painting of large abstract-expressionist canvasses, but gradually he began to be drawn to material that spoke about the place of his childhood. Although he was raised in Tuscaloosa, Christenberry spent his summers with extended family in rural Hale County. After graduating from the University of Alabama and beginning a promising, if not immediately rewarding, artistic career in New York City, he came across the 1941 book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee describes in prose, and Walker Evans in photographs, the experience of living among the dirt-poor farming families of Hale County during the Great Depression. Some of Evans's photographs made a deep impression on Christenberry.
Shortly after beginning a professorship at Corcoran College, Christenberry began making annual visits to Hale County during the summer to visit family and to explore and make photographs. Originally these all were made with a Kodak Brownie camera given to him as a child, but he later moved to a large format view camera in order to capture more detail. On one occasion in 1973, Walker Evans, who had encouraged Christenberry to take his photographs seriously, accompanied him. This was Evans's first and only return to Hale County since 1936.
One of the results of this pilgrimage was a series of photographs documenting the decay of individual structures, which are photographed as nearly isolated objects. In 1974, Christenberry began translating some of these photographed buildings into detailed sculptures that accurately reproduce their state of decay and patina. Although detailed and properly proportioned, Christenberry did not refer to these creations as models, as he says they are not based on precise measurements, and he preferred that they be called sculptures. The bases for these sculptures often are set in soil taken from these places. On many of these trips, Christenberry collected old advertising signs and other found objects which inspired him. Some of these are incorporated into his work, while others hang in his studio.
Another series of works was provoked by an incident when, out of curiosity, he tried to attend a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan. Confronted at the door by a glaring masked figure, Christenberry fled. Although he destroyed his first two Klan paintings, the subject occupied him for many years, resulting in a dense multi-media construction adjacent to his studio that came to be known as the "Klan Room," which was burgled mysteriously in 1979. Christenberry largely reconstructed the room, which is filled with paintings, found objects, drawings, sculptures, dioramas, and a series of fabric dolls of Klansmen in their hooded robes.
Christenberry was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. Christenberry died in Washington, D.C. on November 28, 2016 from complications of the disease.He was 80.
Though known more as a photographer and multi-media artist than as a painter, Christenberry taught painting. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world and is the subject of several monographs.Wikipedia
Christenberry was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011. Christenberry died in Washington, D.C. on November 28, 2016 from complications of the disease.He was 80.
Though known more as a photographer and multi-media artist than as a painter, Christenberry taught painting. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows around the world and is the subject of several monographs.Wikipedia
Black and White Photography Jeanloup Sieff
Jeanloup Sieff (November 30, 1933 – September 20, 2000) was a French photographer. He was born in Paris to Polish parents. He was a photography student of Gertrude Fehr. He is famous for his portraits of politicians, famous artists, landscapes, as well as for his nudes and use of wide-angle lens and visible dodging marks. He worked mainly in black and white and for the fashion.He died in Paris.
Experimental photography Heinz Hajek-Halke
Heinz Hajek-Halke was born in Berlin on December 1, 1898, but spent his childhood in Argentina. Back in Germany, he began to study graphics in Berlin in 1915. In 1916, he served as a soldier in World War I; thereafter he continued his studies.
Hajek-Halke began to take photographs in 1924, and soon he had work with the agency "Presse-Photo". He experimented with photographic techniques – among them light montages, double exposures, photo collages and photo montages. One special technique is "combi-photography," in which Hajek-Halke mounted several negatives for one print. His pictures were innovative and made use of the newly discovered possibilities for manipulating photographs.
According to Hajek-Halke himself, he wanted "to place [...] an illusionistic actuality next to natural reality with all of the means available through advanced photographic technology, maintaining artistic principles". He worked in advertising, created reportages and took nude photographs.
In 1933, Hajek-Halke opposed the order by the NSDAP to falsify documentary films and moved to Lake Constance, where he worked with macro photographs of insects. In 1937, he created several photo reportages in Brazil. Two years later, he worked as a photographer at the Dornier-Werken in Friedrichshafen. In the last year of the war, he found himself imprisoned in France, but was able to flee soon thereafter.
Hajek-Halke was fascinated with snakes and built his own viper farm; he kept working with experimental photography. He created flexible figures out of wire which served as subjects for his photographic experiments ("light graphics"). In 1949, he met Otto Steinert, who belonged to the group "fotoform". Hajek-Halke became a member of the group for a short while, and six years later he was appointed Professor of Photography and Photographics at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
His pictures were seen at the first exhibit "subjective photography".
Hajek-Halke died in Berlin on May 11, 1983. His work connected the photography of "Neues Sehen" [New Seeing] with the experiments of the group "fotoform" and of "subjective photography" in Germany of the post-war era.(art-directory.info)
Robert Heinecken
Robert Heinecken (1931 – May 19, 2006)was an American artist who referred to himself as a "paraphotographer" because he so often made photographic images without a camera.Born in Denver in 1931, Heinecken grew up in Riverside, California, the son of a Lutheran minister. He joined the Navy in 1954 and served as a fighter pilot (though too short, he passed a height test by padding his socks with paper). Heinecken later served as an officer in the Marines, discharged as a captain in 1957.
Heinecken completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in art at UCLA, where he studied printmaking as well as photography.
Heinecken was known for appropriating and re-processing images from magazines, product packaging or television. In "Are You Rea" series from 1964 to 1968, for instance, he created a portfolio of images filled with unexpected and sometimes surreal juxtapositions by placing a single magazine page on a light table, so that the resulting contact print picks up imagery from both sides of the page.
In the late 1960s, he also began cutting up popular magazines such as Time and Vogue and inserting sexual or pornographic images into them. He would place his collage-publications back on newsstands in Los Angeles to be sold to unsuspecting buyers.
In the 1980s, he created several series on American news television that involved photographing images on the television or exposing the light of a television set directly to paper to create what he called "videograms
In 1962, he founded the photography program at UCLA. He taught there until 1991. In 1964 he helped found the Society for Photographic Education, an organization of college-level teachers. He also taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where his second wife, Joyce Neimanas, was on faculty. They split their time between the two cities for several years before they moved to New Mexico in 2004.
During his life he was mainly shown in traditional photography galleries, but two contemporary art galleries in L.A. began staging exhibitions of his work after his death: Marc Selwyn Fine Art and Cherry and Martin. Curators like Eva Respini at the Museum of Modern Art now place his work in a conceptual art lineage, associating him with Pictures Generations artists such as Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari and Richard Prince.Wikipedia
Fernand Fonssagrives
Fernand Fonssagrives (June 8, 1910 – April 23, 2003), born near Paris, France, was a photographer known for his 'beauty photography' in the early 1940s, and as the first husband of the model Lisa Fonssagrives. He died in 2003 at Little Rock, Arkansas.
Fonssagrives was a fashion photographer in the 1940s and 1950s when he took pictures for Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar magazines. At one point he was the highest paid photographer in New York. His later pictures featured female nudes with patterns of light on their skin. His photographic works are represented in Europe by Michael Hoppen Photography (London) and in the United States by Bonni Benrubi (New York) and Duncan Miller Gallery (Santa Monica). An image he created of his first wife Lisa is on the cover of the Spring Christie's photographic auction catalog (2008).
He was also an award winning sculptor working in Bronze, a painter and a writer.
Fonssagrives was married in 1935 to his first wife Lisa, whom he met at a dance school in Paris, and both became dancers. He said that he gave up dancing after he was injured in a diving accident. As a gift for recuperation Lisa gave Fernand a Rolleiflex camera. It was this that introduced him to photography, he becoming a noted photographer and her a noted model. They divorced in 1950.
Fonssagrives's second marriage—to Diane Capron, a professional figure skater and teacher—also ended in divorce. The native Frenchman lived the last 30 years of his life in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Fonssagrives was survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a sculptor and jewelry designer who is married to real estate developer Sheldon Solow, and a son from his second marriage, Marc Fonssagrives.Wikipedia
Edward Hartwig
Edward Hartwig (1909–2003) was a Polish photographer. Born on 6 September 1909 in Moscow and died on 28 October 2003 in Warsaw. His style was formed under the influence of Jan Bułhak’s work.
"He also admired other artists from the Photoclub in Vilnius. Hartwig proved himself to be a master of portraying morning fogs in the forms of impressionistic landscapes from the Lublin region. He also excelled in capturing genre scenes referring to the tradition of Polish painting. Sporadically he would take portraits in the Old Town in Lublin. His style gradually began to resemble that of the Belgian pictorialist Leonard Misonne and the Frenchman Pierre Dubreuil, who referred to Constant Troyon’s painting. Hartwig also successfully employed the so-called noble techniques such as print toning (he toned bromide prints with gold), which he used to create his photographs from Kazimierz Dolny – a town which he especially fancied. He was a prominent figure of the Lublin Photographic Society, which was founded in 1936. In 1938 the society organized the Exhibition of Polish Photography.
In the final stages of his career he experimented with colour photography. Once again he addressed the issues of the abstract image and its coexistence with the figurative form. In his artistic conception literally every representation underwent the processes of posterization and elimination of semitones. He altered negatives using various methods, which was a way of fulfilling modernity’s postulates. By doing so he followed in the footsteps of such artists as Bronisław Schlabs (fifties). Hartwig aimed to individually and characteristically aestheticize the images, which had chiefly painting qualities rather than photogenic features. This resulted in "artistic formalism" (the term was first used by Jerzy Olk). Hartwig’s works may be compared to the painting conceptions of the American Aaron Siskind, who in the fifties searched for universal values in abstract expressionism. Many of the Polish artist’s photographs are allusive abstractions or longings for abstraction, in which the realism of fragments reminds us about palpable reality (for instance people, fruit). He emphasizes the structures of given imaginary forms, the graphicness of lines, the often dark tones. This is a distinguishing feature of his experiments. The modern experiment was an important fingerpost on the very long path of the artist’s seekings. For Hartwig photography was a material used not only to posterize but also to multiply (pop-art’s influence) and to deform. In his multi-aspectual work one may also notice a fascination with the beauty of the female body, which he often juxtaposed with abstract structures. Since the fifties his name is a synonym of "artistic photography".(Author: Krzysztof Jurecki, Art. Museum in Łódź, May 2004. culture.pl/en/artist/edward-hartwig )
Alexandros Raskolnick
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David Hamilton - artistic photography
David Hamilton (15 April 1933 – 25 November 2016) was a British photographer and film director best known for his nude images of young women and girls
His artistic skills began to emerge during a job at an architect's office. At age 20, he went to Paris, where he worked as graphic designer for Peter Knapp of Elle magazine. After becoming known and successful, he was hired away from Elle by Queen magazine in London as art director. Hamilton soon realised his love for Paris, however, and after returning there became the art director of Printemps, the city's largest department store. Hamilton began photographing commercially while still employed, and the dreamy, grainy style of his images quickly brought him success.
His photographs were in demand by other magazines such as Réalités, Twen and Photo. By the end of the 1960s, Hamilton's work had a recognisable style. His further success included many dozens of photographic books with combined sales well into the millions, five feature films, countless magazine publishings and museum and gallery exhibitions. In December 1977, Images Gallery in Manhattan showed his photographs, at the same time that Bilitis was released.At that time art critic Gene Thornton wrote in The New York Times that they reveal "the kind of ideal that regularly was expressed in the great paintings of the past". Hamilton has said that his work looks for "the candor of a lost paradise". In his book Contemporary Photographers curator Christian Caujolle wrote that Hamilton worked only with two fixed devices: "a clear pictorial intention and a latent eroticism, ostensibly romantic, but asking for trouble".In 1995 Hamilton said that people "have made contradiction of nudity and purity, sensuality and innocence, grace and spontaneity. I try to harmonize them, and that's my secret and the reason for my success". Besides his main theme of depicting young women Hamilton made pictures of flowers, men, landscapes, farm animals, pigeons and photographic still lifes of fresh fruits. Several of his photographs look alike oil paintings. Most of his work gives an impression of timelessness because of the absence of cars, modern buildings and advertisement boards. In 1976 Denise Couttès explained Hamilton's phenomenal success on page 6 of The Best of David Hamilton. She wrote that his images expressed "escapism. People can only escape from the violence and cruelty of the modern world through dreams and nostalgia".
His soft focus style came back into fashion at Vogue, Elle and other fashion magazines from around 2003. Hamilton was in a relationship with Mona Kristensen, who was a model in many of his early photobooks and made her screen debut in Bilitis. Later he married Gertrude Hamilton, who co-designed his book The Age of Innocence.but they divorced amicably.
Hamilton divided his time between Saint-Tropez and Paris. Since 2005 he had been enjoying a revival in popularity. In 2006 two new books were published: David Hamilton, a collection of captioned photographs, and Erotic Tales, which contains Hamilton's fictional short stories.Wikipedia
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.
Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.
Other subjects included flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies, children, statues, and celebrities, including Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, Amanda Lear, Laurie Anderson, Joan Armatrading and Patti Smith. Smith was a longtime roommate of Mapplethorpe and a frequent subject in his photography, including a stark, iconic photograph that appears on the cover of Smith's first album, Horses. His work often made reference to religious or classical imagery, such as a portrait of Patti Smith from 1986 which recalls Albrecht Dürer's 1500 self-portrait.
Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art. He worked without apology, investing the homosexual with grandeur, masculinity, and enviable nobility. Without affectation, he created a presence that was wholly male without sacrificing feminine grace. He was not looking to make a political statement or an announcement of his evolving sexual persuasion. He was presenting something new, something not seen or explored as he saw and explored it. Robert sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, "His obscenity is never obscene."
— Patti Smith, Just Kids.Wikipedia
Photographs of nature Eliot Porter
Eliot Furness Porter (December 6, 1901 – November 2, 1990) was an American photographer best known for his color photographs of nature
An amateur photographer since childhood, he was known for photographing the Great Spruce Head Island owned by his family. Porter earned degrees in chemical engineering (A. B. 1924, Harvard College) and medicine (M.D. 1929, Harvard University), and worked as a biochemical researcher at Harvard
After meeting photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz in 1934, Porter showed his work to Stieglitz, who continued to critique Porter’s black-and-white work, taken with a Linhof view camera. In 1938, Stieglitz showed Porter's work in his New York City gallery, An American Place. The exhibit's success prompted Porter to leave Harvard in 1939 to pursue photography full-time.
It was around this period when he began to shift his attention to color film after a book proposal on birds was rejected because the publisher believed black and white wouldn't clearly differentiate the various species. Color photography up to this point was exclusively used in a documentary capacity. Porter, ever the scientist, sought to master it in an effort to get a book on birds published. In the 1940s, he began working in color with Eastman Kodak's new color film, Kodachrome to achieve this end.
Porter's reputation increased following the publication of his 1962 book, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World. Published by the Sierra Club, the book featured Porter's color nature studies of the New England woods and quotes by Henry David Thoreau.[2] A best-seller, several editions of the book have been printed. Porter served as a director of the Sierra Club from 1965 to 1971.He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.
Porter traveled extensively to photograph ecologically important and culturally significant places. He published books of photographs from Glen Canyon in Utah, Maine, Baja California, Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, East Africa, and Iceland. His cultural studies included Mexico, Egypt, China, Czechoslovakia, and ancient Greek sites. His book on Glen Canyon, The Place No One Knew, memorialized the canyon's appearance before its inundation by the Lake Powell reservoir.
James Gleick’s book Chaos: Making a New Science (1987) caused Porter to reexamine his work in the context of chaos theory. They collaborated on a project published in 1990 as Nature's Chaos, which combined his photographs with a new essay by Gleick.Porter died in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1990 and bequeathed his personal archive to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.Wikipedia
Simon Marsden
Sir Simon Neville Llewelyn Marsden, 4th Baronet (1 December 1948 – 22 January 2012) was an English photographer and author. He is known best for his uncommon black-and-white photographs of allegedly haunted houses and places throughout Europe. He succeeded his brother as baronet of Grimsby in Lincolnshire in 1997.Simon Neville Llewelyn Marsden was the younger son of Sir John Denton Marsden, 2nd Bt, and his wife Hope (née Llewelyn). The baronetcy was created in 1924 for a previous John Marsden, owner of a substantial fishing fleet in Grimsby. Marsden attended Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, as well as the University of Sorbonne.[1] From 1969, he worked as an assistant to Irish photographer Ruan O'Lochlainn, whose wife, Jackie Mackay, was a master printer from whom Marsden learned the skills of the darkroom.
The first of his works were published in photography periodicals at the end of the seventies. Two grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1975 and 1976 allowed Marsden to undertake extensive journeys throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, photographing the architectural subjects and varied landscapes he encountered.
Marsden's particular interest was "eerie" motifs like graveyards and old ruins, as well as the legends and tales that are often connected with these places. Yet the gloomy atmosphere of Marsden's pictures is not based on careful choice of the motifs alone, but to the same degree on Marsden's photography technique, which included the use of infrared film.
Marsden’s photographs already became world-famous and are exhibited at a large number of museums. Marsden released various illustrated books, and completed a variety of remittance works. The latter have, amongst other things, been used for the cover of English dark metal band Cradle of Filth's second album Dusk... and Her Embrace and Hecate Enthroned's first three releases, as well as an advertisement for the Japanese manufacturing firm Toshiba.Wikipedia
Joanna Maria Rybczyńska
Joanna Maria Rybczyńska (1960 - 2014) - Polish artist, photographer and painter. He lives and works in Warsaw.
"In years 1979-1981 worked as an artist and graphic designer in the German Institute of Culture (currently Goethe Institute) in Warsaw / Poland /. In the 1980es worked also as an artist and graphic designer in the Old Town's House of Culture in Warsaw. From 1985 she put main focus on painting (easel painting, watercolour, pastel). In the late 1980s she started her photographic work. From the year 2003 she switched from analogue to digital photography. Currently she also takes pinhole photographs.
Since 2009, she has been serving as a Secretary of the Assotiation Of Authors Polish Republic's Photoclub.
PAINTINGS: Her paintings could have been seen at individual exhibitions in Warsaw (Brama Gallery 2001, Brama Gallery 2002, Wisniowy Business Park 2002) and at prestigious International Exhibition of Contemporary European Pastel Painters EUROPASTEL (under patronage of UNESCO) in Italy (2002) and Russia (2003). Currently many works are in private collections in country and abroad (including Sweden, Austria, Germany, USA, Canada).
PHOTOGRAPHY: Photographs were exposed in Warsaw at an individual exhibitions ( Ochoty Theatre 2004, Van Golik Gallery 2009, Zapiecek Art Gallery 2009) and at many collective domestic exhibitions, and also abroad - at artistic photography salons under patronage of FIAP* and PSA** (USA, Argentine, Serbie, Canada, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Qatar, Australia, France, Turkey, China, South Africa).
In total, between years 2002-2010, she participated in 89 group and post-competition exhibitions, and has been awarded 31 prizes and distinctions (including PSA Gold Medal, two FIAP Gold Medals, AL-THANI Gold Medal, FSS Gold Medal, FIAP Bronze Medal)."(.absolutearts.com)
Carlos Bernal Iglessias
".... my artistic work, which as a document, the message of my inner world of through my art that is so transgressive that almost nobody understands … but people who have done so They call it a revelator, and so it is … because I show the intangibility of the world through the synchronicities of my life as a form of communication of the sacred with the human being ... and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Because I loved the great vision and quality of the works that you represent....."
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Rustam
My name is Rustam, one of the founders of Kalos Fund - non profit fund based in Scotland.Because of ex-real estate agentship, this genre I call "Property Art". That's are night photos of "Khao Tam Tea House & gallery" on Koh Phangan, Thailand
THE NUBA - Leni Riefenstahl
From 1962 till 1977 Leni Riefenstahl had been living as the first white woman with a special permission issued by the Sudanese government in the remote valleys of the central Sudan among the mysterious Nabu tribes, had studied their way of life and recorded it on film in pictures of unusual fascination for eternity. Particularly the circumstance that through the advance of civilization the Nuba's way of life is approaching its irreversible end is giving these picture documents a unique anthropological, ethnological and cultural-historical importance.
Who are the Nuba?
Since the outbreak of the civil war in 1983 there have been living in the central Sudan in the Kordofanian province in the Nuba mountains still between 8,000 and 10,000 Masakin Quisar Nuba of different language groups and far from any civilization out of all Nuba tribes counting about half a million people all together. The Austrian anthropologist S.F. Nadel reported that there should have existed 105 different Nuba languages, not dialects but different languages as there are in Europe.
With these sensational pictures, Leni Riefenstahl raised an everlasting monument to this no warlike people in Africa.(leni-riefenstahl.de)
Who are the Nuba?
Since the outbreak of the civil war in 1983 there have been living in the central Sudan in the Kordofanian province in the Nuba mountains still between 8,000 and 10,000 Masakin Quisar Nuba of different language groups and far from any civilization out of all Nuba tribes counting about half a million people all together. The Austrian anthropologist S.F. Nadel reported that there should have existed 105 different Nuba languages, not dialects but different languages as there are in Europe.
With these sensational pictures, Leni Riefenstahl raised an everlasting monument to this no warlike people in Africa.(leni-riefenstahl.de)
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl ( 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer, actress, dancer, and ostensible propagandist for the Nazis.
Born in 1902 Leni Riefenstahl grew up in Germany with her brother Heinz (1905–1944), who was killed on the Eastern Front in World War II. A talented swimmer and artist, she also became interested in dancing during her childhood, taking dancing lessons and performing across Europe.
Born in 1902 Leni Riefenstahl grew up in Germany with her brother Heinz (1905–1944), who was killed on the Eastern Front in World War II. A talented swimmer and artist, she also became interested in dancing during her childhood, taking dancing lessons and performing across Europe.
After seeing a promotional poster for the 1924 film Der Berg des Schicksals ("The Mountain of Destiny"), Riefenstahl was inspired to move into acting. Between 1925 and 1929, she starred in five successful motion pictures. In 1932, Riefenstahl decided to try directing with her own film called Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light"). In the 1930s, she directed Triumph des Willens ("Triumph of the Will") and Olympia, resulting in worldwide attention and acclaim. Both movies are widely considered two of the most effective, and technically innovative, propaganda films ever made. Her involvement in Triumph des Willens, however, significantly damaged her career and reputation after the war. The exact nature of her relationship with Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler remains a matter of debate, although a friendship is claimed to have existed. After the war, Riefenstahl was arrested, but classified as being a "fellow traveler" or "Nazi Sympathiser" only and was not associated with war crimes. Throughout her life, she denied having known about the Holocaust, and won nearly 50 libel cases. Besides directing, Riefenstahl released an autobiography and wrote several books on the Nuba people.
Riefenstahl died of cancer on 8 September 2003 at the age of 101 and was buried at Munich Waldfriedhof. She was praised for her body of work following her death and remains one of the most acclaimed movie directors.Wikipedia
Akira Sato - black-and-white photographs
Akira Sato ( 1930–2002) was a Japanese photographer noted for his photographs of girls and of Europe.
Satō was born on 30 July 1930 in Tokyo. While a student of economics at Yokohama National University he was an avid reader of Life and other photographic and fashion magazines at the American CIE library in Hibiya. He graduated in 1953 and one year later became a freelance photographer, specializing in fashion. From around 1956 he was caught up with new trends in photography, and he participated in the 1957 exhibition Jūnin no me subsequently joining the collective "Vivo".
Satō had a series of one-man shows starting in 1961, alongside publications within the camera magazines. He specialized in black-and-white photographs of girls: their faces in close-up, their bodies surrounded by nature.
In 1963 Satō went to the US and then Europe; he returned to Japan in 1965. Thereafter he made many trips to Europe, particularly Scandinavia and Vienna, primarily photographing in color.
Satō died on 2 April 2002.Wikipedia
Abstract Photography Pery Burge
Pery Burge (1955 – 10 February 2013) was an English artist who, during the 2000s, worked with abstract images using ink in water or ink on paper, invoking natural processes such as surface tension driven flow, gravity, turbulence, rotation and erosion.
Born Peronel Burge, she grew up in Launceston, Cornwall.[citation needed] Pery's first main interest was music, she played the piano and violin. During this time period she was also involved with scientific experiments with direction from her father. Burge developed an interest in art during her early teenage years, and was inspired by a book her mother had given her called You Are An Artist by Fred Gettings (1965). In 1972 she attended various schools before she obtained a music and art teaching certificate from Gipsy Hill College, Kingston. She continued her education at the Gipsy Hill College, Kingston to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree.[citation needed] Gipsy Hill College merged with Kingston University in 1992.
In 2006, Pery Burge developed a new brushless art technique, which lead to experimenting with moving substrate. Burge found that ink in water, when using different surface tension, gave a colorful flow and movement, which she calls "Inkplosions".* Once this technique was mastered, Pery began photographing the sequences of the changing flow. Thus creating color variations that could be controlled by the surface tension. She presented her work at the 12th International Symposium for Flow Visualization(ISFV12) Göttingen, Germany, 2006.Wikipedia
Ian Cuttler
Ian Cuttler Sala (1971–2014) was a Mexican art director, photographer and graphic design artist.Ian Cuttler was born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1971. He lived with his brother Alex and two parents. His mother was crowned Miss Chile in 1968. He studied Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, (1991–1996). From 1991 to 1993 he co-owned Alebrije Estudio. In 1996, he moved to New York, New York City where he worked for Sony Music from September 1996 to January 2006. As an Art Director he created visual art campaigns for artists like Beyoncé, Ricky Martin, Billy Joel, Mariah Carey, Julio Iglesias, Marc Anthony and Destiny's Child.
In 2000, he was nominated to the Grammy Award for the Best Boxed Recording Package for Louis Armstrong: "The Complete Hot Five And Hot Seven Recordings". He was awarded the Grammy for the Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package for Johnny Cash's "The Legend" box set in the 48th Annual Grammy Awards. In January 2006, he left Sony Music to establish his own studio: Ian Cuttler Photography where he worked with prominent firms.He died in a car accident in Los Angeles, California, on February 23, 2014.Wikipedia
Prabuddha Dasgupta
Prabuddha Dasgupta (21 September 1956 – 12 August 2012) was a noted fashion and fine-art photographer from India.Known for his iconic black and white imagery, he had an extended career, primarily as a fashion photographer, spanning more than three decades.Amongst his books, he is most known for Women (1996), a collection of portraits and nudes of urban Indian women.
Masumi Hayashi
Dr. Masumi Hayashi (September 3, 1945 – August 17, 2006) was an American photographer and artist who taught art at Cleveland State University, in Cleveland, Ohio, for 24 years. She won a Cleveland Arts Prize; three Ohio Arts Council awards; a Fulbright fellowship; awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, and Florida Arts Council; as well as a 1997 Civil Liberties Educational Fund research grant.
Dr. Hayashi created a large body of fine art "panoramic photo-collage" or photo collage involving shots taken on a tripod in successive rings, and later assembled as a more-or-less than 360 degree view. Of the over 200 pieces she created in this format, primary subject matter generally fit into the following series: WWII internment camps of Americans of Japanese ancestry, post-industrial landscapes, EPA Superfund sites, abandoned prisons, war and military sites, commissions, city works, and sacred architectures. In 2004, she launched Masumimuseum.com, which is now an online archive of her work.
Masumi Hayashi is perhaps best known for creating striking panoramic photocollages, using smaller color photographs (typically 4-by-6-inch prints) like tiles in a mosaic. Many of these large panoramic pieces involve more than one hundred smaller photographic prints; the rotational scope of the assembled collage can be 360 degrees or even 540 degrees. Much of her work explores socially uncomfortable spaces, including prisons, relocation camps, and Superfund cleanup sites.Later in her career, her artwork reflected a deep interest in sacred sites, and she traveled several times to India and other places in Asia, to photograph spiritually significant spaces.Wikipedia
Ernst Haas
Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921 – September 12, 1986) was a photojournalist and a pioneering color photographer. During his 40-year career, the Austrian-born artist bridged the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a medium for expression and creativity. In addition to his prolific coverage of events around the globe after World War II, Haas was an early innovator in color photography. His images were widely disseminated by magazines like Life and Vogue and, in 1962, were the subject of the first single-artist exhibition of color photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He served as president of the cooperative Magnum Photos, and his book The Creation (1971) was one of the most successful photography books ever, selling 350,000 copies.
Though Haas continued to use black-and-white film for much of his career, color film and visual experimentalism became integral to his photography. He frequently employed techniques like shallow depth of field, selective focus, and blurred motion to create evocative, metaphorical works. He became interested in, as he put it, "transforming an object from what it is to what you want it to be."Beyond the physical place, person, or object he depicted, Haas hoped to reflect the joy of looking and of human experience.
Haas supported his adventurous personal work with commercially viable photojournalism, advertising, and motion picture stills photography. While on such assignments, he would make his own photographs, translating his passion for poetry, music, painting, and adventure into color imagery. His reputation on the rise, Haas traveled the world, photographing the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Southeast Asia in expressionistic color.
In the late 1940s, Haas switched from his medium format Rolleiflex to the smaller 35mm Leica rangefinder camera, which he used consistently for the rest of his career.Once he began working in color, he most often used Kodachrome, known for its rich, saturated colors. To print his color work, Haas used the dye transfer process whenever possible. An expensive, complex process most frequently used at the time for advertising, dye transfer allowed for great control over color hue and saturation.
As the technology of color photography evolved and improved during this period, audience interest in color imagery increased. Many of the magazines that published Haas’ work, such as Life, improved the quality of their color reproduction, and increasingly sought to include his work in the medium. Despite this progress, many photographers, curators, and historians were initially reluctant to consider color photography as art, given the technology’s commercial origins.Wikipedia
Poetry of everyday Marie Šechtlová
Marie Šechtlová (March 25, 1928 Chomutov – July 5, 2008 Prague) was a Czech photographer, one of the proponents of the "poetry of everyday" style.
Shinzo Maeda
Shinzo Maeda (1922–1998) was a Japanese photographer famous for landscape photographs and movies.
He published 46 photography books in Japan, and founded the Tankei Photo Agency Co. The Shinzo Maeda Photo Art Gallery in Biei, Hokkaidō, opened in 1987, and exhibits a number of his Hokkaidō photographs.
One of his movies, Tower on the Hill of Japan's Biei region, is often shown in HDTV format.Wikipedia
Edward Henry Weston
"Edward Henry Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Chicago where he attended Oakland Grammar School. He began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets and funerals. Realizing the need for formal training, in 1908 Weston returned east and attended the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois. He completed the 12-month course in six months and returned to California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing.) Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler (1910), Theodore Brett (1911), Laurence Neil (1916) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. Weston also authored many articles himself for many of these publications. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.” Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his “Daybooks.” They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s.
In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and sharper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality. Weston later wrote, “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Weston also traveled to New York City this same year, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe.In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. It was also here that famous artists; Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco hailed Weston as the master of 20th century art.
After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California. Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936. Following the receipt of this fellowship Weston spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson. Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and in 1948 shot his last photograph of Point Lobos. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art, New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. Over the next 10 years of progressively incapacitating illness, Weston supervised the printing of his prints by his sons, Brett and Cole. His 50th Anniversary Portfolio was published in 1952 with photographs printed by Brett. An even larger printing project took place between1952 and 1955. Brett printed what was known as the Project Prints. A series of 8 -10 prints from 832 negatives considered Edward’s lifetime best. The Smithsonian Institution held
the show, “The World of Edward Weston” in 1956 paying tribute to his remarkable accomplishments in American photography. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, California. Weston’s ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos."(edward-weston.com)
Africa - Kiripi Katembo
Kiripi Katembo, also known as Kiripi Katembo Siku, (June 20, 1979 – August 5, 2015) was a Congolese photographer, documentary filmmaker and painter. Katembo's short films, photography and other projects focused on the daily lives of the people of Kinshasa, as well as the economic and social challenges facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was also a founding director of Mutotu Productions, his film production company, and the executive director of Yango Biennale, based in Kinshasa.
Katembo was born on June 20, 1979, in Goma, Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).He attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa
Katembo, a noted Congolese photographer, was best known for his series, Un regard, released in 2009. The exhibition used a photography technique called mirroring. In Un regard, Katembo photographed his subjects by capturing their reflections in puddles of water found on the streets of Kinshasa. Katembo explained his goals for Un regard in an interview, "Photography also provides a way of seeing beyond reflection as it opens up a poetic window on another world, the world in which I live. I want each image to tell of the children born here who have to grow up surrounded by pools of water, and of the families who survive while others leave to live in exile. To me, this is one way of campaigning for a healthier environment and to denounce through images what Kinshasa’s inhabitants see as fate."
In a 2015 interview with Jenny Stevens of The Guardian, Kitembo also explained that the Congolese, including Kinshasaians, don't usually like having the picture taken, noting .that a photographer usually has to ask permission. It was one of then reasons Kitembo utilized the mirroring of puddles in Un regard, saying "That’s why I started shooting reflections – it was a way to document people going about their lives."
Katembo's work has been featured at Bamako Encounters, the Royal Museum for Central Africa, the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, and the TAZ in Ostend, Belgium. Photos from Un regard collection were on display as part of the "Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko" exhibition at the Foundation Cartier in Paris at the time of his death in 2015.
He also designed the official poster for the 67th Festival d'Avignon in 2013
He was the founder of Yebela, an art collective in Kinshasa.Wikipedia
Leila Alaoui
Leila Alaoui (10 July 1982 – 18 January 2016) was a French-Moroccan photographer and video artist.She worked as a commercial photographer for magazines and NGOs and completed assignments on refugees. Her work was exhibited widely and is held in the collection of Qatar Museum. Alaoui died from injuries suffered in a terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Alaoui was born in Paris to a Moroccan father and a French mother, and grew up in Marrakesh, Morocco.During her childhood and adolescence, she was regularly exposed to tragic stories of migrants drowning at sea while undertaking hazardous journeys, which she interpreted as stories of social injustice.When Alaoui turned 18, she moved to New York City to study photography at the City University of New York.Alaoui felt that studying in the United States allowed her to become "even more exposed to questions of belonging and identity construction."She returned to Morocco in 2008.
Alaoui believed that photography and art could be used for social activism, and should be used for "reflecting and questioning society". As a result, she chose to focus her work on social and national realities of cultural identity and diversity, migration and displacement.To do this, she used image creation, reports and studio video installations. One of her commonly used techniques was to set up a portable studio in a public place such as a market square and to invite interested passers-by to be photographed. Alaoui stated that her inspiration for this type of portrait photography came from Robert Frank's portrayal of Americans in the post-war era, such as in The Americans (1958).Alaoui often emphasizes her subjects, minimizing the background of some of her portraits.
Art critics described her work as "post-Oriental", referring to the theory of Orientalism proposed by Edward Said.
Alaoui was hired by UN Women and Amnesty International to work on a photographic assignment on women's rights in Burkina Faso. On January 16, 2016, during her first week working on the assignment, she was seriously wounded by gunshots while sitting in a parked car with her driver outside the Cappuccino cafe whilst gunmen attacked the Cappucino and the Splendid Hotel. Mahamadi Ouédraogo, the driver, sustained critical injuries and died in the vehicle. Alaoui was quickly taken to a hospital and seemed initially in a stable condition following an operation. She died three days later of a heart attack.Her remains were flown to Morocco at the expense of King Mohammed VI of Morocco.On her death, the director of the Maison européenne de la photographie and the president of Arab World Institute made a joint statement praising her work giving "a voice to the voiceless"and noting that she was "one of the most promising photographers of her generation.Wikipedia
Jean-Marc Caracci
GREEN
Website
Miroslav Tichý
Miroslav Tichý (November 20, 1926 – April 12, 2011) was a photographer who from the 1960s until 1985 took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjov in the Czech Republic, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials
During the years he wandered through Kyjov taking photographs with his crude cameras, the tall, shabby Tichý was tolerated by the townspeople but regarded as an eccentric. He shot about 90 pictures a day, returning to his disordered home to develop and print them.
Homemade telephoto lenses allowed him to work unnoticed at a distance from his subjects. He frequented the streets, the bus station, the main square, the park across from the town swimming pool, stealing intimate glimpses of the women of Kyjov. Although he was not permitted to go to the pool, he could photograph undisturbed through the wire fence. The fence often appears in his pictures, its presence adding a suggestion of forbidden fruit.
According to a review by R. Wayne Parsons published in The New York Photo Review,
We see women photographed from the rear, from the front, from the side; we see their feet, legs, buttocks, backs, faces, as well as complete bodies [as when drawing a nude at the Academy]; we see them walking, standing, sitting, bending over, reclining. There are a few nudes, though the poor image quality sometimes makes it difficult to determine if we are looking at a nude or a woman with not much on. [...] Whatever eroticism is present is limited to that of the voyeur; these women are not inviting us into their world.
Tichý's pictures were created for his own viewing pleasure, not for sale or exhibition. Each negative was printed only once
Tichý's subtle photographs use themes of movement, composition and contrast, but the main theme is an obsession with the female body. Technically, his pictures are full of mistakes that compound the built-in limitations of his equipment — underexposed or overexposed, out of focus, blemished by dust in the camera, stained by careless darkroom processing. Tichý explains, "A mistake. That's what makes the poetry.Wikipedia
George Stein
Michigan City, Indiana, USA
Loose Goose Art
1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
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Sam Haskins
Dr. Masumi Hayashi (September 3, 1945 – August 17, 2006) was an American photographer and artist who taught art at Cleveland State University, in Cleveland, Ohio, for 24 years. She won a Cleveland Arts Prize; three Ohio Arts Council awards; a Fulbright fellowship; awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest, and Florida Arts Council; as well as a 1997 Civil Liberties Educational Fund research grant.
Dr. Hayashi created a large body of fine art "panoramic photo-collage" or photo collage involving shots taken on a tripod in successive rings, and later assembled as a more-or-less than 360 degree view. Of the over 200 pieces she created in this format, primary subject matter generally fit into the following series: WWII internment camps of Americans of Japanese ancestry, post-industrial landscapes, EPA Superfund sites, abandoned prisons, war and military sites, commissions, city works, and sacred architectures. In 2004, she launched Masumimuseum.com, which is now an online archive of her work.
Masumi Hayashi is perhaps best known for creating striking panoramic photocollages, using smaller color photographs (typically 4-by-6-inch prints) like tiles in a mosaic. Many of these large panoramic pieces involve more than one hundred smaller photographic prints; the rotational scope of the assembled collage can be 360 degrees or even 540 degrees. Much of her work explores socially uncomfortable spaces, including prisons, relocation camps, and Superfund cleanup sites.Later in her career, her artwork reflected a deep interest in sacred sites, and she traveled several times to India and other places in Asia, to photograph spiritually significant spaces.Wikipedia
Ernst Haas
Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921 – September 12, 1986) was a photojournalist and a pioneering color photographer. During his 40-year career, the Austrian-born artist bridged the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a medium for expression and creativity. In addition to his prolific coverage of events around the globe after World War II, Haas was an early innovator in color photography. His images were widely disseminated by magazines like Life and Vogue and, in 1962, were the subject of the first single-artist exhibition of color photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He served as president of the cooperative Magnum Photos, and his book The Creation (1971) was one of the most successful photography books ever, selling 350,000 copies.
Though Haas continued to use black-and-white film for much of his career, color film and visual experimentalism became integral to his photography. He frequently employed techniques like shallow depth of field, selective focus, and blurred motion to create evocative, metaphorical works. He became interested in, as he put it, "transforming an object from what it is to what you want it to be."Beyond the physical place, person, or object he depicted, Haas hoped to reflect the joy of looking and of human experience.
Haas supported his adventurous personal work with commercially viable photojournalism, advertising, and motion picture stills photography. While on such assignments, he would make his own photographs, translating his passion for poetry, music, painting, and adventure into color imagery. His reputation on the rise, Haas traveled the world, photographing the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Southeast Asia in expressionistic color.
In the late 1940s, Haas switched from his medium format Rolleiflex to the smaller 35mm Leica rangefinder camera, which he used consistently for the rest of his career.Once he began working in color, he most often used Kodachrome, known for its rich, saturated colors. To print his color work, Haas used the dye transfer process whenever possible. An expensive, complex process most frequently used at the time for advertising, dye transfer allowed for great control over color hue and saturation.
As the technology of color photography evolved and improved during this period, audience interest in color imagery increased. Many of the magazines that published Haas’ work, such as Life, improved the quality of their color reproduction, and increasingly sought to include his work in the medium. Despite this progress, many photographers, curators, and historians were initially reluctant to consider color photography as art, given the technology’s commercial origins.Wikipedia
Poetry of everyday Marie Šechtlová
Marie Šechtlová (March 25, 1928 Chomutov – July 5, 2008 Prague) was a Czech photographer, one of the proponents of the "poetry of everyday" style.
Shinzo Maeda
Shinzo Maeda (1922–1998) was a Japanese photographer famous for landscape photographs and movies.
He published 46 photography books in Japan, and founded the Tankei Photo Agency Co. The Shinzo Maeda Photo Art Gallery in Biei, Hokkaidō, opened in 1987, and exhibits a number of his Hokkaidō photographs.
One of his movies, Tower on the Hill of Japan's Biei region, is often shown in HDTV format.Wikipedia
Edward Henry Weston
"Edward Henry Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Chicago where he attended Oakland Grammar School. He began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets and funerals. Realizing the need for formal training, in 1908 Weston returned east and attended the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois. He completed the 12-month course in six months and returned to California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing.) Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler (1910), Theodore Brett (1911), Laurence Neil (1916) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. Weston also authored many articles himself for many of these publications. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.” Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his “Daybooks.” They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s.
In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and sharper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality. Weston later wrote, “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Weston also traveled to New York City this same year, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe.In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. It was also here that famous artists; Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco hailed Weston as the master of 20th century art.
After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California. Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936. Following the receipt of this fellowship Weston spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson. Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and in 1948 shot his last photograph of Point Lobos. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art, New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. Over the next 10 years of progressively incapacitating illness, Weston supervised the printing of his prints by his sons, Brett and Cole. His 50th Anniversary Portfolio was published in 1952 with photographs printed by Brett. An even larger printing project took place between1952 and 1955. Brett printed what was known as the Project Prints. A series of 8 -10 prints from 832 negatives considered Edward’s lifetime best. The Smithsonian Institution held
the show, “The World of Edward Weston” in 1956 paying tribute to his remarkable accomplishments in American photography. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, California. Weston’s ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos."(edward-weston.com)
Africa - Kiripi Katembo
Kiripi Katembo, also known as Kiripi Katembo Siku, (June 20, 1979 – August 5, 2015) was a Congolese photographer, documentary filmmaker and painter. Katembo's short films, photography and other projects focused on the daily lives of the people of Kinshasa, as well as the economic and social challenges facing the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was also a founding director of Mutotu Productions, his film production company, and the executive director of Yango Biennale, based in Kinshasa.
Katembo was born on June 20, 1979, in Goma, Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo).He attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa
Katembo, a noted Congolese photographer, was best known for his series, Un regard, released in 2009. The exhibition used a photography technique called mirroring. In Un regard, Katembo photographed his subjects by capturing their reflections in puddles of water found on the streets of Kinshasa. Katembo explained his goals for Un regard in an interview, "Photography also provides a way of seeing beyond reflection as it opens up a poetic window on another world, the world in which I live. I want each image to tell of the children born here who have to grow up surrounded by pools of water, and of the families who survive while others leave to live in exile. To me, this is one way of campaigning for a healthier environment and to denounce through images what Kinshasa’s inhabitants see as fate."
In a 2015 interview with Jenny Stevens of The Guardian, Kitembo also explained that the Congolese, including Kinshasaians, don't usually like having the picture taken, noting .that a photographer usually has to ask permission. It was one of then reasons Kitembo utilized the mirroring of puddles in Un regard, saying "That’s why I started shooting reflections – it was a way to document people going about their lives."
Katembo's work has been featured at Bamako Encounters, the Royal Museum for Central Africa, the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, and the TAZ in Ostend, Belgium. Photos from Un regard collection were on display as part of the "Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko" exhibition at the Foundation Cartier in Paris at the time of his death in 2015.
He also designed the official poster for the 67th Festival d'Avignon in 2013
He was the founder of Yebela, an art collective in Kinshasa.Wikipedia
Leila Alaoui
Leila Alaoui (10 July 1982 – 18 January 2016) was a French-Moroccan photographer and video artist.She worked as a commercial photographer for magazines and NGOs and completed assignments on refugees. Her work was exhibited widely and is held in the collection of Qatar Museum. Alaoui died from injuries suffered in a terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Alaoui was born in Paris to a Moroccan father and a French mother, and grew up in Marrakesh, Morocco.During her childhood and adolescence, she was regularly exposed to tragic stories of migrants drowning at sea while undertaking hazardous journeys, which she interpreted as stories of social injustice.When Alaoui turned 18, she moved to New York City to study photography at the City University of New York.Alaoui felt that studying in the United States allowed her to become "even more exposed to questions of belonging and identity construction."She returned to Morocco in 2008.
Alaoui believed that photography and art could be used for social activism, and should be used for "reflecting and questioning society". As a result, she chose to focus her work on social and national realities of cultural identity and diversity, migration and displacement.To do this, she used image creation, reports and studio video installations. One of her commonly used techniques was to set up a portable studio in a public place such as a market square and to invite interested passers-by to be photographed. Alaoui stated that her inspiration for this type of portrait photography came from Robert Frank's portrayal of Americans in the post-war era, such as in The Americans (1958).Alaoui often emphasizes her subjects, minimizing the background of some of her portraits.
Art critics described her work as "post-Oriental", referring to the theory of Orientalism proposed by Edward Said.
Alaoui was hired by UN Women and Amnesty International to work on a photographic assignment on women's rights in Burkina Faso. On January 16, 2016, during her first week working on the assignment, she was seriously wounded by gunshots while sitting in a parked car with her driver outside the Cappuccino cafe whilst gunmen attacked the Cappucino and the Splendid Hotel. Mahamadi Ouédraogo, the driver, sustained critical injuries and died in the vehicle. Alaoui was quickly taken to a hospital and seemed initially in a stable condition following an operation. She died three days later of a heart attack.Her remains were flown to Morocco at the expense of King Mohammed VI of Morocco.On her death, the director of the Maison européenne de la photographie and the president of Arab World Institute made a joint statement praising her work giving "a voice to the voiceless"and noting that she was "one of the most promising photographers of her generation.Wikipedia
Jean-Marc Caracci
GREEN
Website
Miroslav Tichý
Miroslav Tichý (November 20, 1926 – April 12, 2011) was a photographer who from the 1960s until 1985 took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjov in the Czech Republic, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials
During the years he wandered through Kyjov taking photographs with his crude cameras, the tall, shabby Tichý was tolerated by the townspeople but regarded as an eccentric. He shot about 90 pictures a day, returning to his disordered home to develop and print them.
Homemade telephoto lenses allowed him to work unnoticed at a distance from his subjects. He frequented the streets, the bus station, the main square, the park across from the town swimming pool, stealing intimate glimpses of the women of Kyjov. Although he was not permitted to go to the pool, he could photograph undisturbed through the wire fence. The fence often appears in his pictures, its presence adding a suggestion of forbidden fruit.
According to a review by R. Wayne Parsons published in The New York Photo Review,
We see women photographed from the rear, from the front, from the side; we see their feet, legs, buttocks, backs, faces, as well as complete bodies [as when drawing a nude at the Academy]; we see them walking, standing, sitting, bending over, reclining. There are a few nudes, though the poor image quality sometimes makes it difficult to determine if we are looking at a nude or a woman with not much on. [...] Whatever eroticism is present is limited to that of the voyeur; these women are not inviting us into their world.
Tichý's pictures were created for his own viewing pleasure, not for sale or exhibition. Each negative was printed only once
Tichý's subtle photographs use themes of movement, composition and contrast, but the main theme is an obsession with the female body. Technically, his pictures are full of mistakes that compound the built-in limitations of his equipment — underexposed or overexposed, out of focus, blemished by dust in the camera, stained by careless darkroom processing. Tichý explains, "A mistake. That's what makes the poetry.Wikipedia
George Stein
Michigan City, Indiana, USA
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| beef sticks, objectification shoot, models pietre and callista, michigan city, indiana |
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| Barber College, gary, indiana |
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| lilly, objectification shoot, jackson, Michigan, model lilly rose |
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| Michigan city beach view, cooling tower in the background, michigan city, indiana |
Loose Goose Art
1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
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Sam Haskins
Sam Haskins, born Samuel Joseph Haskins
(born 11 November 1926, died 26 November 2009), was a British
photographer, born and raised in South Africa. He started his
photographic career in Johannesburg and moved to London in 1968.
Haskins is best known for his contribution to nude photography,
in-camera image montage, and his books, the most influential of which
were Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate (1964) and Haskins Posters
(1973). He suffered a stroke on 19 September 2009, the opening day of
his exhibition to launch 'Fashion Etcetera' at Milk Gallery in New
York and died at home in Bowral, Australia, nine weeks later.
Haskins started his career as an
advertising photographer in Johannesburg in 1953. He ran what was
probably the first modern freelance advertising studio in Africa. He
produced commercial work across a very broad spectrum of photography
from still life to industrial, fashion and aerial. His first formal
creative output was a one-man show at the popular Johannesburg
department store John Orrs in 1960. This featured black-and-white
photography of models in the studio and included some photographs of
dolls made by the young Elisabeth Langsch, who went on to become
Switzerland's leading ceramist.
His international reputation and his
signature photographic passions were established by four key books
published in the 1960s. Five Girls (1962) explored a fresh approach
to photographing the nude female figure and contained important first
explorations with black-and-white printing, cropping and book design,
which were a key feature of his subsequent books. Cowboy Kate &
Other Stories (1964) was probably the first book to deliberately
explore black-and-white photographic grain as a medium for expression
and image design. It was highly influential at the time, sold roughly
a million copies worldwide and won the Prix Nadar in France in 1964.
It continues to influence contemporary photographers, film makers,
fashion designers and make-up artists. Cowboy Kate & Other
Stories or 'Kate' as the book is often referred to, had its place in
photographic history cemented in 2005 when the International Center
of Photography in New York included the book in their exhibition The
Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the
Present.
In 1972 he produced his first colour
book, Haskins Posters.The large-format publication contained pages
printed on one side using a thick stiff paper and a soft glue perfect
binding allowing the pages to be removed and used as posters. Haskins
and Alida successfully published the book internationally through
their own company, Haskins Press. The book won a gold award at the
New York One Show. At the time the best-known image from Haskins
Posters, a girl's face superimposed on an apple with a bee near the
stem, appeared on the cover or in editorials of almost every major
photographic magazine around the world. This image was part of a
well-publicised visual and graphic experimentation with the apple
theme in the 1970s that for a while resulted in photographic
journalists nicknaming him 'Sam the Apple man'.
The images in Haskins Posters traversed
different creative themes that all became signature passions for
Haskins' image-making over the next three decades; graphically strong
compositions of nudes characterised by a natural essence in the
models while the image-making explored themes of graphic
experimentation, humour and sensual eroticism. Haskins has a
recurring theme (rooted in his training as a painter) of creating
tension in the surface of his photographs between flat graphic
elements and 3D chiaroscuro. These results are often achieved with
sophisticated lighting and/or double exposures. A highly creative and
design driven approach to lighting almost always plays a key role in
Haskins' work, both in the studio and on location. He often develops
complex lighting designs for a single specific shot that are never
repeated, the most recent example being a fashion shoot for New York
magazine's 75th anniversary issue shot in New York's Pier 57 studios
in August 2006.
From 2000 to 2005, he focused on
fashion photography for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Allure and New York.
A shortage of copies of the original edition of Cowboy Kate &
Other Stories (1964), which was selling to collectors for up to
US$3,000, led Haskins to bring out a digitally remastered 'director's
cut' version in October 2006, published by Rizzoli in New York. Apart
from image editing and layout revisions, the new version has 16 pages
of new images.
In 2002 Haskins and Alida moved to the
Southern Highlands in Australia and built the third house-studio of
their partnership. The move away from London resulted in a
renaissance in Haskins' fashion photography. While he always had a
passion for fashion from the start of his career, and Cowboy Kate
influenced fashion designers, who credited Haskins, he had not been
courted by the mainstream fashion world and he did not court them. A
shoot for [Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|Yves Saint Laurent] in Paris
in 2002 resulted in a 'rediscovery' that led to a stream of
assignments in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney working for
fashion houses and magazines.Wikipedia
Philippe Halsman
Philippe Halsman (2 May 1906 – 25 June 1979) was an American portrait photographer. He was born in Riga in the part of the Russian Empire which later became Latvia, and died in New York City.
Born to a Jewish family of Morduch (Maks) Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Riga, Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden.
In September 1928, 22-year-old Halsman was accused of his father's murder while they were on a hiking trip in the Austrian Tyrol, an area rife with antisemitism. After a trial based on circumstantial evidence he was sentenced to four years of prison. His family, friends and barristers worked for his release, getting support from important European intellectuals including Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Henri Hertz, and Paul Painlevé, who endorsed his innocence. He was pardoned and released in 1930.
Halsman consequently left Austria for France. He began contributing to fashion magazines such as Vogue and soon gained a reputation as one of the best portrait photographers in France, renowned for images that were sharp rather than in soft focus as was often used, and closely cropped. When France was invaded by Germany, Halsman fled to Marseille. He eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa[citation needed], aided by family friend Albert Einstein (whom he later famously photographed in 1947).
In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí; they began to collaborate in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dalí Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Dalí in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts before a satisfactory result was achieved. Halsman and Dalí eventually released a compendium of their collaborations in the 1954 book Dali's Mustache, which features 36 different views of the artist's distinctive mustache. Another famous collaboration between the two was In Voluptas Mors, a surrealistic portrait of Dalí beside a large skull, in fact a tableau vivant composed of seven nudes. Halsman took three hours to arrange the models according to a sketch by Dalí. Various reenactments of and allusions to In Voluptas Mors have appeared over the years; most famously, a version was used subtly in the poster for the film The Silence of The Lambs, while an overt reenactment appeared on a promotional poster for The Descent..Wikipedia
Martín Chambi
Martín Chambi Jiménez or Martín Chambi de Coaza, (Puno, Peru November 5, 1891 – Cuzco, September 13, 1973) was a photographer, originally from southern Peru. He was one of the first major indigenous Latin American photographers.
Recognized for the profound historic and ethnic documentary value of his photographs, he was a prolific portrait photographer in the towns and countryside of the Peruvian Andes. As well as being the leading portrait photographer in Cuzco, Chambi made many landscape photographs, which he sold mainly in the form of postcards, a format he pioneered in Peru.In 1979, New York's MOMA held a Chambi retrospective, which later traveled to various locations and inspired other international expositions of his work.
Martín Chambi was born into a Quechua-speaking peasant family in one of the poorest regions of Peru, at the end of the nineteenth century. When his father went to work in a Carabaya Province gold mine on a small tributary of the River Inambari, Martin went along.There he had his first contact with photography, learning the rudiments from the photographer of the Santo Domingo Mine near Coaza (owned by the Inca Mining Company of Bradford, Pa). This chance encounter planted the spark that made him seek to support himself as a professional photographer. With that idea in mind, he headed in 1908 to the city of Arequipa, where photography was more developed and where there were established photographers who had taken the time to develop individual photographic styles and impeccable technique.
Chambi initially served as an apprentice in the studio of Max T. Vargas, but after nine years set up his own studio in Sicuani in 1917, publishing his first postcards in November of that year. In 1923 he moved to Cuzco and opened a studio there, photographing both society figures and his indigenous compatriots. During his career, Chambi also travelled the Andes extensively, photographing the landscapes, Inca ruins, and local people..Wikipedia
Saul Leiter
Saul Leiter (December 3, 1923 – November 26, 2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York school of photography.:259 His work is in the collections of many prestigious public and private collections.
Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a well known Talmud scholar and Saul studied to become a Rabbi. His mother gave him hist first camera at age 12. At age 23, he left theology school and moved to New York City to become an artist. He had developed an early interest in painting and was fortunate to meet the Abstract Expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart.
Pousette-Dart and W. Eugene Smith encouraged Leiter to pursue photography and he was soon taking black and white pictures with a 35 mm Leica, which he acquired for a few Eugene Smith prints. In 1948, he started taking color photographs. He began associating with other contemporary photographers such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus and helped form what Jane Livingston has termed the New York School of photographers during the 1940s and 1950s:259
Leiter worked as a fashion photographer for the next 20 years and was published in Show, Elle, British Vogue, Queen, and Nova. In the late 1950s the art director Henry Wolf published Leiter’s color fashion work in Esquire and later in Harper’s Bazaar
Edward Steichen included Leiter’s black and white photographs in the exhibition Always the Young Stranger at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953. Leiter’s work is featured prominently in Jane Livingston’s book The New York School (1992) and in Martin Harrison’s Appearances: Fashion Photography since 1945 (1991). In 2008, The Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris mounted Leiter’s first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog.
Leiter is the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary In No Great Hurry - 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter, directed and produced by Tomas Leach. Leiter is a featured subject, among others, in the documentary film Tracing Outlines (2015) by 2nd State Productions.
Martin Harrison, editor and author of Saul Leiter Early Color (2006), writes, "Leiter’s sensibility . . . placed him outside the visceral confrontations with urban anxiety associated with photographers such as Robert Frank or William Klein. Instead, for him the camera provided an alternate way of seeing, of framing events and interpreting reality. He sought out moments of quiet humanity in the Manhattan maelstrom, forging a unique urban pastoral from the most unlikely of circumstances."
Early Color book cover
Leiter died on 26 November 2013 in New York City.He is represented in New York by the Howard Greenberg Gallery.Wikipedia
Old Photos of Japan Kusakabe Kimbei
Kusakabe Kimbei(1841–1934) was a Japanese photographer. He usually went by his given name, Kimbei, because his clientele, mostly non-Japanese-speaking foreign residents and visitors, found it easier to pronounce than his family name
Kusakabe Kimbei worked with Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried as a photographic colourist and assistant before opening his own workshop in Yokohama in 1881, in the Benten-dōri quarter, and from 1889 operating in the Honmachi quarter. He also opened a branch in the Ginza quarter of Tokyo.
Around 1885, he acquired the negatives of Felice Beato and of Stillfried, as well as those of Uchida Kuichi. Kusakabe also acquired some of Ueno Hikoma's negatives of Nagasaki.
He stopped working as a photographer in 1912-1913.
Most of his albums are mounted in accordion fashion.Wikipedia
Jem Raid Self portrait figurative video artist
Fifty years of photography and tired of the single image led me to making digital art montages. This in turn to finding the CSS code to make cross fading before and after images. From there another step to using video creation software to put together many images cross fading into each other. Finally to making the sound tracks myself on a drone synthesizer that I made myself.
Making these videos is the most rewarding thing I have ever done, it brings together the two sides of my life on one side artistic interpretation and on the other the technical know how, I am also my own model and therefore always available. This gives me total control of the processes from inception to presentation.
"Interview with Jem Raid self portrait figurative video artist
Milena; Please tell me something about your self
Jem: I was born in Birmingham UK and when I retired I moved to Derbyshire. I'd been a photographer for fifty years and had become tired of the single image. In 2011 I decided to teach myself how to make digital art montages. Having mastered those techniques I realised that I was still producing single images and sought CSS code to make 'before and after' cross fading images. Late in 2015 I realised that better results could be achieved by using video software
Milena; How is your personality reflected in your work?
Jem: My video work is figurative and I am the figure, I have posed for self images for twenty years. I believe that there is nothing like a self portrait to personalise an image or video.
Milena; Can you tell us about where you are right now?
Jem: I'm continually making new videos and entering them into art and video festivals worldwide.
Milena; Are there particular artists who have influenced you?
Jem: Two spring to mind straightaway and are the most important in my life; Catherine McIntyre whose digital montage art I have loved for 20 years, she is lovely person and has been a great help to me. Anne Brigman who in 1908 posed for her self image, 'The soul of the blasted pine' I carry that image around with me, I feel that she is my sister in time.
Milena; What do you think are some of the most inspiring things happening in video currently?
Jem: The resurgence of the figurative image has helped me enormously it's lovely to see so much good work appearing all over the world.
Milena; How do you overcome creative blocks?
Jem: I do get scared of starting another work and often just take a couple of images that are totally unrelated and find someway of merging them. And the muse comes back into the room and I'm off to create something.
Milena; What is the most important thing that has happened to you this year?
Jem: There are two things that have given me a real boost; the first is having eleven exhibitions of my work and having been approved by and having my videos for sale on Sedition Art"
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Mário Cravo Neto
Mário Cravo Neto (Salvador, April 20, 1947 — Salvador, August 9, 2009) was a Brazilian photographer, sculptor and draughtsman. Mário Cravo, son of the sculptor Mário Cravo Júnior, is considered one of the most important photographers of Brazil. Since his early life, he was in contact with circle of artists and, when an adolescent, he met with Pierre Verger, friend of his father. In 1968, he studied for two years at the Art Students League of New York. After that, he returned to Brazil and first exhibits the sculptures created in New York at the 12th São Paulo Art Biennial. He worked mainly with black-and-white photography, and representing the religion of Candomble. In 2005, he exhibited at Rencontres d'Arles festival.Wikipedia
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Manuel Álvarez Bravo (February 4, 1902 – October 19, 2002, age 100) was Mexico’s first principal artistic photographer and is the most important figure in 20th-century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, his photography is self-taught. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with its artistic peak between the 1920s to the 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. Over his career he had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970.Wikipedia
Horst P. Horst
Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann (August 14, 1906 – November 18, 1999) who chose to be known as Horst P. Horst was a German-American fashion photographer.
Horst is best known for his photographs of women and fashion, but is also recognized for his photographs of interior architecture, still lifes, especially ones including plants, and environmental portraits. One of the great iconic photos of the Twentieth-Century is "The Mainbocher Corset" with its erotically charged mystery, captured by Horst in Vogue’s Paris studio in 1939. Designers like Donna Karan continue to use the timeless beauty of "The Mainbocher Corset" as an inspiration for their outerwear collections today. His work frequently reflects his interest in surrealism and his regard of the ancient Greek ideal of physical beauty.
His method of work typically entailed careful preparation for the shoot, with the lighting and studio props (of which he used many) arranged in advance. His instructions to models are remembered as being brief and to the point. His published work uses lighting to pick out the subject; he frequently used four spotlights, often one of them pointing down from the ceiling. Only rarely do his photos include shadows falling on the background of the set. Horst rarely, if ever, used filters. While most of his work is in black & white, much of his color photography includes largely monochromatic settings to set off a colorful fashion. Horst's color photography did include documentation of society interior design, well noted in the volume Horst Interiors. He photographed a number of interiors designed by Robert Denning and Vincent Fourcade of Denning & Fourcade and often visited their homes on Manhattan and Long Island. After making the photograph, Horst generally left it up to others to develop, print, crop, and edit his work.
One of his most famous portraits is of Marlene Dietrich, taken in 1942. She protested the lighting that he had selected and arranged, but he used it anyway. Dietrich liked the results and subsequently used a photo from the session in her own publicity.Wikipedia
Lillian Bassman
Lillian Bassman (June 15, 1917 – February 13, 2012) was an American photographer and painter.
From the 1940s until the 1960s Bassman worked as a fashion photographer for Junior Bazaar and later at Harper's Bazaar where she promoted the careers of photographers such as Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Louis Faurer and Arnold Newman. Under the guidance of the Russian emigrant, Alexey Brodovitch, she began to photograph her model subjects primarily in black and white. Her work was published for the most part in Harper’s Bazaar from 1950 to 1965.
Her parents were Jewish intellectuals who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine (then in Russia) in 1905 and settled in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village, New York, and studied at the Textile High School in Manhattan with Alexey Brodovitch and graduated in 1933.
By the 1970s Bassman’s interest in pure form in her fashion photography was out of vogue. She turned to her own photo projects and abandoned fashion photography. In doing so she tossed out 40 years of negatives and prints - her life’s work. A forgotten bag filled with hundreds of images was discovered over 20 years later. Bassman’s fashion photographic work began to be re-appreciated in the 1990s.
She worked with digital technology and abstract color photography into her 90s to create a new series of work. She used Photoshop for her image manipulation.
The most notable qualities about her photographic work are the high contrasts between light and dark, the graininess of the finished photos, and the geometric placement and camera angles of the subjects. Bassman became one of the last great woman photographers in the world of fashion.
Bassman died on February 13, 2012, at age 94.Wikipedia
Experimental photography Maurice Tabard
Maurice Tabard (July 12, 1897 – February 23, 1984)was a French photographer. Tabard was one of the leading photographers of the Surrealist movement, which he entered under the influence of his friend, American phtographer Man Ray
Tabard was born in Lyon, France in 1897 to a silk industrialist and an amateur musician. His first artistic experiences were as a pattern designer for silk textiles. In 1914, he and his father left Paris for New York, where he pursued photography at the New York Institute of Photography. He continued his studies through to 1920 with fellow photographer, Emile Brune
Following the death of his father in 1922, Tabard became a professional portrait photographer for Backrach Studio in Baltimore. He went on to photograph important homes and well-known people, including future President Calvin Coolidge and his family.
In 1928, Tabard returned to Paris and became a fashion photographer. It was there he met Surrealist writer, Philippe Soupault, who in turn acquainted him with various prominent magazine editors including Lucien Vogel, Giron, and Alexey Brodovitch. He went on to work for a number of publications, such as Bifur, Vu, and Jardin des Modes. He made the acquaintance of Surrealists Man Ray and René Magritte, with his work beginning to reflect the influence of Surrealism. In the late 1920s, he also met Roger Parry, whom he taught photography to, and André Kertész.Wikipedia
Shōji Ueda
Shōji Ueda ( 1913–2000) was a photographer of Tottori, Japan, who combined surrealist compositional elements with realistic depiction. Most of the work for which Ueda is widely known was photographed within a strip of about 350 km running from Igumi (on the border of Tottori and Hyōgo) to Hagi (Yamaguchi).
Ueda was born on 27 March 1913 in Sakai (now Sakaiminato), Tottori. His father was a manufacturer and seller of geta; Shōji was the only child who survived infancy. The boy received a camera from his father in 1930 and quickly became very involved in photography, submitting his photographs to magazines; his photograph Child on the Beach Hama no kodomo) appeared in the December issue of Camera.
The postwar concentration on realism led by Domon, followed by the rejection of realism led by Shōmei Tōmatsu, sidelined Ueda's cool vision. Ueda participated in "Japanese Photography" at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1960 and had solo exhibitions in Japan, but had to wait till a 1974 retrospective held in the Nikon Salon in Tokyo and Osaka before his return to popularity.
Ueda remained based in Tottori, opening a studio and camera shop in Yonago in 1965, and in 1972 moving to a new three-storey building in Yonago: Ueda Camera on the first floor, the Charanka coffee shop on the second, and Gallery U on the third. The building served as a base for local photographic life.
From 1975 until 1994, Ueda was a professor at Kyushu Sangyo University.Wikipedia
Photo painting Anton Solomoukha
Anton (Anatole) P. Solomoukha (November 2, 1945 – 21 October 2015) was a Ukrainian-born French artist and photographer, and a foreign member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. From 1980 he specialized in narrative figuration. After 2000 he developed photo projects and is known as the inventor of a new form of expression in contemporary photography: “Photo painting”. In it he associates the photographic image with pictorial research in tableaux frequently requiring a multitude of models.
The first series; “The girl with the cup-and-ball”, “The Sex of Angels”, “I Fuck Your TV” are characterized by the choice of a closed space and a dark background. He uses mirrors, as ‘a complementary character’ for the construction of a subject, ironic or poetic, inspired by historical myths and the biblical subjects. His obsession with these projects has evolved into a rejection of temporal social topics. His relationship with painting appears more and more and was the principal theme of a series of photo compositions in the monumental style: “Little Red Riding Hood visits the Louvre”. Although these big square “panoramic” compositions are technically photographs, in reality they are projected and constructed as if they were painted pictures. “Photo-painting” has a role to play in the creation of a new contemporary art form.
Mona Lisa di Antonio Maria (Antonmaria) Gherardini del Giocondo
The photographic ‘paintings’ of this series are theatrical. The backgrounds are dark. The foregrounds are filled by actors: characters from the streets of Paris interposed with naked models, animals and elements of still life. An infinite number of small objects are strewn on the ground and cover the walls. The theatrical tableaux style of this collection enabled the artist to break with the traditional photographic image and create a paradoxical metaphysical space. In them, each character, as in an opera, plays a part while remaining an independent element, related to the other characters only if the artist wills it! In 2009 Anton Solomoukha continues to refer to classical art in his project “Little Red Riding Hood visits Tchernobyl”. His preference for “ironic allegory” allows him to create works in a form reminiscent of paintings in the Louvre, morbid scenes of the Tchernobyl .Wikipedia
Incredible Nature Peter Dombrovskis
Peter Dombrovskis (2 March 1945 – 28 March 1996)was an Australian photographer, known for his Tasmanian scenes. In 2003 he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame, the first Australian photographer to reach this milestone
Dombrovskis was born in 1945 in a refugee camp in Wiesbaden, Germany of Latvian parents; together with his mother, migrated to Australia in 1950, and settled in Fern Tree, a suburb of Hobart. The protégé of noted wildlife photographer and activist Olegas Truchanas, his photographs of the Tasmanian Wilderness—particularly his own annual Tasmanian Wilderness Calendar and the Wilderness Calendar produced by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society—brought images of once remote and inaccessible areas of the State into the public realm. Dombrovskis founded West Wind Press in 1977 and later went on to print calendars entirely of his own work featuring incisive commentary from pre-eminent environmental professionals.
His most famous photograph was Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, which some commentators believe played a part in the victory for Bob Hawke in the 1983 federal election. The photograph portrayed a section of the Franklin River which was to be submerged by the proposed Franklin Dam and spearheaded the visual appeal of the Franklin River in the contentious 'No Dams' campaign of 1982. Dombrovskis later co-authored with Bob Brown an example of his skill in photographing the Gordon River and the Franklin River in his 1983 book, Wild Rivers.
On 28 March 1996, Dombrovskis died of a heart attack while photographing near Mount Hayes in the Western Arthurs mountain range of South West Tasmania.
His works are represented at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Australian Heritage Commission and in private collections.Wikipedia
Gjon Mili
Gjon Mili (November 28, 1904 – February 14, 1984) was an Albanian-American photographer best known for his work published in LIFE which he photographed artists such as Pablo Picasso .
Born to Vasil Mili and Viktori Cekani in Korçë, in the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Albania). Mili spent his childhood in Romania, attending Gheorghe Lazăr National College in Bucharest, later he migrated to United States in 1923. In 1939, Mili started to work as a photographer for Life (a position he held until his death in 1984). Over the years his assignments took him to the Riviera (Picasso); to Prades, France (Pablo Casals in exile); to Israel (Adolf Eichmann in captivity); to Florence, Athens, Dublin, Berlin, Venice, Rome, and to Hollywood to photograph celebrities and artists, sports events, concerts, sculptures and architecture.
Working with Harold Eugene Edgerton of MIT, Gjon Mili was a pioneer in the use of stroboscopic instruments to capture a sequence of actions in one photograph. Trained as an engineer and self-taught in photography, Gjon Mili was one of the first to use electronic flash and stroboscopic light to create photographs that had more than scientific interest. Many of his notable images revealed the beautiful intricacy and graceful flow of movement too rapid or complex for the naked eye to discern. In the mid-1940s he was an assistant to the photographer Edward Weston.
In 1944, he directed the short film Jammin' the Blues, which was made at Warner Bros., and features performances by Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, "Big" Sid Catlett, Illinois Jacquet, Barney Kessel, Jo Jones and Marie Bryant. Mili did not serve as cinematographer for the film (Robert Burks did) but the film used multiplied images that in many ways recall the multi-image still-frames done with the strobe. The imaginative use of the camera makes this film a minor landmark in the way that musicians have been filmed.
Over the course of more than four decades, thousands of his pictures were published by Life as well as other publications.[citation needed] He died in Stamford, Connecticut on February 14, 1984, of pneumonia at the age of 79.Wikipedia
Bahman Jalali
Bahman Jalali (1944 – 15 January 2010) was an Iranian photographer who played a significant role in educating a new generation of Iranian photographers. He taught photography at several universities in Iran over a 30-year period
Jalali graduated with a degree in Economics from Melli University in Tehran, then started his career as a photographer with Tamasha Magazine in 1972. In 1974 he joined the Royal Photographic Society in Great Britain. He is best known for his documentary photographs from the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and from the Iran-Iraq war, but after the revolution he focused more on teaching photography at Iranian universities than practicing it. Jalali was a founding member and curator at the Museum of Photography in Tehran (also known as Akskhaneh Shahr), Iran's first museum of photography.
His last work was a photo series called "Image of Imaginations", which took three years (2003–2006) for him to complete. It was a mixture of flowers or Iranian calligraphy with old photographs drawn from Iranian photographic history. Jalali later explained: “I have been exposed to many images by little known photographers around the country. Those that I could keep, I have held as mementos, and others have left their marks on my imagination.” The Museum of Fine Arts in Nantes bought this photo series for their collection.
Jalali was given a special homage for his forty-year career in photography by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona with a solo exhibition curated by Catherine David from September to December 2007 and the publication of a monograph. He was a contributor to the exhibition in the British Museum, London, "Word into Art : Artists of the Modern Middle East" in 2006.Wikipedia
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
Oluwarotimi (Rotimi) Adebiyi Wahab Fani-Kayode (20 April 1955 - 21 December 1989)was a Nigerian-born photographer, who moved to England at the age of 12 to escape the Nigerian Civil War. The main body of his work was created between 1982 and 1989. He explored the tensions created by sexuality, race and culture through stylised portraits and compositions.
Rotimi was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in April 1955, as the second child of a prominent Yoruba family (Chief Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode and Chief Mrs Adia Adunni Fani-Kayode) that moved to Brighton, England, in 1966, after the military coup and the ensuing civil war. Rotimi went to a number of British private schools for his secondary education, including Brighton College, Seabright College and Millfield, then moved to the USA in 1976. He read Fine Arts and Economics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, for his BA, continued on for his MFA in Fine Arts & Photography at the Pratt Institute, New York. While in New York, he became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, who he has claimed as an influence on his work.
Fani-Kayode returned to the UK in 1983. He died in a London hospital of a heart attack while recovering from an AIDS-related illness on 21 December 1989. At the time of his death, he was living in Brixton, London, with his life partner and collaborator Alex Hirst.
Fani-Kayode admitted to being influenced by Mapplethorpe's earlier work but he also pushed the bounds of his own art, exploring sexuality, racism, colonialism and the tensions and conflicts between his homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing through a series of images in both colour and black and white.[3] His work is imbued with the subtlety, irony and political and social comment. He also contributed to the artistic debate surrounding HIV/AIDS.
He started in 1984 to exhibit and was part of eight other exhibitions by the time of his death in 1989. His work has been featured posthumously in many exhibitions and retrospectives. His work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Italy, Nigeria, Sweden, Germany, South Africa and US.
In 1987 along with Mark Sealy, he co-founded Autograph ABP and became their first chair. He was also an active member of the Black Audio Film Collective.[5] He was a major influence on young black photographers in the late 1980s and 1990s. Following Hirst's death in 1992, some controversy has persisted about works attributed to Fani-Kayode. Wikipedia
Street photography Raghubir Singh
Raghubir Singh (1942–1999) was an Indian photographer, most known for his landscapes and documentary-style photographs of the people of India. He was a self-taught photographer who worked in India and lived in Paris, London and New York. During his career he worked with National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time. In the early 1970s, he was one of the first photographers to reinvent the use of color at a time when color photography was still a marginal art form
Singh belongs to a tradition of small-format street photography, pioneered by photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom he met in 1966 and observed for a week while the latter was working in Jaipur, and who, with Robert Frank, was to have a lasting impact of his work; however, unlike them, he chose to work in color, as for him this represented the intrinsic value of Indian aesthetics. In time Singh was acknowledged with William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld as one of the finest photographers of his generation and a leading pioneer of colour photography.He travelled across India with the American photographer Lee Friedlander who according to him ‘was often looking for the abject as subject’; in the end Singh found Friedlander’s approach of ‘beauty as seen in abjection’ fundamentally western, which suited neither him nor India; thus, he built his own style and aesthetic imprint, which according to his 2004 retrospective created "a documentary-style vision was neither sugarcoated, nor abject, nor controllingly omniscient". Deeply influenced as he was by modernism, he liberally took inspiration from Rajasthani miniatures as well as Mughal paintings, and Bengal, a place where he felt the fusion of western modernist ideas and vernacular Indian art took place for the first time, evident in practitioners of the Bengal school, and also the humanism of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who later became a close friend. "Beauty, nature, humanism and spirituality were the cornerstones of Indian culture" for him and became the bedrock for his work.
Singh published 14 well-received books on the Ganges, Calcutta, Benares, his native Rajasthan, Grand Trunk Road, and the Hindustan Ambassador car.Today his work is part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, amongst others.Wikipedia
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Stern Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Her work continues to be the subject of much critical acclaim and attention, years after she killed herself at the age of 22, in 1981
Woodman was born to artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman (Abrahams). Her mother is Jewish and her father is from a Protestant background. Her older brother, Charles, later became an associate professor of electronic art.
Woodman attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971, except for second grade, which she attended in Italy, where the family spent many summers between school years. She began high school in 1972 at Abbot Academy, a private Massachusetts boarding school. There, she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975. Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy
Woodman moved to New York City in 1979. After spending the summer of 1979 in Stanwood, Washington whilst visiting her boyfriend at Pilchuck Glass School, she returned to New York "to make a career in photography." She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere". In the summer of 1980, she was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
In late 1980, Woodman became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt in the autumn of 1980, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan.
On January 19, 1981, Woodman died by suicide, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York.Wikipedia
Guy Bourdin
Guy Bourdin (2 December 1928, Paris – 29 March 1991, Paris), was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper's Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's. His work is collected by important institutions including Tate in London,MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Getty Museum. The first retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2003, and then toured the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. The Tate is permanently exhibiting a part of its collection (one of the largest) with works made between 1950 and 1955. He is considered as one of the best known photographers of fashion and advertising of the second half of the 20th century. He set the stage for a new kind of fashion photography.
"While conventional fashion images make beauty and clothing their central elements, Bourdin’s photographs offer a radical alternative."Wikipedia
Maya Deren
Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia, was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer.
Lucien Clergue
Lucien Clergue (August 14, 1934 – November 15, 2014) was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France. At the age of 7 he began learning to play the violin, and after several years of study his teacher admitted that he had nothing more to teach him. Clergue was from a family of shopkeepers and could not afford to pursue further studies in a college or university school of music, such as a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the basics of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his photographs to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, asked to see more of his work. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked on his photography with the goal of sending more images to Picasso. During this period, he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the « Saltimbanques ». He also worked on a series whose subject was carrion.
Clergue’s photographs are in the collections of numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with noted exhibitions such as in 1961, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the last exhibition organized by Edward Steichen with Lucien Clergue, Bill Brandt and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Museums with large collections of his work include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work, Fontaines du Grand Palais (Fountains of the Grand Palais), is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano. His photographs of Jean Cocteau are on permanent display at the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, France. In the U.S., an exhibition of the Cocteau photographs was premiered at Westwood Gallery, New York City.
In 2007, the city of Arles honored Lucien Clergue and dedicated a retrospective collection of 360 of his photographs dating from 1953 to 2007. He also received the 2007 Lucie Award.Wikipedia
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Clarence John Laughlin
Clarence John Laughlin (1905 – 2 January 1985) was an American photographer best known for his surrealist photographs of the U.S. South.
Laughlin was born into a middle-class family in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His rocky childhood, southern heritage, and interest in literature influenced his work greatly. After losing everything in a failed rice-growing venture in 1910, his family was forced to relocate to New Orleans where Laughlin's father found work in a factory. Laughlin was an introverted child with few friends and a close relationship with his father, who cultivated and encouraged his lifelong love of literature and whose death in 1918 devastated his son.
Raghubir Singh (1942–1999) was an Indian photographer, most known for his landscapes and documentary-style photographs of the people of India. He was a self-taught photographer who worked in India and lived in Paris, London and New York. During his career he worked with National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time. In the early 1970s, he was one of the first photographers to reinvent the use of color at a time when color photography was still a marginal art form
Singh belongs to a tradition of small-format street photography, pioneered by photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom he met in 1966 and observed for a week while the latter was working in Jaipur, and who, with Robert Frank, was to have a lasting impact of his work; however, unlike them, he chose to work in color, as for him this represented the intrinsic value of Indian aesthetics. In time Singh was acknowledged with William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld as one of the finest photographers of his generation and a leading pioneer of colour photography.He travelled across India with the American photographer Lee Friedlander who according to him ‘was often looking for the abject as subject’; in the end Singh found Friedlander’s approach of ‘beauty as seen in abjection’ fundamentally western, which suited neither him nor India; thus, he built his own style and aesthetic imprint, which according to his 2004 retrospective created "a documentary-style vision was neither sugarcoated, nor abject, nor controllingly omniscient". Deeply influenced as he was by modernism, he liberally took inspiration from Rajasthani miniatures as well as Mughal paintings, and Bengal, a place where he felt the fusion of western modernist ideas and vernacular Indian art took place for the first time, evident in practitioners of the Bengal school, and also the humanism of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who later became a close friend. "Beauty, nature, humanism and spirituality were the cornerstones of Indian culture" for him and became the bedrock for his work.
Singh published 14 well-received books on the Ganges, Calcutta, Benares, his native Rajasthan, Grand Trunk Road, and the Hindustan Ambassador car.Today his work is part of the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, amongst others.Wikipedia
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Stern Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Her work continues to be the subject of much critical acclaim and attention, years after she killed herself at the age of 22, in 1981
Woodman was born to artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman (Abrahams). Her mother is Jewish and her father is from a Protestant background. Her older brother, Charles, later became an associate professor of electronic art.
Woodman attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971, except for second grade, which she attended in Italy, where the family spent many summers between school years. She began high school in 1972 at Abbot Academy, a private Massachusetts boarding school. There, she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975. Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy
Woodman moved to New York City in 1979. After spending the summer of 1979 in Stanwood, Washington whilst visiting her boyfriend at Pilchuck Glass School, she returned to New York "to make a career in photography." She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere". In the summer of 1980, she was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
In late 1980, Woodman became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt in the autumn of 1980, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan.
On January 19, 1981, Woodman died by suicide, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York.Wikipedia
Guy Bourdin
Guy Bourdin (2 December 1928, Paris – 29 March 1991, Paris), was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper's Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's. His work is collected by important institutions including Tate in London,MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Getty Museum. The first retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2003, and then toured the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. The Tate is permanently exhibiting a part of its collection (one of the largest) with works made between 1950 and 1955. He is considered as one of the best known photographers of fashion and advertising of the second half of the 20th century. He set the stage for a new kind of fashion photography.
"While conventional fashion images make beauty and clothing their central elements, Bourdin’s photographs offer a radical alternative."Wikipedia
Maya Deren
Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia, was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer.
Lucien Clergue
Lucien Clergue (August 14, 1934 – November 15, 2014) was a French photographer. He was Chairman of the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris for 2013.Lucien Clergue was born in Arles, France. At the age of 7 he began learning to play the violin, and after several years of study his teacher admitted that he had nothing more to teach him. Clergue was from a family of shopkeepers and could not afford to pursue further studies in a college or university school of music, such as a conservatory. In 1949, he learned the basics of photography. Four years later, at a corrida in Arles, he showed his photographs to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso who, though subdued, asked to see more of his work. Within a year and a half, young Clergue worked on his photography with the goal of sending more images to Picasso. During this period, he worked on a series of photographs of traveling entertainers, acrobats and harlequins, the « Saltimbanques ». He also worked on a series whose subject was carrion.
Clergue’s photographs are in the collections of numerous well-known museums and private collectors. His photographs have been exhibited in over 100 solo exhibitions worldwide, with noted exhibitions such as in 1961, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the last exhibition organized by Edward Steichen with Lucien Clergue, Bill Brandt and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Museums with large collections of his work include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work, Fontaines du Grand Palais (Fountains of the Grand Palais), is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano. His photographs of Jean Cocteau are on permanent display at the Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton, France. In the U.S., an exhibition of the Cocteau photographs was premiered at Westwood Gallery, New York City.
In 2007, the city of Arles honored Lucien Clergue and dedicated a retrospective collection of 360 of his photographs dating from 1953 to 2007. He also received the 2007 Lucie Award.Wikipedia
More
Clarence John Laughlin
Clarence John Laughlin (1905 – 2 January 1985) was an American photographer best known for his surrealist photographs of the U.S. South.
Laughlin was born into a middle-class family in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His rocky childhood, southern heritage, and interest in literature influenced his work greatly. After losing everything in a failed rice-growing venture in 1910, his family was forced to relocate to New Orleans where Laughlin's father found work in a factory. Laughlin was an introverted child with few friends and a close relationship with his father, who cultivated and encouraged his lifelong love of literature and whose death in 1918 devastated his son.
Although he dropped out of high school in 1920 after having barely completed his freshman year, Laughlin was an educated and highly literate man. His large vocabulary and love of language are evident in the elaborate captions he later wrote to accompany his photographs. He initially aspired to be a writer and wrote many poems and stories in the style of French symbolism, most of which remained unpublished.
Laughlin discovered photography when he was 25 and taught himself how to use a simple 2½ by 2¼ view camera. He began working as a freelance architectural photographer and was subsequently employed by agencies as varied as Vogue Magazine and the US government. Disliking the constraints of government work, Laughlin eventually left Vogue after a conflict with then-editor Edward Steichen. Thereafter, he worked almost exclusively on personal projects utilizing a wide range of photographic styles and techniques, from simple geometric abstractions of architectural features to elaborately staged allegories utilizing models, costumes, and props.
Through this period one of his favorite models was Dody Weston Thompson who went on to become a notable photographer in her own right.
Many historians credit Laughlin as being the first true surrealist photographer in the United States. His images are often nostalgic, reflecting the influence of Eugène Atget and other photographers who tried to capture vanishing urban landscapes. Laughlin's best-known book, Ghosts Along the Mississippi, was first published in 1948.
He died on January 2, 1985 in New Orleans, leaving behind a massive collection of books and images. Thanks to the 17,000 negatives that he preserved, his work continues to be shown around the United States and Europe. Laughlin's library, comprising over 30,000 volumes, was purchased by Louisiana State University in 1986. The collection's focus in on science fiction, fantasy, mystery and the macabre. Other subjects represented include 20th-century art and design, European and American architecture, photography, Victoriana, humor, sex and sexuality, psychology, spiritualism, and the occult.Wikipedia
Wynn Bullock
Wynn Bullock (April 18, 1902 – November 16, 1975) is a recognized American master photographer of the 20th century whose work is included in over 90 major museum collections around the world.He received substantial critical acclaim during his lifetime, published numerous books and is mentioned in all the standard histories of modern photography.Bullock was born in Chicago and raised in South Pasadena, California. As a boy, his passions were singing and athletics (football, baseball, swimming and tennis). After high school graduation, he moved to New York to pursue a musical career and was hired as a chorus member in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue. He occasionally sang the primary tenor role when headliner John Steele was unable to appear and then was given a major role with the Music Box Review Road Company. During the mid-1920s, he furthered his career in Europe, studying voice and giving concerts in France, Germany and Italy.
While living in Paris, Bullock became fascinated with the work of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He then discovered the work of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy and experienced an immediate affinity with photography, not only as an art form uniquely based on light, but also as a vehicle through which he could more creatively engage with the world. He bought his first camera and began taking pictures.Wikipedia
Wynn Bullock (April 18, 1902 – November 16, 1975) is a recognized American master photographer of the 20th century whose work is included in over 90 major museum collections around the world.He received substantial critical acclaim during his lifetime, published numerous books and is mentioned in all the standard histories of modern photography.Bullock was born in Chicago and raised in South Pasadena, California. As a boy, his passions were singing and athletics (football, baseball, swimming and tennis). After high school graduation, he moved to New York to pursue a musical career and was hired as a chorus member in Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revue. He occasionally sang the primary tenor role when headliner John Steele was unable to appear and then was given a major role with the Music Box Review Road Company. During the mid-1920s, he furthered his career in Europe, studying voice and giving concerts in France, Germany and Italy.
While living in Paris, Bullock became fascinated with the work of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. He then discovered the work of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy and experienced an immediate affinity with photography, not only as an art form uniquely based on light, but also as a vehicle through which he could more creatively engage with the world. He bought his first camera and began taking pictures.Wikipedia
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