Photographers


 * Herb Ritts**

http://killerforfashion.blogspot.com/2011/02/herb-ritts.html

He is known as a master of art and commercial photography. He was drawn to clean lines and strong forms. This graphic simplicity allowed his images to be read and felt instantaneously. They often challenged conventional notions of gender or race. Social history and fantasy were both captured and created by his memorable photographs of noted individuals in film, fashion, music, politics and society. He concentrated on black-and-white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture. He revolutionized fashion photography, modernized nude, and transformed celebrities into icons. He emerged as one of the top photographers in the 1980s. He often used the bright California sun to create contrast, and used outdoor scenes to seperate his work from his New York peers.

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/ritts/ http://www.herbritts.com/about/


 * Richard Avedon**



Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject. His ability to present personal views of public figures, who were distant and inaccessible, attracted celebrities to sought out Avedon for their most public figures. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. In his photos he created both the moment in time and a formal image. He demanding that his models convey emotion and movement, a departure from the norm of motionless fashion photography. He was inspired by his parents' clothing businesses, as a boy Avedon took a great interest in fashion, especially enjoying photographing the clothes in his father's store.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/richard-avedon/about-the-photographer/467/ http://www.biography.com/people/richard-avedon-9193034


 * Helmut Newton**



Helmut Newton was a complex individual.He considered America weird, exotic, and outrageous; the suburbs, funny; and claimed to carry a monocle, a cigarette holder, and a pair of false nipples in his camera bag at all times. His erotic and dreamlike images were like a peep through a keyhole, spied moments of a heightened reality. Newton claimed that his photographs were entirely based in reality. Instead of decorous compositions of, say, autumn leaves, Harris tweeds, and white ladies’ gloves, he ushered into//Vogue// the realms of cocaine, Patty Hearst, lesbians, bondage, sadomasochism, voyeurism, murder, pornography, prostitution, and threesomes. Though Newton’s models and their provocative poses were a direct reflection of the sexual revolution of that liberated era. He did not like working with models that had surgeries to make any of the body parts bigger or smaller. He wanted the natural reality. He avoided working in studios, he liked being in weird places with different kinds of lighting. He only shot black and white images.

http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Helmut_Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Newton


 * Steven Meisel**



In his childhood he never played with toys, he always used to draw women all the time. He is openly gay and most of his models are women. All of his models aspire to work. He was successful in being able to place fashion trends in their greater social context. When he was younger he was fascinated by the beauty of high society matrons like Gloria Guinness and Babe Paley. His younger sister, Robin, was his first muse; he did her hair and makeup and then she posed for him.

http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Steven_Meisel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Meisel


 * Ellen Von Unwerth**



Ellen is a director and photographer who specializes in erotic femininity. She worked as a fashion model for many years before she got behind the camera. She makes fashion, editorial, and advertising photographs. She has published many books of photography. Von Unwerth has also directed short films for fashion designers, and music videos for several pop musicians. She also shot advertising campaigns for Chanel, Dior, Thierry Mugler, H&M, Guess, Lavazza, Tommy Hilfiger, Joop, Zac Posen, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Alberta Ferreti, Miu Miu and Diesel etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_von_Unwerth http://vimeo.com/evu


 * Edward Weston**



He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers." Weston photographed an expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodie. His focus was on the people and places of the American West. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age. Initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Weston


 * David LaChapelle**



David LaChapelle was born in Connecticut and is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, film director, and artist. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. He earned millions and spent much of that on a self-financed film about an urban dance form created in the rough neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. In his childhood he was convicted that he had AIDS. He was tested negative. Both that reality and a desire to restore to memory a period in the early ’80s before downtown life was tinctured by tragedy motivated him to return to the art he made when, as a high school dropout from suburban Connecticut, he first blew into town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_LaChapelle http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/fashion/david-lachapelle-from-photographer-to-artist.html?pagewanted=all


 * Paul Strand**



In the 1930s, he became seriously involved with documentary film and, from the 1940s until the end of his life, he was committed to making photographic books of the highest quality. Strand was introduced to photography as a high school student at New York City's Ethical Culture School. His first photography teacher, Lewis Hine, instilled in Strand a deep sense of commitment to the social betterment of humankind. In early 1915, his mentor Stieglitz criticized the graphic softness of Strand's photographs and over the next two years he dramatically changed his technique and made extraordinary photographs on three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. He had a way of seeing the machines and buildings in New York and capturing them that led to an instantly-recognizable style. Strand was very politically active and like Lange mentioned in my previous post, tried to use photography for social change.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pstd/hd_pstd.htm http://photofocus.com/2012/02/26/photographers-that-you-should-know-about-paul-strand/


 * Sarah Moon**



Sarah lived in Paris. Her and her family escaped the Nazi's and went to England, where her career started. She has concentrated on gallery and film work. She greatly enjoyed photographing her friends in the fashion world during their free time. She became well-known and respected for her unique vision and the signature style of her photography. The images she created were soft, romantic, melancholy, outside of time, more dream-like fantasy than anything real — and composed with an eye for shape, and strong graphic recognition. Moon’s career took off with her fashion images, but she always pursued her own personal, non-commercial work. She cites Bourdin’s influence — his obliqueness and narrative content, most probably, rather than his sexual urgencies and greedy colors. "I believe that the essence of photography is black and white," she says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Moon http://www.lensculture.com/moon?thisPic=100 http://www.professionalphotographer.co.uk/Magazine/Legends/Profiles/Sarah-Moon-Profile


 * Sally Mann**



Sally is best known for her black-and-white //photographs//, featuring portraiture and landscapes in the southern United States. She at first took shots of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. She would shoot what the every day lives of her children were like, and shoot the most vulnerable moments of her husband. She is perhaps best known for her intimate portraits of her family, her young children and her husband, and for her evocative and resonant landscape work in the American South. Her work has attracted controversy at times, but it has always been influential.

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/sally-mann


 * Alfred Steiglitz**

In 1882 Alfred Stieglitz enrolled in Berlin’s Technische Hochschule to study engineering, but the subject apparently did not strike his fancy. He was determined to prove that photography was a medium as capable of artistic expression as painting or sculpture. He was involved with photography, first as a technical and scientific challenge, later as an artistic one. As a gallery director, Stieglitz provided emotional and intellectual sustenance to young modernists, both photographers and artists.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/566170/Alfred-Stieglitz http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm


 * Joyce Tenneson**

Joyce is an American fine art photographer known for her distinctive style of photography, which often involves nude or semi-nude women. She shoots with a Poloroid 20x24 camera. Joyce Tenneson has helped shape the way we see the world. From exhibitions to magazine covers to books, Tenneson's images have been described as "timeless and... deeply affecting." Having always believed that art should be used to change the world, Tenneson describes the charge to work on this exhibit as a "gift from the gods." Recognizing that MS is relatively unknown to the general public, she embraced this opportunity to capture the real faces of 36 people from around the globe who live with it. Her photographs capture each patient's unique story, demonstrating the strength, determination and hope that illuminate their spirits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Tenneson http://www.ms-gateway.com/the-image-of-ms/about-joyce-tenneson-250.htm


 * Linda McCartney**

Linda got her first big break as a photographer as a receptionist at Town and County Magazine. She became a professional photographer in the mid-sixties. She photographed the musical revolution of the decade since she was married to Paul McCartney, and was in one of the bands at one point in her life. She was known as a Rock photographer.

http://www.biography.com/people/linda-mccartney-246040


 * Steve McCurry**

Steve McCurry has been a one of the most iconic voices in contemporary photography for more than 30 years. Traveling with little more than a bag of clothes and another of film, he made his way across the subcontinent, exploring the country with his camera. He documented the way life was in India and shot alot of the poverty and human struggle. He is best known for his evocative color photography. McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. He focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather, on the human face

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 * Rene Burri**

From 1953 to 1955 he worked as a documentary film-maker and began to use a Leica while doing his military service. Burri became an associate of Magnum in 1955 and received international attention for one of his first reportages, on deaf-mute children, 'Touch of Music for the Deaf', published in Life magazine. He also photographed artists. He is known for his photos of major political, historical and cultural events and key figures of the second half of the 20th century.

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 * Cindy Sherman**

Her black-and-white photographs challenged cultural stereotypes supported by the media. In the 1980s, Sherman used color film and large prints, and focused more on lighting and facial expression. She returned to ironic commentary in the 1990s, directing the dark comedy //Office Killer//in 1997. Three years later, in 2000, she released a series of photographs of women with exaagerated attributes—a representation of social role-playing and sexual stereotypes. She is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art.

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