Index

[Hido] - Todd Hido

August 04, 2008

Todd Hido (pronounced Hie-doe) has a successful commercial career…but we won't be paying any attention to that. He's been hired by the N.Y. Times to photograph a well-known acting coach who is also a Scientologist…but you won't see those shots...

[Caffery] - Debbie Fleming Caffery

July 27, 2008

Debbie Fleming Caffery was born in 1948 in New Iberia, Louisiana on Bayou Teche. She is a product of the intersection of multiple cultures; a woman with an Irish name born in an American town founded by Spanish immigrants in...

[Erwitt] - Elliot Erwitt

July 20, 2008

He has led a peripatetic life, which seems almost traditional for a Magnum photographer. Elio Romano Erwitz was born in Paris eighty years ago this week, the only child of Russian émigrés who'd fled the 1917 Revolution a decade earlier....

[Beaton] - Cecil Beaton

July 13, 2008

Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was born in Hampstead, London, on January 14, 1904. His father was a very prosperous timber merchant, his mother was the daughter of a blacksmith. Like so many children of that era born into nouveau...

[Prince] - Richard Prince

July 06, 2008

Richard Prince was the first photographer whose work sold for more than a million dollars. It happened in 2005 in New York City at Christie’s auction house. The photo was one of a very limited series of images which all...

[Plachy] - Sylvia Plachy

June 29, 2008

I love Sylvia Plachy. I first became aware of her in the mid-1980s through the Village Voice, the free weekly ‘alternative’ newspaper distributed in New York City. The contents page of the Voice included a single black and white photograph,...

[Don] - Don Hong-Oai

June 22, 2008

Don Hong-Oai was born in 1929 in the city of Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province of China. He is often described as a Chinese artist, but not because of where he was born. He left China at the age of...

[Grinker] - Lori Grinker

June 15, 2008

Lori Grinker was born in Freeport, New York in 1957. When she was twelve, her parents moved to a quiet suburb of London. In addition to the usual childhood trauma of moving to a new home in a new town,...

[Atget] - Eugène Atget

June 08, 2008

By most objective standards, Eugène Atget would be judged a failure during his lifetime. He tried a number of professions and earnestly worked away at them, but at best he only managed to find a way to sustain himself and...

[Ionesco] - Irina Ionesco

June 01, 2008

She was born in 1935…perhaps in Romania, perhaps in Paris; there is some uncertainty. Her parents are said to have been in the circus…perhaps as performers, perhaps in some other capacity; there is some uncertainty. She either spend her childhood...

[Riis] - Jacob Riis

May 25, 2008

There is a long history of social documentary photography in the U.S. Before there was Milt Rogovin, before John Vachon, even before Lewis Hine, there was Jacob Riis. Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark in 1849, the third of fifteen...

[Link] - O. Winston Link

May 12, 2008

You’ve probably, at some point in your life seen one of the photographs on this page. They’ve become an facet of Americana, wistful representations of a bygone era in which steam locomotives transported goods and people across the huge expanse...

[Polidori] - Robert Polidori

May 05, 2008

Traditional architectural photography is documentary. It’s intended to be aesthetically pleasing, of course, but the primary concern is to accurately depict the appearance of a structure. Most architectural photographers come to their craft through their love of architecture. Robert Polidori...

[Leiter] - Saul Leiter

April 27, 2008

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1923; his father was a rabbi, a Talmudic scholar of some repute. It was only natural that Saul Leiter would follow in his father's footsteps. He found himself enrolled at the Cleveland Theological...

[Woodman] - Francesca Woodman

April 20, 2008

Francesca Woodman was born in April of 1958 in Denver, Colorado. Her parents were artists; her mother Betty was an accomplished ceramicist and art teacher, her father George, a painter and photographer. The family owned a summer house near Florence,...

[Borges] - Phil Borges

April 13, 2008

Phil Borges was your basic yuppie. A successful orthodontist, socially conscious, politically liberal, he traveled widely to remote areas of the world for pleasure and toted along an expensive camera to record his travels. Like a lot of enthusiastic hobbyists,...

[Petersen] - Anders Petersen

April 06, 2008

I recall the first time I saw a photograph by Anders Petersen. It was an image of a bare-chested young man who appears to be blissfully drunk or stoned in the embrace of an older woman who is laughing uproariously....

[Demarchelier] - Patrick Demarchelier

March 31, 2008

How well-known is Patrick Demarchelier in the fashion world? The 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada is about a newly-hired assistant to the editor of the most important fashion magazine in the galaxy. On her first day on the job...

[Seymour] - David Seymour (CHIM)

March 24, 2008

He was born to an affluent family in Warsaw in 1911 and given the name Dawid Szymin. His father, Benjamin, was a publisher of books in Hebrew and Yiddish. The family fled Warsaw after the city was bombed during the...

[Mahurin] - Matt Mahurin

March 16, 2008

Matt Mahurin is hardly a household name, but you're probably familiar with some of his work. You may not be aware of it, but you've almost certainly seen it. Mahurin created one of the most controversial images of the 1990s...

[Letinsky] - Laura Letinsky

March 09, 2008

Laura Letinsky became a photographer partly because the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg wouldn't let her take a class in painting until she'd completed a prerequisite course in art fundamentals. There was no prerequisite for the photography class. Letinsky began...

[Callahan] - Harry Callahan

March 02, 2008

For the first twenty-nine years of his life, he was pretty unremarkable. He was born in Detroit in 1912, took a degree in engineering from Michigan State, got a steady job in the Motor Parts division of Chrysler Corporation, met...

[Becker] - Olaf Otto Becker

February 24, 2008

I'm not an aficionado of landscape photography. I suppose that's not entirely true. I like to look at landscape photography. I find it visually appealing, but for me the appeal rarely expands beyond the eye. Part of that, I suspect,...

[Morley] - Lewis Morley

February 17, 2008

If the 1960s could be said to have a birthplace, it would have to be London. Probably Carnaby Street. Or maybe the opening of the boutiques on King's Road. But definitely London. Everything changed. Music, fashion, theater, literature, politics. Entire...

[Dodgson] - Rev. Charles Dodgson

February 10, 2008

He was born in a parsonage in Cheshire in 1832 to a very conventional Anglican family. Like his father, after whom he was named, Charles Dodgson would eventually take holy orders in the Anglican Church. It was just one of...

[Anthony] - Chris Anthony

February 03, 2008

Some photographers want to document reality. Some want to create images that exist only in their minds. Chris Anthony, it seems, wants to invent new realities. He wants to craft internally consistent environments and populate them with characters who seem...

[Vachon] - John Vachon

January 26, 2008

In 1935, during the Great Depression, the U.S. government tried an experiment. It created the Resettlement Administration, which was intended to relocate poor urban and rural families into planned communities, called 'green towns.' The program also hired a few photographers...

[Gerda Taro] - Gerda Taro

January 13, 2008

She was born Gerta Pohorylle on 1 August, 1910 to a proper upper middle class Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany. For most of her life, she lived a proper upper middle class life: a good education in Leipzig and at...

[Martin & Muñoz] - Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz

January 06, 2008

There are few things more innocent than a snow globe. These small, self-contained, cheerful worlds, in which scenery is enfolded within the purity of snow, first became popular in France in the 1800s. One result of the Industrial Revolution was...

[Rogovin] - Milton Rogovin

December 30, 2007

Milton Rogovin never intended to be a photographer, let alone one of the most renowned social documentary photographers in the U.S. He was an immigrant's son who felt privileged to go to college and lucky to obtain a degree that...

[Humble] - John Humble

December 23, 2007

Los Angeles. Tradition names it the City of Angels. Orson Welles called it “that bright, guilty place.” In modern pop culture it’s known as La La Land. In an earlier era, L.A. was said to be where intellectuals went to...

[Titarenko] - Alexey Titarenko

December 16, 2007

Alexey Titarenko was born in 1962 in the coastal city of Leningrad in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Photography occupied a strange position in the Soviet Union. Marxist theory holds that capitalist societies are arranged so that the world...

[Hofer] - Evelyn Hofer

December 09, 2007

Over the last year and a half, in the course of preparing these salon discussions, I've done quite a bit of research on a lot of photographers. Not surprisingly, a lot of the same names kept turning up when...

[Ballen] - Roger Ballen

December 02, 2007

There's a branch of social psychology that concentrates on the study of various modes of conflict. One of those modes is called the 'approach-avoidance' conflict. It occurs when you're simultaneously drawn to and repelled by a thing. For example, a...

[van Meene] - Hellen van Meene

November 25, 2007

In the middle of the 17th century the Dutch Republic gained its independence from Spain. The Dutch quickly became a major seafaring and economic power, the first thoroughly capitalist country in the world, and one of the most innovative centers...

[Wegman] - William Wegman

November 18, 2007

Imagine taking a fairly common idea and doing it so well that nobody ever expects…or allows…you to have another. Everybody who has both a camera and a dog has eventually turned the former on the latter. How could they not?...

[Tress] - Arthur Tress

November 11, 2007

Arthur Tress was born in 1940 and grew up in a strange time in the United States…the period between the Second World War and what was called the 'police action' in Vietnam. Post-war America took a determined grip on 'normalcy'...

[Crewdson] - Gregory Crewdson

November 04, 2007

I was prepared to like Gregory Crewdson before I ever saw his work. Why? Because I read an article in which he described his photographs as "images without narratives." I've always been of the opinion that a single photograph cannot...

[Dater] - Judy Dater

October 28, 2007

When I was about fifteen years old I saw a photograph in a magazine that left me gob-smacked. A prim-looking old woman in a long black dress, a twin-lens reflex camera around her neck, standing in the woods. Peeking coyly...

[Brassaï] - Brassaï

October 21, 2007

He was born Gyula Halász in the ancient Transylvanian town of Brassó. In 1902, when he was three years old, his family moved to Paris for a year (his father, a professor of literature, had a one year lectureship at...

[Barnes] - Richard Barnes

October 14, 2007

Architectural photography can be elegant, it can be an exercise in grace and fluidity, it can be dramatic…but it's rarely considered to be exciting. It's very precise and deliberate, as much craft as art. The purpose of architectural photography is...

[Krims] - Les Krims

October 07, 2007

The reaction to Les Krims' photography has generally fallen into two categories: outrage or laughter. Or both. That's no accident. His deeply conceptual images are intentionally crafted to spark those reactions. His work has been described as provocative, misogynistic, revolutionary,...

[Moriyama] - Daido Moriyama

September 30, 2007

In 1945, detective novelist Raymond Chandler wrote an essay about the "new detective story." The stories were new because they introduced a new type of protagonist: the hard-boiled detective. In part, Chandler wrote: "…down these mean streets a man must...

[Sanguinetti II] - Alessandra Sanguinetti - Part Two

September 23, 2007

We're doing something a tad different this week. Last week we took a look at Alessandra Sanguinetti's series On the Sixth Day ; this week we're going to look at the same photographer, but a different series. Sanguinetti photographed The...

[Sanguinetti I] - Alessandra Sanguinetti - Part One

September 16, 2007

Alessandra Sanguinetti spent a period of nine years getting to know the Argentine farm families that are featured in her two best known photographic series. She became familiar with the ebb and flow of farm life; she came to...

[Speers] - Vee Speers

September 09, 2007

Traditional portraiture is about the subject of the photograph…sometimes it's intended to be an accurate portrayal of the subject, sometimes a celebratory portrayal, sometimes a portrayal that's revelatory. Australian photographer Vee Speers doesn’t take traditional portraits. It's very clear...

[Brigman] - Anne Brigman

September 02, 2007

Anne Brigman was to photography what Isadora Duncan was to dance. She was a free spirit long before the phrase "free spirit" became a cliché. She was born in Hawaii, moved to California at age 16, married a sea captain...

[Tichý] - Miroslav Tichý

August 26, 2007

Miroslav Tichý was a 22 year old student of drawing and painting at the Academy of Art in Prague when the Communist Party gained control of the government in 1948. Tichý was very vocal in his opposition to the new...

[Misrach] - Richard Misrach

August 19, 2007

It sounds as if Richard Misrach always had a camera in his hand. At the age of twelve his parents put him in charge of photographing the family vacations…but he was never serious about it. Then in high school he...

[Meatyard] - Ralph Meatyard

August 12, 2007

Given the oddity of his most famous photographs, there’s a strange poetry in the fact that Ralph Meatyard was born in a town called Normal, Illinois. Given the critical and artistic acclaim of his work, there’s irony in the fact...

[McGinley] - Ryan McGinley

August 05, 2007

Every few years the world of art photography discovers a new golden child. From 2000 to 2005 the golden child was Ryan McGinley. He was young, he was gay, he was a skateboard thasher, and he had moderately attractive friends...

[Barth] - Uta Barth

July 29, 2007

We are accustomed to seeing…and shooting…photographs OF something. Some person, some object, some thing. In fact, for most of us the subject of the photograph is the reason for the photograph. We shoot photographs OF a tree, OF a friend,...

[Galella] - Ron Galella

July 22, 2007

In the late 1950s when director Federico Fellini was writing the screenplay for his classic movie La Dolce Vita he needed a name for a character…a news photographer. He chose the name Paparazzo. Where did he get that name? One...

[Morell] - Abelardo Morell

July 15, 2007

There is unexpected subtlety in Abelardo Morell's Camera Obscura series. The very first impression is disorienting. The eye seeks something familiar to which the mind can anchor itself. It takes a moment to realize that what we're looking at is...

[Sokolowska] - Ursula Sokolowska

July 08, 2007

"Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer," said Aldous Huxley. He asked "Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of...

[Rhode] - Robin Rhode

July 01, 2007

Robin Rhode is a smart-ass. One of those young street-punk kids who wants to take on the Art World and kick it in the cojones. And sometimes he really does it…sometimes he lays one right in the goolies (and I'll...

[Tomatsu] - Shomei Tomatsu

June 17, 2007

Sometimes the accident of birth shapes the course of one’s life. It’s true for Shomei Tomatsu. He was born and raised in the industrial city of Nagoya, Japan in 1930. The fact Nagoya was an industrial center became important 15...

[Yeager] - Bunny Yeager

June 03, 2007

Who can say where it all began? Perhaps with the Gibson Girl, often called the ‘ideal’ woman of the 1900s. Or maybe it was Paul Chabas’ famous 1912 painting September Morn, which was used on calendars and window displays...

[Parker] - Olivia Parker

May 20, 2007

Still life art has an ancient artistic tradition. Still life paintings have been found on the walls of Egyptian tombs; still life frescoes were uncovered on the walls of Roman villas in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Although the popularity of...

[Tunick] - Spencer Tunick

May 13, 2007

A week ago, on 6 May 2007, approximately eighteen thousand men and women of various ages showed up in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s principal square, just before dawn. At a signal, they took off all their clothes. Another signal,...

[Miller] - Lee Miller

May 06, 2007

She was born in the spring of 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her parents named her Elizabeth Miller, though she went through life using her nickname ‘Lee.’ Her career…in fact, her entire life…can only be described as remarkable. And...

[Emerson] - Peter Henry Emerson

April 29, 2007

Peter Henry Emerson was a child of privilege. He was born in Cuba in 1856; his mother was a member of British society, his father a wealthy American. His cousin was the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. His youth was...

[Tillmans] - Wolfgang Tillmans

April 22, 2007

Over the last year I’d come across the name Wolfgang Tillmans a number of times. “One of the most important and distinctive artists to emerge in the 1990s.” “Fashion and magazine photographer.” “Installation artist.” “A documenter of youth.” “Among...

[Barer] - Cara Barer

April 16, 2007

I'm not easily shocked and I'm rarely given to righteous indignation. Sculpt the naked form of Jesus out of milk chocolate and hang it in a department store window…I won't blink an eye. Use cadavers and body parts as...

[Gaskell] - Anna Gaskell

April 08, 2007

Imagine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland filmed through the lens of Alfred Hitchcock. Imagine the story of Cinderella as interpreted by Edgar Allan Poe. If you can imagine that, then perhaps you’ll have some insight into Anna Gaskell’s photography. Gaskell's...

[Darzacq] - Denis Darzacq

April 01, 2007

In October of 2005 in a suburb of Paris a group of teenagers of North African Muslim descent were returning from a soccer match when they saw police officers setting up a roadblock to conduct ID checks. Wanting to...

[Naiman] - Jon Naiman

March 25, 2007

This is not the Salon I'd intended for today. My intention was to examine the work of one of the old masters…but I'm going to put that off for a week. Why? Because as I was doing the research...

[Rosenthal] - Ken Rosenthal

March 18, 2007

Embrace the Blur. That could be Tuscon photographer Ken Rosenthal’s motto. Where most of us generally try to reduce blurring, Rosenthal relies on it. His blur, however, is an expressive blur. It’s a blur that serves a purpose. Several...

[Almog] - Lili Almog

March 11, 2007

I have to admit, I was first attracted to Lili Almog by her name. It’s just immense fun to say out loud. People who are much more aware of the photographic art world, though, have been drawn in by...

[Henson] - Bill Henson

March 04, 2007

For the last quarter of a century photographer Bill Henson has been taking strangely, dystopian photographs of urban industrial landscapes and dark, melancholy semi-candid portraits of alienated, disaffected adolescents and teens. His work as distinctly cinematic quality. While Henson...

[Nachtwey] - James Nachtwey

February 25, 2007

He has been called “the hottest war photographer on the contemporary scene.” He has been accused of “war porn.” He has been the subject of an Academy Award-nominated documentary film. He has won the the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, the World...

[Fontana] - Franco Fontana

February 18, 2007

Composition, down at the bone, is about geometry. Lines, shapes, angles, forms. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the landscape work of Italian photographer Franco Fontana. Fontana, born in 1933, didn’t take up photography until 1961 when he...

[Kerstens] - Hendrik Kerstens

February 11, 2007

In the 17th century Dutch painters began to create informal paintings that focused on the features and/or expressions of anonymous people. These were called tronies. Although a tronie showed a person’s face, it wasn’t considered a portrait. A portrait,...

[Ciardi] - George Ciardi

February 04, 2007

He was a factory worker for a couple of decades. Now he works as a courier, driving up and down the Duwamish Waterway, an industrial estuary in Seattle, delivering packages to the sorts of factories where he used to...

[Witkin] - Joel-Peter Witkin

January 28, 2007

The work of Joel-Peter Witkin can only be described as photography of the grotesque. Everything about his work is grotesque: the subject matter, the models, the printing process, the final image. It’s a perfect storm of grotesquery. Witkin began...

[Bubley] - Esther Bubley

January 21, 2007

Esther Bubley isn’t a familiar name to most photographers. Nonetheless, she was a quietly revolutionary figure. She wasn’t a revolutionary so much by choice; rather Bubley was a product of her time, and her time was one of radical...

[Porter] - Eliot Porter

January 15, 2007

If you’ve ever taken a nature photograph…budding trees in spring, fallen leaves in the autumn, a bird nesting, a lichen-covered stone…you owe a debt to Eliot Porter. Virtually all modern nature photography is an imitation of (and occasionally an...

[Renaldi] - Richard Renaldi

January 07, 2007

Los Angeles-based photographer Richard Renaldi is one of those prolific photographers so many Utatans would like to be. He travels widely, he photographs the things that interest him and the resulting prints sell for thousands of dollars in art...

[Tseng] - Tseng Kwong Chi

December 31, 2006

In 1979 Joseph Tseng was an unemployed 29 year old artist living with his sister in New York City. On a visit to the city, his parents invited Tseng and his sister to dinner at an upscale tourist-oriented restaurant....

[Brandt] - Nick Brandt

December 24, 2006

In December of 2000, Nick Brandt was in East Africa directing a music video for Michael Jackson. When the shooting for the video was complete, Brandt took some time off and visited some of the wildlife preserves. He took...

[González Palma] - Luis González Palma

December 17, 2006

Luis González Palma is best known for his strange, quiet portraits of the Mayan and mestizo women in his native Guatemala. There is a contradictory quality to many of these portraits. The subjects are women who belong to cultures...

[Sturges] - Jock Sturges

December 10, 2006

The name of Jock Sturges will always be interlinked with accusations of child pornography. It’s impossible to discuss his photographic career without making mention of the 1990 FBI raid on his studio and the resulting criminal charge of child...

[Sheikh] - Fazal Sheikh

December 03, 2006

Fazal Ilahi Sheikh came by his interest in displaced people naturally. You could say it was the family business. He was born in New York City in 1965. His father, though, was born in Nairobi, Kenya and his grandfather...

[Allee] - David S. Allee

November 26, 2006

“I believe in the future transmutation of those two seemingly contradictory states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of surreality, so to speak.” Andre Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924. The tragic landscape of highway strips, parking...

[Hai] - Zhou Hai

November 19, 2006

I know almost nothing about Zhou Hai, this week’s Sunday Salon photographer. I know he was born in1970 in the city of Guilin, which is located in the Guangxi region of China...a region known for its natural beauty. I...

[Wall] - Jeff Wall

November 12, 2006

Jeff Wall is best known for his large scale directorial photographs. Large scale directorial photographs…what the hell does that mean? It means Jeff Wall uses an 8x10 view camera to take staged pictures of events that could be real...

[Levinthal] - David Levinthal

October 29, 2006

Toys are, by definition, objects of play. In the hands of photographer David Levinthal, however, these objects of play play with our objectivity. He turns the innocence of toys upside down, using tiny figurines to create lurid scenes, some...

[Burrows] - Larry Burrows

October 22, 2006

Larry Burrows arrived in Vietnam in 1962 at the age of thirty-six. He’d been a professional photographer for Life magazeine for almost a decade. He’d covered some violent places at violent times (tribal conflict in the Congo, sporadic hostility...

[Fredine] - Eric Fredine

October 15, 2006

I am not a particular fan of landscape photography. It doesn't move me. Don't get me wrong; I've spent a great deal of time in natural places of staggering beauty and I appreciate the allure of the landscape. But...

[Hine] - Lewis Hine

October 01, 2006

Some photographers have an agenda. They see photography less as a form of expression and more as a tool for bringing public awareness to their cause. Their photography is not intended to please, but to inform...not meant to form...

[Sammallahti] - Pentti Sammallahti

September 24, 2006

The photograph on the right was my introduction to Pentti Sammallahti. I was altogether charmed by it. In some ways, it's not at all representative of Sammallahti's work; it's clearly manipulated in post processing and it features an amphibian....

[Davidson] - Bruce Davidson

September 17, 2006

There are a few fortunate people who know early on what they want to do for the rest of their lives…and actually find a way to do it. One of those felicitous folks is Bruce Davidson. Born in Chicago...

[Fontcuberta] - Joan Fontcuberta

September 10, 2006

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the relationship between reality and photography. There's been discussion about what constitutes a "photograph." These aren't new discussions, of course (although given flickr's NIPSA rules, they are increasingly personal and pertinent)....

[Sullivan] - Bill Sullivan

September 08, 2006

He calls it “situational photography” and describes it as “as a combination of street photography and portrait photography.” In essence, it involves the photographer visibly loitering in a specific, clearly identifiable location, taking candid surreptitious photographs of ordinary people...

[Karsh] - Yousuf Karsh

September 03, 2006

Yousuf Karsh was a master portrait photographer. One of the old school of portraitists who created classically styled portraits that lionized the subject. His portraits were deliberately dramatic, rich in light and shadow, respectful of the subject, carefully crafted...

[Blackmon] - Julie Blackmon

August 27, 2006

Domestic Vacations…the very title of photographer Julie Blackmon's most recent series offers us a whimsical contradiction. The photographs in the series are equally whimsical and equally contradictory. In a way, these images are classic interior photographs; still, composed, quiet....

[Watanabe] - Hiroshi Watanabe

August 20, 2006

As he wandered around the San Lázaro Psychiatric Hospital taking photographs, Hiroshi Watanabe was followed by a woman patient. She nattered on about a toothache and he apparently didn't pay much attention to her. When he was leaving, she...

[Christenberry] - William Christenberry

August 13, 2006

William Christenberry, born in Alabama in 1936, is an artist who works in several different media…sculpture, painting, photography. Like so many Southern artists of his generation, Christenberry left the South as soon as he could. He moved to New...

[Ross] - Judith Joy Ross

August 06, 2006

Judith Joy Ross is a fine arts portrait photographer. Throughout her career, she has focused her 8x10 view camera on both common people in common places (a swimming hole in rural PA, visitors to the Vietnam War Memorial in...

[Pickering] - Sara Pickering

July 30, 2006

The course of British photographer Sara Pickering's career seems to have been driven as much by serendipity as by design. Her early work (which included such topics as idealized glamor, women's body image, and eating disorders) appears to have...

[Burtynsky] - Edward Burtynsky

July 23, 2006

Edward Burtynsky has been called the Ansel Adams of the ruined landscape. He creates large, stunningly beautiful images of nature…but not the organic nature celebrated by Adams. Burtynsky describes the essential theme of his photography as "nature transformed through...

[Soth] - Alec Soth

July 16, 2006

There is a romantic tradition in American popular culture of the itinerant adventurer. A man alone, traveling around the country, meeting people, becoming involved in their lives for a short time, then wandering off again. They travel by horse...

[Sander] - August Sander

July 09, 2006

For the last century and a half people in Western society have primarily defined themselves by how they earned money. We are what we do. Although that's changing slowly, an occupational title still serves as a sort of shorthand;...

[ParkeHarrison] - Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

July 02, 2006

There is something mythic and heroic about the photographs of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. You can imagine discovering them stored away in some musty archive hidden among the overgrown brambles of the decaying ruin of an ancient city. The...

[von Holleben] - Jan von Holleben

June 25, 2006

Playful. We don't hear that word often enough in connection to photography. But it's summertime (at least in the northern hemisphere) and that means it's time to relax and play. German photographer Jan von Holleben's most recent series "Dreams...

[Iooss] - Walter Iooss

June 11, 2006

Because the World Cup…the premier sports event in the world…is now underway, I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the work of Walter Iooss, who is probably the premier sports photographer in the world. Normally we only examine...

[Grannan] - Katy Grannan

June 04, 2006

This is what I know about portrait photographer Katy Grannan: she was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1969. In 1991 she received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, two years later she took an M.A. from Harvard University,...

[Sudek] - Josef Sudek

May 28, 2006

It occurs to me that one thing we could all do to improve our understanding of photography is to examine and discuss some of the works of the great photographers. So starting today and every Sunday after this (if...