A little while ago, I found a book containing an overview of Barbara Crane’s work, and I was struck by the beauty of some of the portfolios. My favourite was shot in parks and on beaches in Chicago. You can find many more of her photos on this site or here - beautiful work!
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I remember a while ago, I was writing a post about my favourite classic portraits, and I wanted to include Richard Avedon’s portraiture of his father - which I couldn’t find online. I suppose the obvious did not occur to me, namely to look on the Richard Avedon website (in my defense, it appears as if the website has been expanded quite a bit since my prior visits). So it took Miguel’s post to remind me of that work, and to tell me where to look.
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“Born in Normal, Illinois, in 1925, […] Meatyard attended Williams College as part of the Navy’s V12 program in World War II. Following the war, he married, became a licensed optician, and moved to Lexington, Kentucky [..] When the first of his three children was born, Meatyard bought a camera to make pictures of the baby. Quickly, photography became a consuming interest. He joined the Lexington Camera Club, where he met Van Deren Coke, under whose encouragement he soon developed into a powerfully original photographer. […] An eclectic and voracious reader, Meatyard became close friends with poets and writers, including Guy Davenport, Wendell Berry, Jonathan Williams, and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Meatyard’s work became well known and was exhibited widely within the United States and abroad. In 1972, he died of cancer, a week before his forty seventh birthday.” (source; sample images here)
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I recently saw a show of work by Milton Rogovin, and I was impressed by the power of his work. By today’s standards his prints are tiny, but as I said before bigger is not necessarily better. Find another page with his work here.
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“Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.” This, of course, being a treasure trove of early colour work, previously linked to by Christian - which I managed to miss nevertheless, so thanks, Jacob, for telling me about it!
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“Luigi Ghirri revolutionized Italian photography in the 1970s with his fresh color snap-shot style observations of Italian contemporary culture. His small delicately colored prints were conceived in series to create visual poems- gentle but direct. The small scale and modest demeanor of his prints belie their power. Much of the work anticipates the large scale contemporary work of photographers ranging from Miguel Rio Branco to Andreas Gursky.” (source) See some more photos here.
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John Hinde was a colour photo pioneer. “Chances are you’ve never heard of him, but it’s more than likely that you’ll have seen some of his work. Hinde is a (mostly unsung) pioneer of colour photography; overlooked because he spent his time producing holiday postcards.” (source, with very neat samples). He recently became somewhat more widely known because of the Butlin’s Photographs (some of which you can see here). There appears to be a John Hinde website, but it won’t load for me right now…
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Regardless of whether there’s more to the whole than just the parts, the plethora of things that can be said about Lee Miller indicate that her life was quite unusual. Sadly enough, it ended in depression and alcohol - with a neglected cache of 40,000 negatives and 500 prints in the attic, which werediscovered after her death by her only son. She was the first woman to appear in an ad for menstrual pads (in a photo taken by Edward Steichen) and model and lover of Man Ray, before she became a photographer herself, and not just “a” photographer, but one of the finest ones of her days. During World War II, she worked as a daring war photographer who took the famous photos of the dead concentration camp guard in Dachau and the dead mayor’s daughter in (I believe Dresden), and she had her photo taken Hitler’s bathtub in Munich. Find two long accounts of her life here and here, both well worth the read.
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When I saw this photo for the first time, I stopped what I was doing (I think I was actually walking somewhere in Amsterdam) and I stared at it for what must have been a long time. It’s a photo by Ed van der Elsken, a Dutch photojournalist. Most of his work is in b/w, but look at the colour work! I wanted to link to his work earlier, and since I’ll be focusing on early unknown colour photography this week, now is the time. (updated entry - thanks, Pim!) PS: I got an email saying that the link to Ed van der Elsken’s doesn’t work right. I can’t reproduce the problem here, it works fine for me; but another way to get to the images is to use the museum’s main site and then to use the “Search” function.
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“Generations of photographers are indebted to [Evelyn] Hofer. For many years, her absolute technical proficiency attracted a constant stream of young photographers wishing to gain experience with her or work as her assistants. As a result, Hofer trained countless young practitioners and is a household name in the world of professional photography. This has made her ‘the most famous unknown photographer in America’, as one professional photo-journal put it in 1987.” (source) See more photos here, here, and here.
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“Ruth Bernhard, who photographed nude models in graceful compositions evoking sand dunes and sculpted shapes, died Monday. She was 101.” - full story
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“From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s, William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the United States, in India, and in Europe. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment to the daily chores of unemployed coal miners, from the indolent lifestyle of hippies in Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney was able to record the lives of others with remarkable clarity and poignancy. These photographs, along with his notebooks and writings, illuminate the rare vision of an intensely private man who, as a writer and photographer, was able to reveal the lives of others with striking sensitivity.” - The collection of work is nothing but amazing (and the sheer number of photos is quite overwhelming).
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“Arnold Newman, whose portraits of artists like Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso aimed to capture their souls, not just their faces, died on Tuesday [6 June] at age 88 at a New York hospital” (source)
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Tata Rankholz was a first-generation Becher student, and it is quite hard to find links. There are a few pages with text, all in German; I’ll spare you those. So enjoy the Trinkhallen, and also check out this page. (updated entry)
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“The eccentric photographer known as Disfarmer (1884-1959) seemed to be a man determined to shroud himself in mystery. Born Mike Meyers, the sixth of seven children in a German immigrant family, Disfarmer rejected the Arkansas farming world and the family in which he was raised. […] Disfarmer built a studio on Main Street and became a full-time photographer. Using commercially available glass plates, Disfarmer photographed his subjects in direct north light creating a unique and compelling intimacy. He was so obsessed with obtaining the correct lighting that his lighting adjustments for a sitting were said to take sometimes more than an hour.”
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Ruth Bernhard is mostly known for her photography of the nude, and if you look at those photos you will easily see why. Fortunately, since I first posted an entry about her, the number of websites dedicated to her work has mushroomed. See images here, here, here, here, here, and here. (updated entry)
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“Photographing the artistic life after World War II in a period full of promise, Karl Bissinger took unexpected portraits of the day’s luminaries of high Bohemia—writers, dancers, musicians, painters, journalists, and celebrities for such magazines as Flair, Theatre Arts and Harper’s Bazaar. These photographs capture those lost, illustrious years of artistic and literary life in the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly in New York, but also in London, Paris, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.”
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Richard Avedon was such icon of portrait photography that he could get away with showing almost no photos on his website. You don’t have to see the photos again because you already have. There are a variey of shows and exhibitions online of which I’m going to list only a few: The Metropolitan Museum’s Special Exhibition, PBS’ American Masters, PDN’s Legends Online. In the late 1970’s, Richard Avedon decided to embark on a project quite different from his usual work and to travel out west to take photos of people there. The resulting work In The American West has been hailed as one of his finest achievements and deservedly so. The book, long out of print, has just been re-issued. Laura Wilson, who worked with him during the trip, recently published her account of it. Digital Journalist has an introduction that features lots of photos (click on the thumbnails to get larger version that include explanatory text). Also see this page, which includes some audio material. The more intellectually inclined, who is not afraid to read material longer than three sentences, might enjoy Stylistic Trials and Documentary Tribulations in Richard Avedon’s In the American West - I myself, while usually fond of reading, am not very interested in reading about photography; it’s a visual art, after all, and too much babbling just gets in the way (but that’s just me). If you don’t want to just look at a book, you can also travel to Texas and see the show (open until 8 January 2006). make sure to also look at Avedon’s Lone Stars - Then and Now. There also is a review of the book, courtesy of Britain’s The Guardian. (updated post)
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I have wanted to link to Walter Vogel’s work for a while but, up until now, there was no website available. That has now changed; unfortunately, there only is a German version. Click on “Bilder” to see the photos, form there it’s obvious what to do. My favourites are the photos from around Düsseldorf. (thanks, Frank!)
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Jaroslav Rössler was a Czech master of abstract photography. Very impressive work! (seen at gmtPlus9)
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The Edward Weston website features lots of iconic American photos. And the aformentioned background article about Brett Weston gives a little background about what Edward Weston’s son Brett thought about the new prints of the old negatives.
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“On his 80th birthday, Brett Weston fed sixty years worth of his negatives into the large fireplace in his home on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Some of the negatives didn’t burn immediately. So Weston doused them with kerosene. Yes, he was something of a pyro. Over the course of that evening in 1991, flames consumed the raw material of one of the greatest photographic legacies in the history of the medium.” Thus begins an interesting article about the life and work of Brett Weston. And there is quite an ironic ending to the story of the burning negatives. Find more photos here; if you want to see more use Google - it’s an easy search for this classic photographer.
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Helmar Lerski (1871-1956) created studies of faces. There really is no other way to describe it. If you want to get an idea of what it means watch this film that shows some of the 140 photos done using a single person’s face. Utterly incredible. PS: If you can’t understand a word the presenter is saying don’t worry. It’s Swiss German.
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Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990) was an Austrian photographer (who in 1939 emigrated to the United States) who contributed greatly to portrait and nude photography. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find samples online. There are a bunch of portraits on this site, also don’t miss this portrait and this nude study.
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“Frederick Sommer, most widely known as a photographer, also maintained lifelong interests in drawing, painting, collage, poetry and prose.” His photography is currently on view at the Getty Museum (until 4 September). (thanks, Mark!)
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After his untimely death Werner Bischof did not become an icon like Robert Capa. I personally like Bischof’s work much better. Bischof was always an involved observer and and an artist at the same time - something that, I think, distinuishes a master photojournalist from the rest of the crowd. See many of his photos over at Magnum. There is a retrospective at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, and a new feature at ZoneZero. (updated post)
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There is a website dedicated to the photography of Horst P Horst, one of my favourite classic photographers. As much as I hate to say this make sure you treat yourself to the Flash presentation - even though it forces you to read all kinds of statements (some of which would not have been a tremendeous loss) before you can see the next image, the selection of photos is well worth the time.
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Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a member of the Bauhaus school (“The Bauhaus School was Germany’s most important and most avant-garde art and design school. In existence from 1919, many of its teachers found a new home in the USA when the Nazis forced the school to close in 1933.”), and there is a huge collection of his photos at the George Eastman House
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“Lotte Jacobi spent portions of her life in Berlin (1925-1935), New York City (1935-1955), and New Hampshire (1955-1990). As a result, she is able to provide us with a wealth of information through her photographs about pre-World-War II Germany, the cultural life in New York City, and the regional artists in New England.” Also see this page.
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George Hurrell was one of the most important Hollywood photographers of all times. Don’t miss this site which has tons of samples. Also slate.com just had a tiny feature (with a very very sad portrait of the dumbest Austrian export since 1945). You know, when I look at photos like this one or this one and compare it with what current Hollywood photographers produce… I am sure yesterday’s celebrities were as shallow and vain as today’s; but will we look at photos of today’s celebrities in fifty years and be amazed about classic beauty? I doubt it. (Thanks, Mark!)
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W. Eugene Smith is one of the true giants of American photojournalism, and I’ve always thought that his work deserved much more praise than that of others who became more well known. Fortunately, there is no shortage of information about Smith online. More overviews of his life and assessments of his work can be found here, here, and here. This page discusses Smith’s monumental Pittsburgh project. And you can find more samples of his work here, here, and here. Unfortunately, Smith’s Country Doctor series isn’t easily reachable any longer. However, if you start on this page and click forward you can still see most of it (Pssst! Don’t tell Life!)
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I’ve long wanted to link to Irving Penn but whenever I was looking for links it turned out to be very slim pickings. In that sense, the internet can be quite deceiving: If you try to estimate popularity or importance by the number of links you can find you might be making quite a serious mistake. In any case, I fould a few more links with a small number of samples: Two brief bios/introductions, here and here; and three samples plus text for his “Nudes”.
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“Erwin Blumenfeld’s popular reputation comes almost completely from his work as a fashion photographer in New York in the 40s, yet when he came to choose his ‘Hundred Best Photos’ in 1969 only four of them were fashion shots.” Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to find more samples of his work online. Given his contribution to fashion photography - when fashion photography did not mean to take photos of naked anorexic women - that’s fairly sad.
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The other day, architectural photographer Ezra Stoller died. Find some of his work here and here. (found at coincidences)
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József Pécsi is another classic Hungarian photographer. I think the Eastern European photography history and scene has so far been vastly underrepresented compared with the Western European one.
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Until today, I had never heard of Angelo (P疝 Funk) before. I bet you’ll be as amazed as I was when looking at the photos. Some of the 1920s photos have the look that many toy camera enthusiasts are trying to re-create now.
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Richard Avedon is dead. The New York Times has an extensive obituary. Update (5 Oct): Slate.com features a somewhat less hagiographic obituary, which might be the best I’ve read. There are some interesting and, for a(ny) photographer, somewhat disturbing observations in it, which it is tempting to dismiss - until you start to think about them.
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One of the very first photography shows I went to was the big Richard Avedon retrospective they had somewhere in Cologne. It must have been about ten years ago, I can’t say for sure, and I knew nothing about photography and very little about art. There was something about the photos that struck me. The portraits were very honest and very revealing - especially the ones that weren’t too obviously staged. And they were big. You could see every pore, and it wasn’t always flattering for the people whose photos Richard Avedon had taken. There also was a certain timeless beauty about the photos. I don’t think the photos will get this somehow dated look that we know from, say, Karsh’s portraits; maybe Avedon’s work is closer to Horst’s. Horst’s photos only look a little dated because people dressed differently. Since I got the subscription of New Yorker magazine (read their obituary), I have seen many photos by Richard Avedon, maybe too many. I’ve always felt that despite his obvious genius as a photographer Avedon wasn’t able to produce good work every week - the occasional masterpiece notwithstanding (such as the portraits of Michael Moore - shown on Avedon’s website). But now that he is gone I will miss seeing the photos, I’m sure. Through his work and through the people who copied his technique (and/or willingness to show people as they are) Richard Avedon will stay with us. Portrait photography is probably the most difficult thing you can do, and I think it will take a long time before somebody else will be able to fill those shoes again.
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In an older edition of Digital Journalist, I discovered a special on Arnold Newman that is not to be missed. More samples: here and here; plus a nice article/interview here.
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“Taking pictures is, in many ways, a kind of performance, and a camera is more like a musical instrument than a paintbrush or a pen. So, looking at a Lartigue print is very much like beholding, say, one of those brilliant child soul singers who come along every so often. You know they can’t possibly have the wisdom that their work suggests, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The miracle of such artists isn’t a question of intuitive technique, for as I say, that’s a contradiction in terms. But neither is it simply an illusion. It’s something altogether astonishing and inexplicable, an expertise beyond experience, and sometimes all you can do is stand back and admire it.” - Jim Lewis in a review of a a book about Jacques Henri Lartigue
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When you say “classical French photographer” people inevitably think of Henri Cartier-Bresson. That’s quite unfortunate as there are many others. Willy Ronis is one of them. This site has lots of photos, unfortunately it’s only in German. Click on “Bilder” to see the photos.
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Most people will probably remember Andre de Dienes for his early photos of Marilyn Monroe even though he did lots of other subjects, including surrealist nudes.
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Henri Cartier-Bresson is dead. The New York Times has an extended obituary, as has The Economist. It’s hard to say something about HCB that hasn’t been said already. Given he was a master photographer I think it is enough to let his photos speak: Selected Portraits, assembled for a show in the National Portrait Gallery. A small selection of his work at Peter Fetterman Gallery; another small selection. Also see these selections on Magnum’s website: photos of HCB, landscapes, and an amazing retrospective.
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William Eggleston has been named the father of colour photography. You can think about his work whatever you want but this weblog would certainly look quite different without Mr. Eggleston’s groundbreaking work. The Observer has just published a very nice article about him, a must read for anybody interested in photography (even for those who hate Mr. Eggleston’s work). Compare this older Salon.com article. (thanks, Mark!)
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“‘Hiroshima’ is an on-going project by the Japanese photographer Hiromi Tsuchida.” (thru consumptive.org)
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Dorothea Lange is one of the iconic US photographers of the past century and, if I may add this personal comment, one whose work I actually enjoy and admire (unlike, for example, Ansel Adams’s work that I find so utterly boring and vastly overrated). There is a fairly large selection of her work online: this page has lots of variations of the famous “migrant mother” photo shown above. I bet you never noticed Dorothea Lange retouched it (oh, the horror for all those photo “purists”!). And this page has lots and lots of photos. PS: I find the subtitle of the official site - “Photographer of the People” - quite odd. Sounds like late 19th century labour movement to me. (all links from wood’s lot)
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The official Milton H Greene website features tons of photos - for all subjects I looked at you basically get a digital contact sheet of the photo session - incl. failed exposures. Even though the samples are all fairly small it’s quite amazing to be able to see all that.
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Yevonde Cumbers aka Madame Yevonde was a pioneer of colour photography. When looking at her work one finds it almost hard to believe how old it is (more samples).
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Peter Basch was one of the most successful photographers of stars and starlets in the 1950s. Conscientious has been advocating contemporary photography quite consistently. But - and here comes the part that most people don’t want to read - when it comes to this kind of photography it seems like in the 1950s photographers had more style and class. This might be partly due to the use of colour - it’s so much easier to produce a colour photo that will look dated in ten years than a black/white one! Isn’t that amazing?! More on Basch here (an interview in German) and here (German description of a book; if you scroll down to the very bottom there are plenty of cool thumbnails from the book to look at).
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Billed on the front page of the web exhibition as “the worker’s photographer”, Ernst Thormann shows us a Weimar Republic that’s somewhat different from August Sander’s, or, if you prefer this interpretation, that is just part of August Sander’s œvre: The one dealing with “the worker”. (Danke, John C.!)
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