100 Most influential photographers of all time

From Professional Photographer magazine we find this intriguing post, there is no doubt a list like this will generate some debate but I doubt any of your favourites will be missing

Richard Avedon American 1923-2004
Avedon was the epitome of the modern photographer – a charming, sophisticated man-about-town and a photographer who was able to cross photographic genres. It did not matter where he was, which format he chose to work with or who his subject was, the image would be an Avedon image. It would have that unmistakeable elegance and confidence that marked him out, not just as a great photographer but as a highly successful commercial photographer, who was able to create instantly iconic and memorable images. So what’s his influence? His large-format portrait style with the stark white background, his use of two images to tell one portrait story, his use of strobe lights in fashion, the book In The American West? Of course it’s all this and more.Avedon is a photographer whom every photographer should get to know via his books. They cover his whole career and not only chart his own photographic and personal development but also, that of commercial photography over the last half of the twentieth century. Quite simply he is our No.1.www.richardavedon.com

here are the next nine, to see all one hundred go here

 

 2. W. Eugene Smith American 1918-1978

Intense and at times obsessed with his work. He helped establish the photo story and the power of black & white printing. www.smithfund.org

3. Helmut Newton German 1920-2004
Newton created erotically charged and powerful images of women, and developed the use of ring flash in fashion images. www.helmutnewton.com

4. Irving Penn American 1917- 2009
Every portrait shot in the corner of a room or simple symbolic still life owes something to Penn. He is the established genius of American Vogue magazine.www.irvingpenn.com

5. Guy Bourdin French 1928-1991
No one has been more imitated over the last few years in fashion and art photography than Bourdin. Erotic, surreal and controversial. www.guybourdin.org

6. Henri Cartier-Bresson French 1908-2004
The creator of ‘The decisive moment’. He never cropped his images and only shot in black & white. A Leica-wielding legend.

7. Diane Arbus American 1923-1971
Freaks, loners and people on the edges of society’s norms were Arbus‘s subjects. Her direct and simple portrait style and subject matter have inspired ever since.www.diane-arbus-photography.com

8.Elliott Erwitt French 1928-
Magnum member and humorous observer of everyday life. His juxtapositions of form and images of dogs show art is where you find it. www.elliotterwitt.com

9. Walker Evans American 1903-1975
The chronicler of American life who brought a detached observer’s eye to all of his images. He created order and beauty through composition where there was none.

10. Martin Parr British 1952-
Parr’s use of intense colour and his ability to raise the snapshot to the level of art has led to him being recognised as the master chronicler of the every day.www.martinparr.com

 

Tate doubles its photography collection after donation

In the BJP Olivier Laurent writes

“Tate has received a donation of 1400 photographs of London, including images shot by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Elliot Erwitt among many others, doubling the number of works that form its photography collection……

The collection spans the period from the 1880s to the 2000s and include images from more than 120 photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Ellen Auerbach, Eve Arnold, Ian Berry, Dorothy Bohm, Bill Brandt, Horacio Coppola, Martine Franck, Stephen Gill, Karen Knorr, Marketa Luskacova, Roger Mayne, Chris Steele Perkins, Marc Riboud, George Rodger and Chris Shaw.

Some of their images will form part of Tate’s upcoming Another London exhibition, which opens on 27 July 2012″.….MORE

It is the last point about an exhibition opening on 27th July that caught my eye. The home page of the Tate website doesn’t mention this exhibition and I had to search their site to find this info for you

Tate Britain will hold an exhibition of 180 classic twentieth-century photographs which take London as their key subject. In the years between 1930 and 1980, some of the best-known photographers from around the world came to London to make work about the city and its communities. This exhibition will bring together some of the biggest names in international photography, to explore the ways photographers, for whom London was a foreign city which they either visited briefly or settled in permanently, saw and represented the subject in their own unique and distinctive ways. Artists represented in the show include: Bill Brandt, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Frank,  Marketa Luskacova, Dora Maar, Irving Penn and Willy Ronis.

Another London

Tate Britain: Exhibition

27 July – 16 September 2012

£10

Girl with kitten 1960 © Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos.

So thanks again to the BJP for having it’s very sharp eye on all matters photographic

Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2172088/tate-doubles-photography-collection-donation#ixzz1vaXXWEm3
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New Photographers Gallery at the V & A

On 24 October 2011, the V&A’s new Photographs Gallery will open to the public. The gallery will have an inaugural  display of works by key figures of photographic history including Victorian portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and significant works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Afred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn.

The Photographs Gallery will draw upon the  V&A’s internationally renowned collection of photographs, and will chronicle the history of photography from 1839 up to the 1960s. In 1858, the V&A became the first museum to exhibit photographs, and the new Photographs Gallery is able to showcase some of the most technically brilliant and artistically accomplished photographs in its collection. Temporary displays, primarily showcasing contemporary photography, will be shown in the V&A’s existing photographs gallery.

more on this article here

there is also an interesting article in The Guardian by Jonathan Jones

“Photography is a mechanical art. The photographer points a lens at an object, records the image on a plate or film or, today, in digital memory. Therefore all photographs should be similar, the hands of individual photographers unrecognisable. Yet the new Photographs Gallery at the V&A, which opened on Monday to showcase the world’s oldest museum collection of photographs, reveals the apparently limitless variety of the art and the utterly personal genius of great photographers.

A photograph of a steam train taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1902 hangs near Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s 1932 picture Behind Gare St Lazare, Paris, on the blue-painted wall of the long, elegantly restored, Victorian gallery.” ....more of this here

Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Launching Chains of ‘The Great Eastern’

Robert Howlett (1830-58), ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Launching Chains of ‘The Great Eastern”, 1857. Museum no. PH.246-1979

Roslyn Chapel

Roger Fenton (1819-69), ‘Roslyn Chapel’, 1856. Museum no. 290-1935

Duane Michals Sequences

Duane Michals (b. February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Largely self-taught, his work is noted for its innovation and artistry. Michals’ style often features photo-sequences and the incorporation of text to examine emotion and philosophy, resulting in a unique body of work.

Michals grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. In 1953 he received a B.A. from the University of Denver. In 1956 he went on to study design at the Parsons School of Design with a plan to becoming a graphic designer, however he did not complete his studies. In 1958 while on a holiday in the USSR he discovered an interest in photography. The photographs he made during this trip became his first exhibition held in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York City.

For a number of years, Michals worked in commercial photography, working for Esquire and Mademoiselle, and he covered the filming of The Great Gatsby for Vogue (1974). He did not have a studio. Instead, he took portraits of people in their environment, which was a contrast to the method of other photographers at the time, such as Avedon and Irving Penn.

In 1968 Michals was hired by the government of Mexico to photograph the 1968 Olympic Games. In 1970 his works were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The portraits he took between 1958 and 1988 would later become the basis of his book, Album.

In 1976 Michals received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Michals also produced the art for the album Synchronicity (by The Police) in 1983, and Richard Barone’s Clouds Over Eden album in 1993.

go here for more articles on Duane Michals

american photo

1000words

Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals

http://michalsphotography.tumblr.com/