Gleneagle Secondary

Some photographers to look into for this project:

 

Annie Leibovitz (1949 - )

Arguably the most famous portrait photographer working today, Leibovitz has photographed many of the world's major celebrities, often in elaborate and imaginative set-ups.Spending her childhood and adolescence in different cities around the United States, Annie Leibovitz started her academic studies in photography in 1970 at the San Francisco Institute of Art. Months later, she achieved her first of many milestones when one of her images of John Lennon graced the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Two years later, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz the Chief Photographer of Rolling Stone, which she held for 10 years before leaving in 1983 for a position with Vanity Fair.

She was inspired and influenced by many other photographers like Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson—who are surprisingly well-known for their documentary and street work—during her time at the San Francisco Art Institute. Also inspired by Richard Avedon, Leibovitz had a beautiful relationship with writer and essayist Susan Sontag, who greatly contributed to Leibovitz’s inspiration and work.

Today, Leibovitz is considered to be the photographer of the famous. Her productions are very well thought out and offer extreme conceptualization. She is also known for taking the last image of John Lennon before his death.

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Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)Armenian-Canadian, renowned for his meticulous lighting, who became the most famous portrait photographer of his age. Career highlights include an iconic 1941 portrait of Winston Churchill in 'bulldog' mood.

 

Diane Arbus (1923 - 1971)

Diane Arbus was an American documentary photographer who focused on an exceptionally singular demographic—the marginalized. Her work is emotionally intense and often disturbing. During her time, this social pocket was populated by dwarfs, giants, transgenders, circus performers and many other surreal personas that captured her attention. She is often considered the Sylvia Plath of photography because of her work.  Embodying the importance of getting close to people when it comes to environmental and everyday portraits, Arbus is truly an inspiration. She has been credited for her uncanny and amazing ability of separating her subjects from their context or their society.

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Ansel Adams (1902-1984)
Highly influential master of the monochrome landscape. Particularly famous for his images celebrating the beauty and majesty of Yosemite National Park and his 'Zone system' for accurately calculating exposure.

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Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)
American photojournalist, remembered for her documentary work for the Farm Security Administration, which highlighted the plight of the poor during the Great Depression in the 1930s.  Migrant Mother is perhaps her most iconic work and is also the most famous image she produced during her tenure with the FSA. The image embodies the complex struggles of the American working class of the time.

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Alfred Stieglitz (1864 -1946)
Groundbreaking photographer, tireless promoter of others' work and a hugely important figure in the development and acceptance of photography as a serious art form.

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Helen Levitt (1913 - 2009)

Capturing humor with photography can be difficult. However, Helen Levitt made it seem easy. An American photographer known for her street photography, Levitt’s talent didn’t stop there as she mastered capturing humor on the streets. She is now considered the "most celebrated and least known female photographer of her time" and was a pioneer of color photography and color street photography.  Applying for and receiving not just any grant but a prestigious Guggenheim grant, Levitt had a stellar opportunity to explore her hometown. With the grant renewed for a second time in 1960, she honored the grant’s requirements and the world of photography by capturing hundreds of images that shifted from black and white to color.

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Robert Doisneau (1912-1994)French photojournalist, best known for his gentle, often humorous but brilliantly observed shots of life in France. His most famous picture is Le baiser de l'hütel de ville, which shows a couple kissing in a Paris street.

 

Ruth Orkin

The late Ruth Orkin, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1921, captured an image that has since served as a bold reminder of what it was like to travel as a single woman in post-WWII Europe. The photo, shot in 1951, is not staged. Rather, it shows Orkin's friend Ninalee Craig walking along a Florence street amidst a crowd of Italian strangers all too eager to take notice of a lone woman (they were aware of a camera, but not instructed to gawk). Craig and Orkin's daughter Mary Engel have insisted that the image is not about harassment or the male gaze; instead it's meant to highlight the resilience of a woman intent on experiencing the world on her own.  Orkin worked steadily from the 1940s to the 1980s, shooting for publications like The New York Times and Life, co-directing an Oscar-nominated film, and showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before she died in New York City in 1985.

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Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is one of Canada’s most respected photographers, with works featured in the collections of more than 50 museums across the globe, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Canada. A recipient of the Order of Canada in 2006, Burtynsky’s work dissects the relationships between industry and nature. His images of global industrial landscapes across Canada, the United States, and Europe capture beauty in these unlikely environments, as well as explore the environment impact of these sites. Burtynsky also founded and continues to manage Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, gallery, and digital imaging lab.

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Meaghan Ogilvie

Toronto-native Meaghan Ogilvie is known for her evocative images exploring the movement of the human body underwater and on land. A graduate of the Applied Photography Program at Sheridan College, Ogilvie is constantly experimenting with new technologies, most recently working with early photographic processes. Ogilvie’s has received recognition locally and internationally, including a shortlist nomination for the Sony World Photography Awards in 2013. Ogilvie wasalso granted a prestigious commission for the 2015 Toronto Pan Am/Parapan Am Games.

 

Neil Dankoff

Neil Dankoff’s work captures the power of dramatic landscapes. Using wide panoramic shots and intense colors, Dankoff transports viewers to faraway places. A Montreal native, Dankoff studied Film & Communications at McGill University before relocating to Toronto in 1998. His distinct photographic style is achieved by stitching together multiple digital images taken with varying exposures. Dankoff’s photographs highlight natural and developed landscapes across the globe, including destinations like Switzerland, Israel, Africa, and Italy.

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Paul Nicklen

Paul Nicklen grew up in an Inuit community on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. This unusual childhood helped to spur Nicklen’s deep understanding of harsh ecosystems and passion for environmental issues. He began his career as biologist studying species such as polar bears, lynx, and grizzlies, before becoming a full-time photographer in 1994. Since then, Nicklen has become known as one of the top wildlife and nature photographers of his generation. His images help to close the gap between scientists and the general public, presenting an intimate perspective on isolated and endangered habitats. An assignment photographer for National Geographic, Nicklen has also been a TED speaker and received dozens of international awards for his work.

 

Laura Letinsky

Winnipeg-born Laura Letinsky is known for her expressive still life photographs. Although she began her career photographing people, Letinsky later shifted towards still life images that suggest the presence of people instead, with subjects including half-empty glasses, orange peels, and unwashed dishes. A professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts, Letinsky’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Drawing on the influences of 17th-century Dutch still life painting, Letinsky’s work subtly examines concepts of space, perceptions, and color.

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Marilyn Cornwell

Originally from Grimsby, Ontario, Marilyn Cornwell left her career in IT and advertising in 2009 to focus on photography. Cornwell is an expert gardener and much of her work focuses on capturing the beauty and presence of plants in gardens and nature. Her ‘Flowerography’ series is inspired by Floriography, a form of cryptological communication that uses flower arrangements to convey meaning. Her images aim to move beyond the physical beauty of gardens, and resonate with viewers on an emotional level. Some of her other work explores urban environments through abstract images of rust, peeling paint, and other forms of decay.

 

Radha Chaddah

Radha Chaddah’s eclectic resume includes B.A.s in Art History and Film and Human Biology, as well as a Master of Science in Cell and Molecular Biology. Chaddah combines her passions for art and science in her imaginative cell photographs and multi-media installations. She uses her research science experience to grow stem cells in a laboratory and then photographs them using laser light. Her work aims to highlight the beauty of the unseen parts of the world, creating compelling two-dimensional works that appear both abstract and thoughtful. In addition to exhibiting her works in dozens of venues, she has lectured at the Ontario Science Centre, Sheridan College, and other institutions.

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Christopher Wahl

Christopher Wahl’s photography is often described as striking and honest. Born and based in Toronto, Wahl is one of Canada’s most successful portrait photographers. Wahl has photographed leading figures ranging from Queen Elizabeth and the Pope, to Al Pacino and Jon Stewart. His work has appeared in almost every major North American magazine, including Time, Life, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. His images are part of a permanent collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and his work has been recognized by The Magenta Foundation, American Photography, and The Annual Report 100, among other organizations.

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April Hickox

April Hickox has been producing photography, video, film, and installations works for more than 35 years. Her work, which has been exhibited both nationally and abroad, primarily focuses on narratives, examining the movement of one experience to another throughout life. Associate professor of photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, Hickox is also the founding director of Gallery 44 Center for Contemporary Photography.

 

Gregory Colbert

Photographer and film-maker Gregory Colbert is best known as the creator of the exhibition Ashes and Snow. This on-going exhibition is the culmination of a ten-year project, which took the artist around the world to locations such as India, Antarctica, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Egypt. The project aims to capture the relationship between humans and animals, documenting wild animals as well as those that have been habituated to human contact in their natural environments. The unique exhibition combines large-scale photographs and films, all of which are presented in a moveable structure called the Nomadic Museum, which is transported from city to city.

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Art Wolfe (born 1951)
Popular nature photographer and television presenter whose vividly-coloured images of wildlife, landscapes and indigenous cultures celebrate the beauty and diversity of the natural world.

 

Garry Winogrand (1928-1984)
One of the great street photographers of the 1960s and 70s, Winogrand's pictures of everyday urban life are complex, sometimes humorous and often profound.

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Edward Weston (1886-1958)
One of the most influential American photographers of the 20th century, Weston shot meticulously detailed large-format pictures of landscape, people and still-life subjects.

 

Mario Testino (born 1954)
One of the world's most famous photographers in the world, Testino is particularly celebrated for his glamorous and flattering fashion photography of women and his advertising campaigns for Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana.

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Edward Steichen (1879-1973)
Initially an important pictorialist photographer, Steichen went on to adopt 'straight' photography and became a successful fashion photographer as well as an important gallery and museum curator.

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W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978)
Famously uncompromising American photojournalist who photographed combat in World War II and went on to specialise in the photo-essay, most notably in his three-year Pittsburgh project.

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Sebastiao Salgado (born 1944)
Salgado abandoned a successful career as an economist in 1973 to become a photojournalist and has since carried out numerous photo projects worldwide, highlighting poverty and social injustice.

 

Man Ray (1890-1976)
Highly creative, surrealist-influenced photographer whose most famous images resulted from experiments with photograms (which he called 'rayographs') and solarisation, in which an image is completely or partially inverted.

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Irving Penn (1917-2009)
American photographer, widely revered for his studio-based portrait, still life and fashion work. His pictures, executed with great attention to detail, are spare, powerful and carefully composed.

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Martin Parr (born 1952)
Documentary photographer whose often acerbic, often darkly humorous images (as shown in books such as The Last Resort and Small World) offer a critical view of contemporary culture.

 

Simon Norfolk (born 1963)
Passionately political British documentary and landscape photographer who has focused his 'forensic' attention on the aftermath of war in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda.

 

Arnold Newman (1918-2006)
Known as the 'father of environmental photography', Newman preferred to shoot in the subject's home or workplace and use their surroundings to give additional insight into their personality.

 

James Nachtwey (born 1948)
Multi award-winning American photojournalist, famous for his unflinchingly honest images of war in Iraq, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

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Steve McCurry (born 1950)
Magnum member and National Geographic contributor whose varied career in photojournalism has included war reporting and numerous informal portraits including the famous 'Afghan Girl'.

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Don McCullin (born 1935)
Fearless photojournalist who reported on the Vietnam War and other conflicts before turning to landscape photography and producing distinctive, atmospheric, doom-laden scenes.

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Winston Link (1914-2001)
Commercial photographer best known for his classic, beautifully lit monochrome images of the now-vanished world of American steam railways in the 1950s.

 

Neil Leifer (born 1942)
Acclaimed sports photographer who shot iconic images of Muhammad Ali in action in the 1960s and who later went on to photograph 40 covers for Time magazine.

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Frans Lanting (born 1951)
Netherlands-born nature photographer and long-term National Geographic contributor whose work has broken new ground and directly influenced governments' conservation policies.

 

David LaChapelle (born 1963)
American fashion and fine art photographer who places both celebrity subjects and fashion models in lavish, complex and brightly-coloured fantasy scenes, often using digital manipulation to surreal effect.

 

Nick Knight (born 1958)
Cutting-edge fashion and advertising photographer who goes against the accepted ideas of beauty in his often-confrontational images. He has tackled a range of issues including racism and disability.

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Andre Kertesz (1894-1985)
Hungarian-born photographer who shot street pictures, portraits, cityscapes, still lifes and a famous series of distorted nudes. Still underrated and for some he's the 'father of modern photography'.

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Michael Kenna (born 1953)
Kenna's distinctively sparse, minimalist monochrome landscapes, often shot in remote locations and using very long exposures, have influenced countless others.

 

adav Kander (born 1961)
Award-winning advertising and fine art photographer best known for his desolate urban landscapes and his documentary images taken in China along the Yangtze river.

 

Horst P Horst (1906-1999)
Horst shot fashion, portraits and nudes with a classic sense of style and was the creator of the famous 'Mainbocher Corset' photograph (1939). He had a long association with Vogue magazine.

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Lewis Hine (1874-1940)
Documentary photographer and social reformer whose shocking images of factory conditions in America, particularly child labour, had a direct influence on changing US employment law.

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Philippe Halsman (1906-1979)
Portraits were Halsman's speciality and he photographed a number of American celebrities and politicians with his customary panache. Best known for his dynamic and surreal creation, Dali Atomicus.

 

Andreas Gursky (1955)
German photographer and visual artist whose digitally manipulated, large-scale images of buildings, public spaces and landscapes have sold for up to £2.7million each.

 

Anne Geddes (born 1956)
Australian portrait photographer who is both praised and criticised for her fantasy-inspired images of babies and motherhood, but is a phenomenal commercial success, selling over 18 million books.

 

Robert Frank (born 1924)
Swiss-born photographer whose seminal 1958 book The Americans broke new ground in documentary photography technique and was widely influential on succeeding generations.

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Roger Fenton (1819-1869)
Photographic pioneer who shot some of the earliest war photographs when he took his cumbersome equipment to the Crimean War in 1855 and captured unique battlefield images.

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Walker Evans (1893-1975)
American documentary photographer and journalist who recorded poverty-stricken sharecropper families during the Depression era and everyday subjects in a clear, poetic style.

 

Elliot Erwitt (born 1928)
Paris-born photographer and member of the Magnum agency, best known for his witty and ironic street pictures, shots of people in museums, and dogs.

 

William Eggleston (born 1939)
American photographer whose 'snapshot' style elevated the everyday to the extraordinary and whose saturated 'dye-transfer' prints helped colour photography become an accepted art-form.

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Harold Edgerton (1903-1990)
Scientist, inventor of the first electronic flash and creator of revolutionary high-speed flash photographs, including a famous shot of a bullet passing through an apple.

 

Brian Duffy (1933-2010)
Highly-regarded fashion, advertising and portrait photographer who shot David Bowie's iconic Aladdin Sane cover and the imaginative and surreal Benson & Hedges poster campaigns of the 1970s.

 

Patrick Demarchelier (born 1943)
Prominent fashion photographer whose stunning images of the world's top models have featured in magazines such as Harper's Bazaar. Has also shot major advertising campaigns for Dior, Calvin Klein and others.

 

Bruce Davidson (born 1933)
American photographer whose documentary work on gang life in Brooklyn, the poor districts of Harlem, New York, and his photographs of the New York subway system in the 1970s broke new ground.

 

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
Pioneer of portrait photography, renowned for her intentionally-unfocussed portraits of eminent Victorians including Alfred Lord Tennyson and Sir John Herschel.

[caption id="attachment_540101" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Cartier-Bresson in a rare interview."]

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
Innovative and highly influential French photojournalist and portrait photographer. He co-founded the Magnum agency and is forever associated with the term 'the decisive moment'.

 

Robert Capa (1913-54)
Charismatic Hungarian photojournalist who covered five different conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to the First Indochina War. Famous for his visceral images of the D-Day landings.

 

Bill Brandt (1904-1983)
German-born photographer with his own distinctive artistic vision. Created atmospheric images while working in diverse genres including portraiture, landscape, figure studies and social documentary.

 

Cecil Beaton (1904-1980)
British fashion and portrait photographer who created elegant and stylish fashion and portrait images for magazines including Vogue and Vanity Fair from the 1920s-70s.

 

Larry Burrows (1926-1971)
For some commentators, Burrows is one of the greatest war photographers. His hard-hitting photo stories for LIFE magazine helped influence public opinion against the Vietnam War, which he covered for nine years.

 

Brassaii (1899-1984)
Hungarian photographer and sculptor who achieved international fame for his atmospheric images of 1930s Paris as shown in his influential book Paris by Night.

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Meridith Kohut (Venezuela)

Meridith’s work this year has shown remarkable depth. She has spent most of it chronicling the Venezuelan economic and social crisis. Her persistence and courage have brought her into some very tough situations, and yet she produced remarkable images – and in some cases her own reporting brought us stories, like this tragic picture from a mental hospital.
– Michele McNally, Assistant Managing Editor and Director of Photography of The New York Times, U.S.

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Johanna Maria Fritz (Germany)

Johanna Maria Fritz is curious about people and their ambivalent relationships with reality. Although she has only just finished school and is barely in her 20s, she has already created a long-term documentary series that is full of personality. Fritz travelled to several different countries to document circus artists. She describes the photos as “a mixture of staged and documentary photography.” She is a powerful young female photographer who is determined to go her own way.
– Barbara Stauss, Photography Director of Mare, Switzerland/Germany

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David Bailey (born 1938)
One of the key players in the new generation of photographers which rose to prominence in the 1960s, known mainly for his iconic fashion and portrait
photographs (Krays, Beatles), and still active today.

 

Richard Avedon (1923-2004)
American photographer, widely acclaimed for his innovative fashion photography for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and for his penetrating black and white
portraits of people against a white background.

 

Eve Arnold (1912-2012)
Photojournalist equally at home when documenting the lives of the poor and dispossessed around the world, or shooting informal portraits of celebrities. Best-known for her photographs of Marilyn Monroe.

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Cate Dingley (U.S.)

Cate is the classic people photographer (in the spirit of Dorothea Lange); she executes thought-provoking juxtapositions combining form and content into a square frame so that the viewer cannot overlook the pure poetry in her aim.
– Donna Ferrato, Photographer, U.S.

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Kirsty Mackay (U.K.)

I was first introduced to Kirsty’s work by a photojournalism professor in Cambridge, and later saw a project of hers while judging for Unicef in Germany. Her work is so fresh and quite simple. She tends not to examine the enormous conflicts and problems we face, but instead focuses on smaller perspectives – like her project on little girls and the imposition of the color pink. Yes I know, I deal with world news, but this enchanted me.
– Maria Mann, European Pressphoto Agency Consultant, Portugal

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Luisa Dörr (Brazil)

Luisa Dorr’s work is pure poetry. I serendipitously discovered her on my Instagram feed, and the picture lept off the screen. Luisa’s photographs are soulful and thoughtful and she works with a quiet grace. We have been honored to work with her for the past few months. Stay tuned for her terrific project coming up in TIME. – Kira Pollack, Director of Photography and Visual Enterprise at TIME, U.S.

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Adriana Loureiro Fernandez (Venezuela, based in the U.S.)

Adriana’s pictures are all heart. She’s so fully and deeply present in what she’s seeing and experiencing. She has a beautifully poetic understanding of color, light and shadow which is unusual in such a young photographer. Beyond that, she’s extremely courageous but also cognizant of her own fears and vulnerabilities which is an unusual combination. – Nina Berman, Photographer, U.S.

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Nazik Armenakyan (Armenia)

In 2013, I traveled to Yerevan where I had the privilege of curating the first ever exhibit of women photographers in Armenia. Nazik’s work struck me with its powerful message and quiet, elegant approach. In Armenia, a former Soviet country with a non-democratic heritage, human rights issues are her focus. For her first long-term project, Survivors, about the Armenian genocide, she traveled around Armenia racing with death as her subjects aged. She found 45 of them.
– Svetlana Bachevanova, Publisher of FotoEvidence, U.S./Bulgaria

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Vittoria Mentasti (Italy)

There is a certain poetic, artistic quality in Vittoria’s documentary work. She has the ability to find stories beyond sensational news.
– Alessia Glaviano, Senior Photo Editor of Vogue Italia, Italy

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Mahin Mohammadzadeh (Iran)

Mahin is not only a talented photographer, but she is also very determined, something you really need to be when you live in Iran’s poorest province. She fought to become a photographer. Her father initially didn’t approve, but now Mahin is the only female photographer in the entire province of Sistan and Baluchestan. She is documenting lives in a part of the country that we rarely get a chance to see. I admire her for being a quiet bulldozer, always inching forward, ignoring the drama. Her work is honest and real. – Newsha Tavakolian, Photographer, Iran

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Ashima Narain (India)

Ashima is a poetic photographer and storyteller. She always finds unique stories and her images make sense of our commonalities in the world we share. She also happens to be one of the hardest working photographers/filmmakers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. – Ami Vitale, Photographer, U.S.

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Ashima Narain (India)

Ashima is a poetic photographer and storyteller. She always finds unique stories and her images make sense of our commonalities in the world we share. She also happens to be one of the hardest working photographers/filmmakers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. – Ami Vitale, Photographer, U.S.

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Alice Martins (Brazil, based in Iraq)

Alice is one of the few Latin American female photographers – if not the only one – working in the Middle East, with a heavy focus on Syria. I love how she isolates islands of apparent calm and strange beauty in the middle of chaos.
– Adriana Zehbrauskas, Photographer, Brazil

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Fatemeh Behboudi (Iran)

In 2014, I curated the Asian Women Photographers’ Showcase, where I selected Fatemeh’s work, featuring her series Mothers of Patience. I later met Fatemeh in person in Malaysia and she was like a little girl, curious about everything around her. She found a piano and began playing it beautifully – she was a totally different person than the female photographer I had envisioned working in Iran. Her innocence allows her to focus sincerely on her subjects. I am personally interested in photographers who focus on subjects that are somehow related to their own lives. She’s the one of the most important photographers I have ever met. – Yumi Goto, Independent curator, Japan

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Tatiana Plotnikova (Russia)

Tatiana Plotnikova

I picked Tatiana because she has her own style, her pictures are always recognizable – and this is something that you don’t come across very often. I picked her pictures for the poetry they bring to the world, for their surreal truth. I like her pictures because they help reveal the inner life of strangers. – Victoria Ivleva, Photographer, Russia

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Lalla Essaydi

Born in Morocco in 1956, Lalla Essaydi creates staged photographs of Arab women, investigating the way power and gender manifest in the ways her subjects pose their bodies in negative space. Many of her images, like Neshat's, involve text -- namely Arabic calligraphy, which is a traditionally male practice in her country. Her image, "Converging Territories #13," on sale at Sotheby's, is one such image.

"My work is really autobiographical," she told PBS, "it’s about my own experiences growing up in Morocco and living as an adult in Saudi Arabia for many years. It’s obviously infused in my work, but my work really goes beyond the Arab world or Arab culture. It really engages Western art and the role in which Arab women are used that I find problematic."

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Sally Mann

Born in Virginia in 1964, Sally Mann's series "At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women" attempts to capture moments in adolescent girls' lives that neither glamorize nor darken a period marked by constant change and a desire for independence. Throughout her career, Mann has also employed her children as models, further exploring the relationship -- or, perhaps, distance -- between kids and adults, always a camera in between.

While her art has garnered the attention of critics who find her treatment of young girls too controversial, Edward de Grazia, a professor at Benjamin Cardoza School of Law in New York who's focused on censorship of art and literature, says: "What makes Sally such a good case is that right now her work deals squarely with this taboo subject of nude children. There isn’t the slightest question that what she’s doing is art, so her motives and the artistic value would be unmistakable to the Supreme Court. Her work would highlight the vagueness and overbreadth of the child pornography laws. Isn’t work like this entitled to be protected under the First Amendment?"

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Tina Modotti

Born in Italy in 1896, Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini (also known as Tina) was an actress, activist and artist who before, during and after her marriage to fellow photography Edward Weston managed to create a breathtaking collection of images, mainly in Mexico, before her death in 1942. Most of her work was not fully recognized until a trove of her unseen images was found in a trunk belonging to one of her former lover Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey's descendants.

The image above, taken in 1924-25, could fetch up to $100,000 alone.

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Berenice Abbott (1898 - 1991)

An American photographer largely known for her portraits, Berenice Abbott’s love of photography started in 1920 when she worked as a darkroom assistant for the peculiar photographer and vastly known surrealist Man Ray. Developing her own talent and aesthetic after meeting people like Max Ernst, James Joyce and Edna St. Vincent Millay, she was also inspired by the pleasant images of Eugène Atget. In an artistic sense, Abbott pursued objective images that stood on their own merit, rather than just referencing other classical art forms with black and white being her medium of choice. Her portraits are historically centered around the world wars and cultural figures with her architectural and urban photography like those seen in her New York City pieces offering a striking aesthetic.

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Cindy Sherman (1954 - )

Cynthia Morris Sherman is a peculiar artist and female photographer who is also one of the most important figures of the post-war era with her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art for over three decades. She is best known for personifying the classical stereotypes of the film noir and the European cinema in what is known as "author films" of the 1950s and the 1960s.

Untitled Film Stills ©Cindy Sherman

Her most famous work is Untitled Film Stills, which was produced from 1977 to 1980 and includes a series of 69 pictures where she enacts female clichés of 20th-century pop culture. Her consistent double role as a subject and viewer is striking evidence of her artistic statement and conscience.

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Francesca Woodman (1958 - 1981)

Born at the center of a family of artists, Francesca Woodman was no stranger to American photography and its influencers thanks to her parents, George and Betty Woodman. Today, the Woodmans manage their daughter’s archives, which includes approximately 800 images of which only 120 have been publicized through exhibitions or in books.

Perhaps not the most famous female photographer, Woodman’s talent is undeniable. She is known mainly for her self-portraits and has been defined for her unveiling attitude toward the camera. Although she tragically committed suicide at the age of 22 in 1981, her work continues to be the subject of widespread critical acclaim and attention.

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Gerda Taro (1910 - 1937)

Gerda Taro is one female photographer that history should never forget. Born as Gerta Pohorylle but taking on an alias as a young and talented photojournalist, Taro was a pioneer in photojournalism especially when it came to the discipline of war. Today, she is recognized as the first photojournalist to cover a Belic conflict and, sadly, is also known as the first woman who died doing this brave task.  Romantically involved with Endre Ernö Friedmann, Taro and Friedmann both shot under one signature—Robert Capa. Because of this and the difficulty in determining the authority of some images, Taro’s work is often complex and difficult to examine. One mechanism that has been reliable in crediting certain images to Taro and others to Friedmann is the format of the images. Taro worked with a 6x6 medium format camera while Friedmann worked with a 35mm format camera; however, even then, camera sharing could have easily taken place.  

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 Imogen Cunningham (1883 - 1976)

An American photographer mainly known for her botanical work as well her nudes and industrial landscapes, Imogen Cunningham was a member of the famous direct photography f/64 group. She was one of the first professional female photographers with her love, passion and commitment for the art reaching many disciplines of the craft.

One important aspect of Cunningham’s artistry is that she was also very interested in human subjects, especially artists, with even her industrial landscapes showing an undeniable "human footprint." She is often associated with other iconic 20th century photographers like Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Dorothea Lange.

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Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971)

Margaret Bourke-White's work has become the paradigm of the social and political commitment of North American photographic journalism. She was particularly interested in industrial photography and received her first commission from Fortune magazine in 1930. During the Second World War, she worked as a war correspondent and portrayed the often harsh reality of war. Her moving images of the liberation of the concentration camps had worldwide repercussion in terms of perception and consciousness.  Thanks to a commission from LIFE magazine, Bourke-White moved to India in 1946 to capture the liberation of the Hindus. Her most iconic image from this period is of Ghandi and the Spinning Wheel, which emphasized the importance of the spinning wheel as a symbol of India's independence.

 

Mary Ellen Mark (1940 - 2015)

Mary Ellen Mark was an amazing American photojournalist with a special social focus on people who were "away from mainstream society." Her most famous work is Streetwise and can be seen here. Thanks to publications like LIFE, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The New York Times, her work has seen the light of day. She was also a member of the Magnum Photo Agency for 5 years.  Although she is widely known as a photojournalist and documentary photographer, her images go beyond genres. Her work isn’t like any other news photographs because they are deeply rooted in reality with many of the social struggles and issues of the time and era recorded in the human faces of her subjects in what would otherwise be dimmed in the dry world of statistics.

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Sally Mann (1951 - )

Extremely well known in the world of fine art, Sally Mann’s favorite technique has been large format, black and white photographs. She centers in the eerie aspects of life and dares the viewer with images that often feel odd to the average public eye.  Prolific when it comes to her subjects from landscapes to intimate and close images of her own family members and loved ones, Mann is known for using her family as her primary subjects. 

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Susan Meiselas (1948 - )

Susan Meiselas is an American documentary photographer whose work has been published in many newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Times, Time, GEO and Paris Match. Besides being a member of the Magnum Photo Agency since 1980, she received the 1979 Robert Capa Gold Medal and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992.  Her iconic image titled Molotov Man became a symbol for revolutionary causes first in Nicaragua and later in other countries much like Alberto Korda’s Guerrillero Heroico became an international symbol. Meiselas also documented the El Mozote Massacre in 1981 during the civil war conflict in El Salvador.

 

Tina Modotti (1896 - 1942)

Although she was born in Italy, Tina Modotti’s life and photography were strongly marked by the time she spent in Mexico with her photographs conveying her own sensitivity to Mexican culture while reflecting the evolution of her political ideas. Immersed in the avant-garde Mexican scene, she created an important photographic archive about the culture and politics of the country after the revolution.  Many believe that Modotti tried to balance the dichotomy between aesthetics and politics by presenting them with absolute elegance. By far, her most iconic image is Worker's Parade.

 

Vivian Maier (1926 - 2009)

Vivian Maier was not known as a photographer like other women that are famous. Instead, she worked as a nanny four four decades and carried her camera around in her spare time to pursue and collect moments on the streets. She took over 150,00 photographs during her lifetime and has rewritten the history of street photography with her work. She is a great example of the importance behind constantly revisiting history.

During her lifetime, her images were completely unknown and, therefore remained unpublished. Her images were for her and no one else. Her private photographs were controversially discovered by John Maloof, which is why her most treasured images are now available for our delight. You can see the documentary film Finding Vivian Maier to understand more about her beliefs. Afterward, maybe you'll have your own questions about the controversial discovery and publication of her work.

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