Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Golfe-Juan, France by Robert Capa
Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Golfe-Juan, France 1948 Photography Silver Gelatin Print – Collection of International Center of Photography, New York, USA
In a light-hearted image, Capa captured the legendary Picasso carrying an umbrella whilst walking along the beach shading his young lover Françoise Gilot. The twenty-six-year-old Gilot strides toward the camera with confidence. In the background, Picasso’s nephew Javier Vilato seems to be strolling through the scene. Taken from a low vantage point the mastery of Capa’s composition makes the three figures appear descending in scale from Gilot in the foreground to Vilato in the middle background. Gilot was a talented painter. The couple met in France during the occupation before Picasso had officially separated from his wife, Olga Khokhlova. They had a ten-year tumultuous affair resulting in two children before Gilot left and later moved to the USA where she married Dr. Jonas Salk, a pioneer of the polio vaccine.
Robert Capa 1913-1954
Robert Capa Photojournalism, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography Born: 22 October 1913, Budapest, Hungary Nationality: Hungarian-American Died: 25 May 1954, Thái Bình, Vietnam
Capa was a war photographer and photojournalist and is among the best combat and adventure photographers in history. He had fled political repression in Hungary as a teenager, moving to Berlin whereas a student he witnessed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. He moved to Paris and finally, to America, Capa, and his professional partner Gerda Taro began to publish their work. Capa covers five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, WW2 across Europe, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the First Indochina War. His images were published in major magazines and newspapers. Capa was killed by a landmine in Vietnam
Juvisy, France 1938 Photography Gelatin Silver Photograph National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
In a scene ubiquitous in Impressionist paintings Cartier-Bresson’s “Juvisy, France” portrays two couples picnicking on the banks of the river Marne. The elevation of the viewer’s vantage point at the top of the steep bank initiates a visual cascade effect as they glance down at the picnickers who are looking down to a boat as it rests on the sky-mirroring river.
Henri Cartier-Bresson 1908-2004
Henri Cartier-Bresson Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Photojournalism, Documentary Photography Born: 22 August 1908, Chantelop-en-Brie, France Nationality: French Died: 3 August 2004, Montjustin, France
Cartier-Bresson was an artist and humanist photographer renowned for his candid photography and as an early user of 35mm film. A pioneer of Street Photography Cartier-Bresson viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment
Man carrying a wounded boy, Battle of Teruel, Spain by Robert Capa
Man carrying a wounded boy, Battle of Teruel, Spain 1937 Documentary Photography Gelatin Silver Print Collection of International Center of Photography, New York
Capa focuses on the visible struggle in the face of the man carrying the child in his arms. In the aftermath of the siege of the Spanish hilltop town of Teruel, the young boy has been seriously injured and the man is carrying him to safety. Exemplifying the horrors of war it is an eye-opening image of the devastating impact of war on everyday people. Capa was the first photographer to bring the full horror of war into the homes of readers around Europe and beyond. In his documentation of the Spanish Civil War Capa did far more than document a war he also told the stories of those affected by it
Robert Capa 1913-1954
Robert Capa Photojournalism, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography Born: 22 October 1913, Budapest, Hungary Nationality: Hungarian-American Died: 25 May 1954, Thái Bình, Vietnam
Capa was a war photographer and photojournalist and is among the best combat and adventure photographers in history. He had fled political repression in Hungary as a teenager, moving to Berlin whereas a student he witnessed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. He moved to Paris and finally, to America, Capa, and his professional partner Gerda Taro began to publish their work. Capa covers five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, WW2 across Europe, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the First Indochina War. His images were published in major magazines and newspapers. Capa was killed by a landmine in Vietnam
Artist: Dora Maar Born: 22 November 1907, Tours, France Nationality: French Movements: Surrealism, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Photomontage Died: 16 July 1997, Paris, France
Maar was a talented photographer and made work that developed quickly from acute poetic realism to Surrealist manipulations. She made images out of her own emotional interior and her desire to escape from it. Maar abandoned photography because Picasso insisted photographers were painters waiting to be released. Between 1935-45 she was in love with Picasso and became a muse for other artists as well as a practicing painter herself. Maar suffered a breakdown after separating from Picasso and recovered through the help of Jacques Lacan, the famous psychiatrist. She moved from Paris to rural Provence and in later life painted abstract landscapes and melancholic still life. A recluse, she became a devoted Catholic. Living in the shadow of Picasso she never returned to photography, the medium which exulted in her exquisite and unusual talent.
After the Rain, 1933. Photograph
Maar’s most surrealistic photographs examine recurring motifs such as hair, shells, shadows, and spirals. The images are disturbing, foreboding, and macabre. An invaluable documenter of the lives of other artists, Maar famously photographed Picasso as he completed Guernica and other female Surrealist artists. Marr surrounded the women in darkness to focus on their defiant and seductive characteristics, exposing uneasy aspects of the human subconscious.
In Picasso’s ‘The Weeping Woman’ series of portraits of Maar, she is depicted with two faces made up of a collection of sharp and violent lines. The paintings exemplify anxiety in love and the potential of harm caused by a destructive and toxic relationship. Maar’s later career was sadly tainted by her tumultuous affair with Picasso and stands as a warning to others.
Maar was born Henrietta Theodora Markovich in Tours, France. Her father was a Croatian architect; her mother was French and raised in the Catholic faith. She spent most of her childhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where her father was working on several projects. She read in English and spoke Spanish and French fluently. Naturally left-handed but her parents and teachers had forced her to use her right hand for writing, eating, and conducting daily affairs. She always used her left hand to draw and paint.
Maar returned to Paris to study painting in 1925. She attended the École des Arts Décoratifs, Académie Julien, and Académie da Passy. She also spent time studying with the Cubist André Lhote. She abandoned painting for photography and studied at the École de Photographie de la Ville de Paris. It was at this time she shortened her name and became Dora Maar.
Untitled, 1934. Gelatin silver print Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France
The French set designer and photographer Pierre Kéfer noticed Maar’s talents and around 1930 asked to share his studio in Neuilly. They worked together on advertising, portraits, and fashion photography. Maar also depicted nudes for erotic publications, posed for artists such as Man Ray, and took photographs for the books of art critic, historian, and Louvre curator, Germain Bazin.
Maar began associating with some of the most prominent intellectuals in Europe at the time. She considered the advertising photographer and director of a French weekly newspaper, Louis-Victor Emmanuel Sougez, as her mentor. With Henri Cartier-Bresson, she studied photography and he encouraged her to become a photojournalist. Driven by Sougez, Maar’s exploration of photography deepened. She opened her own studio at 29 Rue d’Astorg when the Kéfer-Maar studio closed.
Maar worked from her studio through the early to mid-1930s and began creating some of her most well-known Surrealist photographs. She immersed herself in the Surrealist circles and was admired by the leading poets and artists of the movement. Many of her photographic portraits from the 1930s were included in Paul Eluard’s Le Temps Déboirde (1947).
A committed and active leftist, Maar joined and supported anti-Fascist political groups, including Contre-Attaque, Masses, and Octobre. Wearing her passions and beliefs on her sleeve she was known to be inclined to stormy, reactionary outbursts.
Pére Ubu, 1936. Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Picasso and Maar met on a movie set in 1935, although Picasso did not recall the encounter. Maar engineered a meeting with Picasso the following year by sitting at a table at the Café de Deux Magots, knowing the artist was a frequent patron. She played a game involving stabbing a small knife between her fingers and Picasso watched as she occasionally jabbed her fingers and small drops of blood appeared on her lacy black gloves. This enchanted the narcissistic artist and led to a tempestuous love affair between the two. Picasso painted Maar many times and she became renowned as the model for the Weeping Woman canvases made between 1937 and 1944. Most of these portraits appeared tortured and distorted.
Despite the dysfunction between Maar and Picasso, she was the only person Picasso permitted in his studio while he was working on ‘Guernica’, his 1937 groundbreaking painting. Maar extensively photographed the piece, was the model for the woman with the lamp, and painted a few brushstrokes on the canvas. The Guernica series of photographs were among the last of Maar’s photographic work as she followed Picasso who convinced her painting was a superior medium.
Maar’s relationship with Picasso deteriorated along with her mental health. Picasso left for Francoise Gilot and Maar was sent to St. Anne’s Hospital for electroshock therapy. The Neo-Freudian psychiatrist, Jacques Lacon, took over her care. Under his reluctant guidance, Maar turned to religion, and following experiments with Buddhism and the occult she became a fervent Roman Catholic. She became reclusive but began to focus on painting. Maar concentrated on still life and landscapes creating a large body of work in the remaining decades of her life. Maar divided her time between Paris and Ménerbes, eventually living full-time in the latter. She was devout for the rest of her life and most people in Ménerbes only saw her when she went to church services.
Rue d’Astorg, 1936. Gelatin silver print
In 1990 the final exhibition of Maar’s work before her death was held at the 1900-2000 gallery in Paris. At this time, Maar was a dedicated follower of the auction results for the works of Picasso and lived off the sales of the ones in her possession at the end of her life. Maar passed away in 1997. She kept everything that Picasso had given her, no matter how bizarre, strange, or grim; including paintings, newspaper cuttings, and sketches on random pieces of paper. Following her death, Maar’s collection was sold at auction, worth millions of dollars which were given to distant relatives as she had never married nor had children
Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters by Berenice Abbott
Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters 1937 Modern Photography Gelatin silver print Collection of Museum of the City of New York, New York, New York, USA
Reflecting Abbott’s fascination with the vernacular culture of New York “Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters” fills the frame with a handgun sign viewed from below against the façade of the facing building, the city’s police department. Abbott employed a low angle to monumentalize the ephemeral sign.
Berenice Abbott 1898-1991
Berenice Abbott Straight Photography, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Modern Photography Born: 17 July 1898, Ohio, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 December 1991, Maine, USA
Abbott was a photographer particularly known for portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative and educational value of the photographic print. She followed a realist vision in her photographs recording history and her own experience to potentially inspire change in her audience., purposely facilitating interaction between the photographer, the photograph, and the viewer. Her realistic approach to photography originated in her career as a portrait photographer in Paris and the photographic realism of Eugène Atget. Following eight years working in Paris, Abbot moved to New York in 1929 and began to document the modern transformation of the city
A Jewish Giant at home with his parents, in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970 Documentary Photography Gelatin Silver Print The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
In an emotional tour of force, this photograph shows Arbus’s direct style of photography combined with her devotion to representing the underrepresented. Standing well over seven feet tall, Eddie Carmel stands next to his parents. His father appears as if posing for a classic family portrait. The core of the photograph is a picture of a mother and father with their child in a typical family home yet exemplifies the vastness felt by their physical differences.
Diane Arbus 1923-1971
Diane Arbus Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography, Identity Art and Identity Politics Born: 14 March 1923, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 26 July 1971, New York, USA
Arbus was a photographer who photographed a wide range of subjects during her career including strippers, carnival performers, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and families. Arbus is noted for expanding the concepts of acceptable subject matter and not objectifying her subjects so as to capture them with a rare psychological intensity.
A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, N.Y. 1968 1968 Modern Photography Gelatin Silver Photograph Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California, USA
In this photograph, Arbus lampoons the experience of post-war suburban life. The nuclear family, husband, wife, and child on a suburban lawn in weekend leisure. The couple are separated physically and metaphorically by a table. The child, playing in the background, symbolizes a bridge between his parents.
Diane Arbus 1923-1971
Diane Arbus Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography, Identity Art and Identity Politics Born: 14 March 1923, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 26 July 1971, New York, USA
Arbus was a photographer who photographed a wide range of subjects during her career including strippers, carnival performers, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and families. Arbus is noted for expanding the concepts of acceptable subject matter and not objectifying her subjects to capture them with a rare psychological intensity
Untitled 1971 Documentary Photography Gelatin silver print Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Whist on honeymoon with his wife and favourite muse in 1971 Araki bought a camera to photograph the trip. In this image, taken on the Yanagawa River, Yoko is sleeping on a rowboat. Along with the other photographs he took on the trip it became a series entitled £Sentimental Journey,” one of Araki’s best-known and most acclaimed works.
Nobuyoshi Araki
Nobuyoshi Araki Street Photography, Fashion Photography, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography Born: 25 May 1945, Tokyo, Japan Nationality: Japanese
Araki is a photographer and contemporary artist, primarily known for his photography that blends eroticism and bondage in a fine art context
Will Work For #4 1993 Photography Gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
Aguilar stands beneath a gallery sign on a wall holding a handwritten sign that states “Artist Will Work for Axcess” whilst looking straight to camera, “Will Work For #4” is part of Aguilar’s 1993 Will Work For series. The makeshift handwritten aesthetic of the cardboard signs recalls homeless individuals begging for money on the streets and draws a parallel between the positioning of Aguilar the artist who needs charitable intervention to gain access to museums and galleries.
Laura Aguilar 1959-2018
Laura Aguilar Queer Art, Identity Art and Identity Politics, Documentary Photography, LGBT Artists Born: 26 October 1959, California, USA Nationality: Mexican-American Died: 25 April 2018, California, USA
Aguilar was a photographer. Born with auditory dyslexia she attributed her start in photography to her brother, who taught her how to develop in dark rooms. Self-taught Aguilar was well-known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and her focus on marginalized communities including LGBT+ and Latino subjects, self-love, and the stigma of obesity in society
Sachin 1963 Documentary Photography Silver gelatin print Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, England
From Araki’s first series, “Sachin” portrays a boy on his back on the ground, doubled in laughter because his older brother is tickling him. Other photographs from the series show the boys playing around the run-down apartment blocks of the Shitamachi area. Conveying a sense of nostalgia for childhood the Sachin series won a Taiyo award for photographic reportage.
Nobuyoshi Araki Street Photography, fashion Photography, Documentary Photography, Modern Photography Born: 25 May 1945, Tokyo, Japan Nationality: Japanese
Araki is a photographer and contemporary artist, primarily known for his photography that blends eroticism and bondage in a fine art context
Pietà 1996 Modern Photography Colour photograph on paper Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom
“Pietà” is a photograph of Fairhurst lying limp and naked in the arms of a stuffed gorilla in a pose that mimics that of the dead Christ in his mother’s arms, the classic Pieta form seen in much of Christianity’s religious art of the Renaissance. In his right hand, Fairhurst grasps the camera’s cable release. With closed eyes and the protective cradling and downcast face of the gorilla connotations of death are unavoidable.
Angus Fairhurst 1966-2008
Angus Fairhurst Young British Artists, Installation Art, Performance Art, Conceptual Art Born: 4 October 1966, Kent, UK Nationality: British Died: 29 March 2008, Argyll and Bute, Scotland
Fairhurst was an artist working in installation, photography, and video. The ‘quiet man’ of the Young British Artists, his sophisticated and understated practice reveals an artist interested in poignant meditations on life, individual experiences, and society. His work has been overshadowed by his suicide, but his creations investigated questions of self-awareness, his own life, and vanity using visual cues including animals and magazine images
After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue by Jeff Wall
After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 2000 Modern Photography Silver dye bleach transparency; aluminium lightbox The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
“After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue” is an exploration of the relationship between images and their influences. It questions how closely images need to adhere to the aesthetic and conceptual features of their source material. Wall portrays a barefoot man sitting in a cluttered, windowless room. Wall specifies the source material for the image as Ralph Ellison’s novel “The Invisible Man” and reflects to the viewer his personal recollections and impressions of the novel.
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall Conceptual Art, Modern Photography Born: 29 September 1946, Vancouver, Canada Nationality: Canadian
Wall is an artist best-known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and writings on art history. Vancouver’s natural beauty, urban decay, and post-modern industrial featurelessness often form the backdrop for Wall’s photographic collages and tableaux.
Dress to Go Out/Undressing to Go In by Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Dress to Go Out/Undressing to Go In 1973 Modern Photography 95 gelatin silver prints mounted on foam core with chain and dust rag
“Dress to Go Out/Undressing to Go In” expands on Ukeles Maintenance Art manifesto. By elevating the everyday domesticity of life to art she garnered attention to the importance and to the complexities of domestic labour, especially that of motherhood. In a series of photographs, Ukeles provides a moment-by-moment documentary of the repetitive task of dressing and undressing her own children in shoes, jackets, and scarves. Her use of black and white, artistic photography enhances the everyday life of a mother. With carefully created images the repetitive and exhausting work of her role as a mother is made similar to the kinds of work artists do.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Feminist Art, Performance Art, Conceptual Art, Earth Art Born: 1939, Colorado, USA Nationality: American
Ukeles is an artist based in New York City. She is best known for her feminist and service-orientated artwork which relates to the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic maintenance. The Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation she creates art that gives life to the essence of any urban centre with depictions of waste flows, sustainability, recycling, people, ecology, and the environment
Changing Room 2014 Modern Photography Inkjet Print The White Cube Gallery, London, UK
“Changing Room” portrays a woman in a changing room within a clothing store. The experience of changing rooms, of trying on clothes is familiar to viewers and perhaps considered to be mundane, but the woman in the photograph is struggling to pull a second dress over her head to cover the dress she is already wearing suggesting something more devious is in action. A duplicate red dress hangs in the left of the picture. Wall’s inspiration came from observing a woman shoplifting from a high-end fashion store. “Changing Room” is a showcase of Wall’s ability to suggest a lot from a minimal image. With only one human figure and very few environmental details, the image offers the viewer a puzzling story that is not confined to the events or memory but to the imagination of the viewer.
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall Conceptual Art, Modern Photography Born: 29 September 1946, Vancouver, Canada Nationality: Canadian
Wall is an artist best-known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and writings on art history. Vancouver’s natural beauty, urban decay, and post-modern industrial featurelessness often form the backdrop for Wall’s photographic collages and tableaux.
Winston Eggleston 1995 Modern Photography Pigment Print Eggleston Trust
Once the viewer is aware it is a snapshot of Eggleston’s son then 21-year-old, Winston, the experience of the casual photograph changes. Leaning back on a sofa Winston looks directly into the camera. The askew angle captures the man’s mood while his eyes engage with the viewer. A lamp draws the viewer to the back of the room where the daylight comes in creating a scene suggesting an intimacy between father and son.
William Eggleston
William Eggleston Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 27 July 1939, Tennessee, USA Nationality: American
Eggleston is a photographer, credited with increasing the recognition of colour photography as an artistic medium. His books include William Eggleston’s Guide and The Democratic Forest. Since the 1960s he has used colour photographs in his descriptions of the cultural transformations in Tennessee and rural southern states. His scenes of everyday life register these changes, including portraits, shop interiors, gasoline stations, and cars. Paralleled with Pop art’s fascination with post-war consumerism Eggleston’s aesthetic snapshots reflect the new cultural phenomena and the ephemeral things that symbolise the human presence in the world
Summer, Mississippi, Cassidy Bayou in Background by William Eggleston
Summer, Mississippi 1971 Modern Photography Dye imbibition print The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Eggleston’s photographs are successful because he captures what he knows, the American South. “Summer, Mississippi” the figure of a white man stands in front of the figure of a black man. Both men are looking away from the camera with neutral facial expressions. A car with the side door open is parked alongside them on the leafy banks of a river. The photo is a depiction of Eggleston’s uncle Adyn Schuyler Sr and Jasper, a long-time family servant in the midst of watching a family funeral. Taken at the height of racial tensions in the South the family photo overlaid with racial tension is nonchalant yet candidly creates an authentic image of ingrained social biases.
William Eggleston
William Eggleston Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 27 July 1939, Tennessee, USA Nationality: American
Eggleston is a photographer, credited with increasing the recognition of colour photography as an artistic medium. His books include William Eggleston’s Guide and The Democratic Forest. Since the 1960s he has used colour photographs in his descriptions of the cultural transformations in Tennessee and rural southern states. His scenes of everyday life register these changes, including portraits, shop interiors, gasoline stations, and cars. Paralleled with Pop art’s fascination with post-war consumerism Eggleston’s aesthetic snapshots reflect the new cultural phenomena and the ephemeral things that symbolize the human presence in the world
Memphis 1965 Modern Photography Colour Transparency Print Wilson Centre for Photography, Washington DC
Eggleston’s first successful colour negative, “Memphis” was taken as the artist began experimenting with colour photography. For Eggleston, there is beauty and interest in the everyday just as there is in a photograph of something extraordinary. The resulting photograph lifts the portrait of a teenage boy beyond the banal to something monumental because of the effort used in orchestrating life to its most menial tasks.
William Eggleston
William Eggleston Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 27 July 1939, Tennessee, USA Nationality: American
Eggleston is a photographer, credited with increasing the recognition of colour photography as an artistic medium. His books include William Eggleston’s Guide and The Democratic Forest. Since the 1960s he has used colour photographs in his descriptions of the cultural transformations in Tennessee and rural southern states. His scenes of everyday life register these changes, including portraits, shop interiors, gasoline stations and cars. Paralleled with Pop art’s fascination with post-war consumerism Eggleston’s aesthetic snapshots reflect the new cultural phenomena and the ephemeral things that symbolise the human presence in the world
Picture for Women 1979 Photography Cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbox The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
In his photograph “Picture for Women” Wall continues his investigation of the 19th-century painting within a contemporary photograph. The photograph depicts a reflection of a sparse studio room simply furnished with metallic office-style chairs and a worktable. Following traditional aesthetic rules of photography, the picture is divided into thirds and balances the composition vertically and horizontally. In one third a woman is standing resting her hands on a bar or long table confronting the viewer. In another third Wall’s camera brings a centre point to the image. In the last third stands Wall himself with his body facing the camera whilst his face is looking at the woman. He is holding the shutter release cable confirming his authorship of the photograph.
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall Conceptual Art, Modern Photography Born: 29 September 1946, Vancouver, Canada Nationality: Canadian
Wall is an artist best-known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and writings on art history. Vancouver’s natural beauty, urban decay, and post-modern industrial featurelessness often form the backdrop for Wall’s photographic collages and tableaux
Photograph of Members of the Mochida Family Awaiting Evacuation by Dorothea Lange
Photograph of Members of the Mochida Family Awaiting Evacuation 1942 Documentary Photography Photograph The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
The Mochida family awaits an evacuation bus with their identification tags used to aid keeping the family unit together during the various phases of their evacuation. Mochida raised snapdragons and sweet peas in his nursery and five greenhouses in Eden Township. The Evacuees of Japanese ancestry would be housed in War Relocation Authority centres for the duration. Lange’s solemn and portrait-style photograph counteracts the indignity of the family’s pending interment. Their tags on their clothing echo the tags on their luggage drawing the viewers attention to their less than-human treatment. The photograph is one of a series commissioned by the government only to be impounded as fears rose they would spark public outrage at the treatment of internees.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 26 May 1895, New Jersey, USA Nationality: American Died: 11 October 1965, California, USA
Images of Depression-era America made Lange one of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the 20th century. Revelations of sharecroppers displaced farmers, and migrants in the 1930s and the portrait of Florence Owen Thompson I 1936 became iconic of the era.
Untitled (Citgo gas pump) 1976 Modern Photography Dye Imbibition Print The Eggleston Trust
A man crosses the street towards a gas station, A parked car with its bonnet up is waiting to be worked on. No mechanic is present. The old house peeks out from behind the gas station observing new cars parked in the rundown forecourt. Eggleston often implied a narrative in his work, but it was never explicit. The implied narrative of the rural south brings tension to the image as the viewer draws their own conclusions
William Eggleston
William Eggleston Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 27 July 1939, Tennessee, USA Nationality: American
Eggleston is a photographer, credited with increasing the recognition of colour photography as an artistic medium. His books include William Eggleston’s Guide and The Democratic Forest. Since the 1960s he has used colour photographs in his descriptions of the cultural transformations in Tennessee and rural southern states. His scenes of everyday life register these changes, including portraits, shop interiors, gasoline stations, and cars. Paralleled with Pop art’s fascination with post-war consumerism Eggleston’s aesthetic snapshots reflect the new cultural phenomena and the ephemeral things that symbolize the human presence in the world
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) by Jeff Wall
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993 Photography Cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbox Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom
‘A Sudden Gust of Wind’ reinterprets a woodcut print scene by the Japanese printmaker and painter Katsushika Hokusai. In Wall’s photograph, the figures caught in the wind mimic the poses of the travellers in Hokusai’s woodcut. Wall’s large-scale image consists of multiple photographs taken over several months and digitally combined to create a collaged composition.
Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall Conceptual Art, Modern photography Born: 29 September 1946, Vancouver, Canada Nationality: Canadian
Wall is an artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and writings on art history. Vancouver’s natural beauty, urban decay, and post-modern industrial featurelessness often form the backdrop for Wall’s photographic collages and tableaux
Photograph from the series I am in training don’t kiss me by Claude Cahun
Photograph from the series “I am in training don’t kiss me” 1927 Photography Photographic Print
Using props, stylized costumes, and make-up Cahun presents a feminized image of a strong man. Using this persona they conflate masculine and feminine stereotypes. The theatrical nature of the strongman combines contradictory ideals of gender to highlight the pace between the opposing poles of identity. Shortly after this photograph, Cahun published articles stating controversial theories introducing the concept of a third sex, uniting both masculine and feminine traits but living as neither one nor the other. Cahun breaks the gender boundaries and represents themself as a human being rather than being defined by their sex
Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun Modern Photography, Dada, Surrealism, Photomontage, Collage, Proto-Feminist Artists Born: 25 October 1894, Nantes, France Nationality: French Died: 8 December 1954, Jersey, GB
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, better known as Claude Cahun, was a lesbian photographer, sculptor, and writer. Assuming the name in 1917, Cahun is best known for self-portraits, in which the artist assumed a variety of personae. Their work was political and personal, often undermining traditional concepts of stereotypical gender roles. In their autobiography, Disavowals, Cahun explained ‘Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.’
Photogram 1926 Photography Gelatin silver print The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
Moholy-Nagy was engrossed with the life and form-giving effects of light throughout his career. Photogram reveals that obsession with light as the means of the visual composition. Photograms were camera-less photographs created by exposing photosensitive paper to light in controlled conditions, with objects placed on the paper white shapes unaltered by the darkening effects of light on the page.
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy Bauhaus, Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Kinetic Art, Op Art, Photomontage Born: 20 July 1895, Borsod, Austria-Hungary Nationality: Hungarian-American Died: 24 November 1946, Illinois, USA
Moholy-Nagy was a painter, sculptor, and photographer. He was also a professor in the Bauhaus School. Highly influenced by constructivism he was a strong advocate of the integration of industry and technology into the arts
Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California by Dorothea Lange
Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California 1936 Documentary Photography The Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of California, USA
Lange captures a striking look of anxiety on her subject’s face. A man stranded in his car his plight is suggestive of the larger problems of society during the Great Depression. Cropping the photograph into a tighter composition Lange adds to the claustrophobic feeling.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 26 May 1895, New Jersey, USA Nationality: American Died: 11 October 1965, California, USA
Images of Depression-era America made Lange on of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the 20th century. Revelations of sharecroppers, displaced farmers, and migrants in the 1930s and the portrait of Florence Owen Thompson I 1936 became iconic of the era.
Fluids 1967 Modern Photography 30 walls of ice Photos and archives: Allan Kaprow Archives, the Getty Research Institute
One of Kaprow’s most ambitious works, ‘Fluids’ involved the recruitment of groups of local residents to build huge ice structures in various locations within Pasadena, California. The concept of collective actions resulting in the inevitable melting of the ice is suggestive of the obsolete nature of human labour within the allegory of capitalist production and consumption.
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow Performance Art, Art Theoretician Born: 23 August 1927, New Jersey, USA Nationality: American Died: 5 April 2006, California, USA
Kaprow was a painter, assemblagist and he is considered a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. In the late 1950s and 1960s he was involved in the development of the ‘Happening’ and the ‘Environment’ and their theory. Eventually Kaprow’s work evolved into what he referred to as ‘Activities’, devoted to the study of normal human activity
Andy Warhol 1986 Modern Photography Gelatin Silver Print The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York, USA
Warhol’s bust is centered in a white halo-like circle around his head, placed within a black frame with Warhol wearing his trademark black turtleneck and blank stare. The cruciform shape recalls Mapplethorpe’s recurring Catholic motifs and the Catholic background ha and Warhol shared with the frame and haloed light suggesting the god-like status achieved by Warhol through fame.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Conceptual Art Born: 4 November 1946, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 March 1989, Massachusetts, USA
Mapplethorpe was a photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. Featuring an array of subjects including male and female nudes, homoerotica, and the BDSM subculture of the late 1960s Mapplethorpe sparked controversy and debate concerning the use of public funds for art and the limits of free speech. His work is still considered taboo by many; however, he remains one of the most revered American photographers
Untitled #92 1985 Photography Colour Photograph Metro Pictures, New York, USA
This photograph is part of Sherman’s later Disasters and Fairy Tales series and depicts Sherman as a damsel in distress. She fearfully looks away from the camera as she crouches on the ground with wetted hair and a tensed position she seems to have just walked away from a horror movie set. The photograph is centred by sparse lighting which gives the image an ominous tone.
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman The Pictures Generation, Conceptual Art, Feminist Art, Post Modernism Born: 19 January 1954, New Jersey, USA Nationality: American
A contemporary master of socially critical photography, Sherman is a key figure of the Pictures Generation, a circle of American artists who came into artistic maturity during the early 1980s, an era of rapid and widespread proliferation of mass media imagery. In art school painting in a super-realist style during the aftermath of American Feminism Sherman took up photography at the end of the 1970s to explore common female social roles and personas. She sought to question the seductive and oppressive influence of mass media on individual and collective identities
Untitled 1960-65 Modern Photography Silver gelatin print Eggleston Trust, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Eggleston’s career began at a time when black and white photography was beginning to be accepted as an art form. In this untitled shot he captures a scene in a convenience store with a boy leaning against stocked shelves next to a chilled section. The boy stares boringly out of the shop window whilst stood with his hand in his pockets seemingly unaware of the photographer. A female employee at the left of the frame glances at the camera seemingly acknowledging the presence of the photographer. Eggleston reveals an empty shop as his camera captures the empty space.
William Eggleston
William Eggleston Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Street Photography, Documentary Photography Born: 27 July 1939, Tennessee, USA Nationality: American
Eggleston is a photographer, credited with increasing the recognition of colour photography as an artistic medium. His books include William Eggleston’s Guide and The Democratic Forest. Since the 1960s he has used colour photographs in his descriptions of the cultural transformations in Tennessee and rural southern states. His scenes of everyday life register these changes, including portraits, shop interiors, gasoline stations and cars. Paralleled with Pop art’s fascination with post war consumerism Eggleston’s aesthetic snapshots reflect the new cultural phenomena and the ephemeral things the symbolise the human presence in the world
Self Portrait, Head Between Hands 1920 Identity Politics, Photography Photographic print
A striking photograph, ‘Self-Portrait, Head Between Hands’ depicts how Cahun has transitioned from their childhood and teenage female identity to the gender-neutral persona. A shaved scalp replaces the long hair effectively stripping away the social traditions of the alluring flowing locks of femininity. Cahun portrays themselves with an air of detachment and a lack of feeling, however the hands are placed either side of their head giving a sense of intensity of their lived experience. However this image is more than a comment on shifting gender politics, Cahun was also Jewish, physically stripped of identity and sex in the mounting prejudice against Jews and women.
Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun Modern Photography, Dada, Surrealism, Photomontage, Collage, Proto-Feminist Artists Born: 25 October 1894, Nantes, France Nationality: French Died: 8 December 1954, Jersey, GB
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, better known as Claude Cahun, was a lesbian photographer, sculptor, and writer. Assuming the name in 1917, Cahun is best known for self-portraits, in which the artist assumed a variety of personae. Their work was political and personal, often undermining traditional concepts of stereotypical gender roles. In their autobiography, Disavowals, Cahun explained ‘Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.’
Ken Moody and Robert Sherman by Robert Mapplethorpe
Ken Moody and Robert Sherman 1984 Modern Photography Gelatin silver print The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
Mapplethorpes’s portrait depicts two of his friends, Ken Moody (a black man) and Robert Sherman (a white man). Both men face directly to the left of the frame and the directional lightening captures the subtle undulations and form of their skin. Mapplethorpe insisted on the importance of the camera and studio to sculpt light and form and the models posed in several positions until Mapplethorpe settled on Sherman’s longer neck reaching over Moody and it was not a posing of the two to make a social or political statement on the plight of race. Both men lost their hair at an early age, and Mapplethorpe brought them together through their similarities and their striking contrasts from opposite sides of the spectrum. This is the key to the photograph.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Conceptual Art Born: 4 November 1946, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 March 1989, Massachusetts, USA
Mapplethorpe was a photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. Featuring an array of subjects including male and female nudes, homoerotica, and the BDSM subculture of the late 1960s Mapplethorpe sparked controversy and debate concerning the use of public funds for art and the limits of free speech. His work is still considered taboo by many; however he remains one of the most revered American photographers
Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place, New York City, July 16, 1936 1936 Modern Photography Gelatin silver print Collection of Museum of the City of New York, New York, New York, USA
The focus on the façade of the Exchange Court Building appears to define the space in-between the Adams Building and the North American Building. Abbot captured the narrow expanse between skyscrapers at Broadway and Exchange. Place. Exchange Place at barely 25 feet wide is overhung on either side by skyscrapers towering 300 and 400 feet high. Abbot presented this image of powerful modern structures towering over the pedestrian viewer.
Berenice Abbott Straight Photography, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Modern Photography Born: 17 July 1898, Ohio, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 December 1991, Maine, USA
Abbot was a photographer particularly known for portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative and educational value of the photographic print. She followed a realist vision in her photographs recording history and her own experience to potentially inspire change in her audience., purposely facilitating interaction between photographer, photograph, and the viewer. Her realistic approach to photography originated in her career as a portrait photographer in Paris and the photographic realism of Eugène Atget. Following eight years working in Paris, Abbot moved to New York in 1929 and began to document the modern transformation of the city.
Nightview, New York 1932 Surrealism Gelatin silver print Collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA
In this 1932 photograph by Abbott the white lights in the buildings and headlights of cars contrast starkly with the solid structures of the buildings that dominate the city. Abbot captured New York at night as a representation of the emergence of the modern city.
Berenice Abbott Straight Photography, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Modern Photography Born: 17 July 1898, Ohio, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 December 1991, Maine, USA
Abbot was a photographer particularly known for portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative and educational value of the photographic print. She followed a realist vision in her photographs recording history and her own experience to potentially inspire change in her audience., purposely facilitating interaction between photographer, photograph, and the viewer. Her realistic approach to photography originated in her career as a portrait photographer in Paris and the photographic realism of Eugène Atget. Following eight years working in Paris, Abbot moved to New York in 1929 and began to document the modern transformation of the city.
Roadsign, Route 1, Maine 1954 Modern Photography Vintage gelatin silver print Collection of Syracuse University Art Collection, Syracuse, New York, USA
A lone male figure walking down the middle of a two-lane highway as though he owns the road in Maine, USA. Situated in the middle ground of the picture Abbott used to clear grey light to tie the man to his own natural and mam-made surroundings. A strategy developed by the artist in 1936 the lighting and middle-distance reveal the photograph to as a picture distinct from reality.
Berenice Abbott Straight Photography, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Modern Photography Born: 17 July 1898, Ohio, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 December 1991, Maine, USA
Abbott was a photographer particularly known for portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative and educational value of the photographic print. She followed a realist vision in her photographs recording history and her own experience to potentially inspire change in her audience., purposely facilitating interaction between photographer, photograph, and the viewer. Her realistic approach to photography originated in her career as a portrait photographer in Paris and the photographic realism of Eugène Atget. Following eight years working in Paris, Abbot moved to New York in 1929 and began to document the modern transformation of the city.
Self Portrait 1975 Modern Photography Photograph on paper, dry mounted on board Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, New York, USA
A young Mapplethorpe is posed shirtless against a white background for this black and white portrait, with a playful boyish smile and an arm stretched across the background wall, his body remains mostly out of frame. Self-portrait marks the transition from collage, mixed media, and assemblage to Mapplethorpe’s exclusive focus on photography. It also marks the beginning of Mapplethorpe’s dedicated self-portraiture as central to his work. He would go on to create a variety of images exploring the interconnections of spirituality, nudity, and eroticism.
Robert Mapplethorpe Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Conceptual Art Born: 4 November 1946, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 March 1989, Massachusetts, USA
Mapplethorpe was a photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. Featuring an array of subjects including male and female nudes, homoerotica, and the BDSM subculture of the late 1960s Mapplethorpe sparked controversy and debate concerning the use of public funds for art and the limits of free speech. His work is still considered taboo by many; however he remains one of the most revered American photographers.
Patti Smith 1978 Straight Photography Gelatin Silver Print Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angles, USA
In an everyday home setting, Patti Smith cuts her hair ceremoniously. Facing the camera and staring directly into the lens she is uninhibited by the camera’s gaze. Likewise the cat, perched nonchalantly, echoes the stare into the lens. Mapplethorpe captures Smith’s essence of unrestrained, indifferent confidence in a seemingly impromptu photograph. The scene isn’t an intimate bedroom or a glossy black background but an unpretentious home setting, but it is intimate and reflects the long-term relationship shared by the subject and the photographer.
Robert Mapplethorpe Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Conceptual Art Born: 4 November 1946, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 March 1989, Massachusetts, USA
Mapplethorpe was a photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. Featuring an array of subjects including male and female nudes, homoerotica, and the BDSM subculture of the late 1960s Mapplethorpe sparked controversy and debate concerning the use of public funds for art and the limits of free speech. His work is still considered taboo by many; however he remains one of the most revered American photographers.
Self Portrait as a Young Girl 1914 Modern Photography Photographic print Jersey Heritage, St Helier, Jersey
One of the earliest known self-portraits by Cahun, the photograph displays an intensely, penetrating stare. The artist’s head is seemingly disembodied, suggesting an imbalance between head and body as though the head is too heavy making the body redundant. The abundant flowing hair recalls Medusa, the Greek mythical woman who had a head full of snakes and the power to turn men to stone. Cahun has no intention of pleasing men, instead he challenges the viewer by acknowledging female rage. Self-Portrait as a Young Girl is quietly revolutionary introducing the complex and powerful presence of a woman silenced by patriarchal society.
Claude Cahun Modern Photography, Dada, Surrealism, Photomontage, Collage, Proto-Feminist Artists Born: 25 October 1894, Nantes, France Nationality: French Died: 8 December 1954, Jersey
Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, better known as Claude Cahun, was an lesbian photographer, sculptor, and writer. Assuming the name 1917, Cahun is best known for self-portraits, in which the artist assumed a variety of personae. Their work was political and personal, often undermining tradition concepts of stereotypical gender roles. In their autobiography, Disavowals, Cahun explained ‘Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.’
Dorothea Lange Born: 26 May 1895, New Jersey, USA Nationality: American Movement: Modern Photography, Social Realism Died: 11 October 1965, California, USA
Images of Depression-era America made Lange on of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the 20th century. Revelations of sharecroppers, displaced farmers, and migrants in the 1930s and the portrait of Florence Owen Thompson I 1936 became iconic of the era. Commissioned by the Farm Security Administration Lange’s work is an unusual case of American art being used explicitly drive government policy. After the Depression Lange went on to an illustrious career in photo-journalism, working for leading magazines and travelling throughout Asia, Latin America, and Egypt.
The White Angel Breadline by Dorothea Lange, 1933. Located at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Henry Swift Collection, USA
Lange’s documentary photographs borrow techniques from modernism with dramatic angles and dynamic compositions, producing startling and jarring images. Rather than overpowering the subject she subtly directs the viewer to a fresh outlook of the individual’s plight. The maturity of Lange’s work prove that art and documentary images are not mutually exclusive, and can combine to produce moving, beautiful images. Her innovative use of art techniques also gave power to the fact that modernist art not only conveys the personal feelings of the artist but can service journalism. Lange’s work characterizes a lost age and she saw herself first as a journalist and then as an artist working to effect social change with images of public suffering during the Depression and the post-war years.
Lange grew up in a middle-class family in New Jersey. Her father worked as a lawyer and held several respected positions in local businesses, politics, and the church. Proponents of education and culture her parents exposed Lange and her brother to literature and the creative arts. Lang contracted polio when she was seven years old which left her with a weakened right leg and foot. After her parents divorce the family moved in with her mother’s family.
Ditched, Stalled and Stranded, San Joaquin Valley, California by Dorothea Lange, 1936. Located at The Dorothea Lange Collection, The Oakland Museum of California, USA
With little interest in academics Lange announced to her family that she intended to pursue a career in photography after she finished high school. She was hired by Arnold Genthe. One of the most successful portrait photographers, as a receptionist and he taught her the skills the trade. Despite working for several photographers after Genthe, she remembered his sense of aesthetics and the importance of high quality. Lange also studied under Clarence White, whose Pictoralist style cultivated effects of fine painting. White also encouraged his students to develop unique points of view to individualize their photography.
Plantation overseer and his field hands, near Clarksdale, Mississippi by Dorothea Lange, 1936. Currently located at Collection of the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, New York, USA
In 1918 Lange settled in San Francisco where she made connections with business owners and gallery patrons, enabling her to open her own portrait studio. She considered her work a trade and focused on satisfying her client’s wants. Her marriage to Maynard Dixon drew Lange deeper into the Californian art community and the Great Depression put both her marriage and career under strain. It was witnessing the effects of financial hardship on the people in her community that inspired Lange to take to the streets of San Francisco to document life at the time. Documenting social history meant seeking new techniques, experimentations with close-up shots and simple compositions with the emphasis on shape and form.
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California by Dorothea Lange, 1936. Housed by San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Public Library, USA
Lange was one of the photographers invited to assist with a 1935 economic research study led by Paul Taylor, who later became her husband. Taylor recruited Lange for the Farm Security Administration, a government department representing the interests of US farm workers. She recorded the conditions of workers living in poverty on the West Coast, the South and Midwest. The photographs from this time have become iconic within American history and photography.
Photograph of Members of the Mochida Family Awaiting Evacuation by Dorothea Lange, 1942. Oil on canvas. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Lange developed her signature style of photography out in the field, abandoning wide-angle landscape views for mature photographs representing intimate portraits with the captions relating to the conversations with the stories her subjects shared. Within her work four themes prevalent themes emerged. Images illustrating the growing hopelessness in the relationship between workers unable to invigorate their sterile environments and their land. A deep sense of desertion in her portrayals of empty streets, fields barren of crops, and empty houses. Photographs of the depression of men left idle from lack of work. And portraits of strong, heroic female figures.
Argument in a Trailer Camp by Dorothea Lange, 1944. Tempura on canvas. Located at The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, USA
In 1940, Lange became the first female photographer to receive the Guggenheim Award Fellowship. The US government commissioned Lange to document the internment of the Japanese population after the Pearl Harbour attack. The resulting photographs were so controversial they were impounded for the duration of the war and Lange was unable to see them for twenty years.
Lange withdrew from photography for several years, disillusioned at her works’ failure to enact social or political change. The effects from her bout with polio and other illnesses took their toll on her health. At the California School of Fine Arts she taught a photography course, using methods that echoed her old teacher, White. However by 1950 Lange had resumed working and she agreed to participate in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s Family of Man exhibition
Lange was contracted by Life to document the Mormon society in Utah and the Irish community in County Clare, and later she gained the opportunity to record life across the continents. These trips ended as her health deteriorated. Lange died from oesophageal cancer in 1965
Calla Lilly 1988 Modern Photography Platinum Print The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
The definitive lines and natural shape of the Calla lily are enhanced by the subtle graduation of light this photograph. The image plane Is dominated by the flower and the highly detailed platinum print creates a stark contrast of extreme white against extreme black with subtle tones of grey on the pedal and pistil. The flower portraits exemplify Mapplethorpe as an accomplished studio photographer. Mapplethorpe was well-renowned for his timeless black and white photography and floral still lifes.
Robert Mapplethorpe Modern Photography, Straight Photography, Conceptual Art Born: 4 November 1946, New York, USA Nationality: American Died: 9 March 1989, Massachusetts, USA
Mapplethorpe was a photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. Featuring an array of subjects including male and female nudes, homoerotica, and the BDSM subculture of the late 1960s Mapplethorpe sparked controversy and debate concerning the use of public funds for art and the limits of free speech. His work is still considered taboo by many; however he remains one of the most revered American photographers.
Jezzie G 