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Joseph Niepce
Although by the late seventeenth century the camera obscura projected pictures onto paper and in the eighteenth century the German inventor J. H. Schulzeobserved that silver salts darken when exposed to light, it was more than a century later when Niepce combined these two concepts to produce photography. From his workroom, which overlooked the courtyard of his family's estate, Niepce made the first true attempt at photography in 1816. -
Louis Daguerre
The plate was then exposed in a camera; the silver iodide was reduced to silver in proportion to the density. The exposed plate was then placed over a container of warm mercury; the fumes formed an amalgam with the silver producing an image. The plate was washed with a saline solution to prevent further exposure. Daguerre allowed that his iodized silver plate would remain in his partnership but it would be called a “daguerreotype”, as it was completely Daguerre’s invention. -
Matthew Brady
Mathew Brady is often referred to as the father of photojournalism and is most well known for his documentation of the Civil War. His photographs, and those he commissioned, had a tremendous impact on society at the time of the war, and continue to do so today. He and his employees photographed thousands of images including battlefields, camp life, and portraits of some of the most famous citizens of his time including Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. -
Edward Weston
From 1934 through 1948, his last working year, Weston continued to explore his favourite subject matter: natural forms, landscapes, nudes, and people. His development was guided by a cool analytical intelligence that allowed him to proceed quite consciously from simpler to increasingly complex problems. The nature of this artistic evolution can perhaps be seen most clearly in the genre of landscape. -
Edward Muybridge
Muybridge’s experiments in photographing motion began in 1872, when the railroad magnate Leland Stanford hired him to prove that during a particular moment in a trotting horse’s gait, all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. Although he was acquitted, he found it expedient to travel for a number of years in Mexico and Central America, making publicity photographs for the Union Pacific Railroad, a company owned by Stanford. -
Lewis line
Trickery of the actual image-making and its production were the heart of creating this type of photography. Hine once questioned the groups artistic methods, from their ivory tower, how could they see way down to the substrata of it all? Hine, from the beginning, considered his photography as an educational tool in addition to an art form. -
Dorothea Lange
Lange’s first exhibition was held in 1934, and thereafter her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer was firmly established. In 1939 she published a collection of her photographs in the book An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. Two years later she received a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 1942 she recorded the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans to detention camps after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. -
Ansel Adams
Adams was an unremitting activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. However, his great influence came from his photography. His images became the symbols, the veritable icons, of wild America. When people thought about the national parks of the Sierra Club or nature of the environment itself, the often envisioned them in terms of an Ansel Adams photograph. -
Margaret Bourke-White
Bourke-White was one of the first four photographers hired, and her photograph Fort Peck Dam was reproduced on the first cover. She was the only Western photographer to witness the German invasion of Moscow in 1941, she was the first woman to accompany Air Corps crews on bombing missions in 1942, and she traveled with Patton's army through Germany in 1945 as it liberated several concentration camps. -
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was also Jean Renoir’s assistant on three major films, an artist who sees himself an artisan but who nevertheless established Magnum, the most prestigious of all photo agencies, and who immortalised his major contemporaries : Mauriac in a state of mystical levitation, Giacometti, Sartre, Faulkner or Camus, and as many more all taken at the decisive moment, all portraits for eternity. -
Yousef Karsh
Yousuf Karsh CC, was an Armenian-Canadian photographer known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. An Armenian Genocide survivor, Karsh migrated to Canada as a refugee. -
Arnold Newman
was an American photographer, noted for his "environmental portraits" of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. American photographer, who specialized in portraits of well-known people posed in settings associated with their work. This approach, known as “environmental portraiture,” greatly influenced portrait photography in the 20th century. -
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus is an American photographer known for her hand-held black and white images of marginalized people such as midgets, circus freaks, giants, gender non-conforming people, as well as more normalized subjects of suburban families, celebrities, and nudists. Arbus' work can be understood as bizarre, fantastical, and psychologically complex all at once - either way, she took documentary photography a step further. -
richard avedon
American photographer Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist portraits. He worked first as a photographer for the Merchant Marines, taking identification photos -
Jerry ulesman
In 1967, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY, acted as a starting point for Uelsmann's serious photography career by serving as the site for one of his most famous solo exhibitions. Uelsmann's work often involves photographic images created by assembling multiple negatives on a series of enlargers -
Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz is a portrait photographer who in 1970 landed a job at Rolling Stone and went on to create a distinctive look for the publication as chief photographer. In 1983, she began working for the entertainment magazine Vanity Fair, continuing to produce images that would be deemed iconic and provocative. Having also worked on high-profile advertising campaigns, Leibovitz's images have been showcased in several books and major exhibitions around the world.
