PETAPIXEL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Photographer
- War Photographer
"I've made this huge journey from the beginning of my life where it was very poor and impoverished," McCullin tells BBC News. "I've managed to get away from that and I've managed to educate myself by travelling with great journalists."
The photographer also tells BBC News that he's retiring from conflict photography after making a trip to Iraq last month to document the Battle of Mosul. He does, however, plan to continue shooting other kinds of photos for as long as he's able.
Don McCullin on His 60-Year Career: ‘What Good Have I Done?'
Job Titles:
- Resettlement Administration Photographer
- the Photographer of Depression - Era Rural America
Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer who is best known for Migrant Mother, an iconic photo of the Great Depression. Her work helped Americans see the devastating effects of the depression on rural America, and Lange is now celebrated as a pioneer in the field of documentary photography.
Lange was born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey, on May 26, 1895, but she grew up and attended public schools and college in New York City. Her father abandoned the family when Lange was just twelve, leading her to drop her birth surname (Nutzhorn) in favor of her mother's maiden name (Lange).
After college, Lange and a friend decided that they would travel around the world before they began their careers. They got as far as San Francisco when they were robbed and had to stop and get jobs.
Dorothea took a job at the photofinishing counter of a department store. She had already decided to be a photographer and taking in photofinishing was pretty much an entry-level photography job at the time. She soon got a job as a photographer's assistant at a portrait studio.
Before long she had her own studio photographing the rich and society of San Francisco. Her studio became the hangout of artists, musicians, writers, and photographers of San Francisco. This community encouraged each other and helped build a desire to help those less fortunate.
Resettlement Administration photographer Dorothea Lange sitting ona Ford Model 40 in California with a Graflex 4×5 Series D camera in her lap.
Because of Dorothea Lange's influence and career, she became the first woman awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1940. In 1945 she joined the photography faculty of the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) along with other outstanding photographers of the day including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, Edward Weston, and Lisette Model.
Job Titles:
- Inventor of the Negative - Positive Photo Process
William Henry Fox Talbot was on his honeymoon at Lake Como in northern Italy in 1833. He was trying to sketch the beautiful lake and the surrounding scenery but was becoming increasingly frustrated with his lack of drawing skills. He used a camera lucida and a camera obscura, two devices that use lenses to project an image onto a piece of paper to aid in drawing, but he didn't find either one very satisfactory.
Fox Talbot was the man for the job. He was a scientist, mathematician, botanist, etymologist, and Member of Parliament. He was well educated, had plenty of resources, and was well connected with the English elite. He was also humble and not at all a self-promoter. For that reason, much of his contributions to photography, publishing, and scientific discoveries are not often appreciated nor particularly well documented.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was not Impressed
The founder of Magnum Photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson, visited Parr's exhibition in Paris around 1994, and the legendary "decisive moment" photographer was not impressed.
Henri Cartier-Bresson is said to be a founder of modern photojournalism. I have actually talked about his life and photography in one of my very first videos. He actually came up with this idea of the "decisive moment." I wouldn't say he invented it but he definitely gave it a name and introduced it to a wider audience.
Job Titles:
- Leading Documentary Photographer of Post - War Britain
- Photographer of Leisure Pursuits of the Wealthy Classes
Parr became a member of the prestigious photography cooperative by one vote and joined in 1994.
"That's part of what I try and do is to make a picture that can draw people in and then if they want, if they look at them all together because obviously, you present sets rather than one picture on its own," says Parr. "There is something to be read about the politics of what's going on, but it's not mandatory.
"I did photograph the Queen but from behind, and that's one of my best pictures of recent years. There are very few people you'd recognize from behind."
"Every time I do more work, I try and make my CV shorter" because nobody wants to read long CVs anymore, Parr says.
Parr is a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). The next step up is being knighted (if it ever happens), an honor conferred to Sir Donald McCullin, (born 1935) C.B.E., photojournalist and war photographer, for services to photography in 2016. Parr was awarded the CBE on June 19, 2021, and received the award this month from King's representative Lord Lieutenant in Bristol.
The great American photographer Walker Evans is best known for his stark photos that document the years of the Great Depression in the US. In the 4.5-minute video above, produced many years afterwards, Evans looks back on his photography and offers a glimpse into his mindset at the time he shot it.
Although many of his works are in the permanent collections of major museums now and praised as being some of the most powerful images made in American history, Evans had a much smaller and less ambitious view of what he was doing at the time.
"I was very innocent about government, about Washington," he says in the video. "I did it so carelessly - I just photographed everything that attracted me at the time… and rather unconsciously was recording that period. I didn't think of it as such. The work piled up, and some of it is looked at now as a record that I wasn't even thinking of making."
Job Titles:
- Legendary Documentary Photographer, Has Died at 94
Job Titles:
- Photographer of Mass Nude Photos
Photographer Spencer Tunick has captured groups of nudes in close to 100 public spaces all over the world. His largest masterpiece was a group of 18,000 people who took off their clothes in Mexico City's Zocalo Square, the heart of the ancient Aztec empire.
Tunick has said that other artists may use oil or clay to shape their subjects. He does the same with nude bodies to create his abstractions. His canvas is the setting he chooses, whether rural, urban, indoors or out.
Tunick has no interest in tilt/shift lenses or very high-resolution camera backs of 150 megapixels.
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his "deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States" and for his pioneering use of color in fine art photography. At age 14, he sold three photographs to the Museum of Modern Art, and at 24, he became the second living photographer to do a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this video, Shore talks a little about his work and shares some of his thoughts on photography.
William Eggleston is often referred to as "the godfather of color photography" for his role in helping color photos be seen as legitimate art. A collection of 36 of his prints sold at auction back in 2012 for a whopping $5.9 million, with $578,500 paid for one print of a photo of a tricycle.
Eggleston has published a large number of photo books over the course of his career. The Democratic Forest was published in 1989 and features 150 color photos showing the details of everyday life.
Job Titles:
- Detroit Photographic Co
- Pioneer Photographer of the American West
Throughout his long career of almost 90 years, Jackson photographed and painted many subjects and scenes that are now embedded in our view and understanding of the American West.
His autobiography, Time Exposure, is still available.
In 1941, Jackson was interviewed about his experience of roaming the Wild West as a photographer.