Top Lady
1) Lee Miller
Model, Photographer, Reporter, Muse: Lee Miller had an extraordinary life on both sides of the camera. As a young model, she graced the cover of Vogue in the 1920s, then learned photography (and a few other things) from her relationship with Man Ray, making abstract photographs. In the 1930s, she became a photojournalist for Vogue and Life magazines, covering World War II in France and North Africa. And she was the only photographer with the American troops when they entered the Buchenwald concentration camp, sending her images of dead and dying bodies back to her editors with only the words “Believe It.”
2) Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky creates wall-size photographs that often act as if they were paintings, often capturing large-scale scenes such as infinite layers of hotel balconies or the eye-popping colors of a huge 99-cent store. His free and open use of digital alterations also brings in the question the nature of the medium, which Gursky clearly believes is as malleable as paint.
3) Taryn Simon
A working contemporary photographer, Taryn Simon’s trademark is getting access to remote or off-limits areas to take “forbidden” images. A recent show at the Whitney Museum held pictures of green-glowing nuclear waste, the Death Star prop from Star Wars (packed in storage in a Hollywood lot), and a portrait of Kenny, a white tiger with mental retardation and other problems due to massive inbreeding.
4) Gordon Parks
Aside from being the photographer of the Civil Rights Movement, Gordon Parks also produced hundreds of images of simple beauty. And, yes, he directed Shaft.
5) Ryan McGinley
Ryan McGinley is definitely the toast of the town at the moment, and he should be. A young, working photographer in New York, his images capture the spirit of the 2000s in a way no one else does. Young, beautiful hipsters frolic in a park, find ecstasy at a Morrissey concert, and graffiti-bomb buildings at twilight. They seem to think they will always be young and beautiful, and in these pictures, they will be.
Top Guy
1) Richard Avedon
I often had been struck by beauty in photographs, but I had never really been moved by a still image until seeing Richard Avedon’s In the American West series. American West featured striking photographs of common people living hardscrabble lives as oil workers, cowboys and drifters. Walker Evans and Robert Frank also have captured the essence of the American soul, but Avedon’s work made a deeper impression on me because I saw it first.
2) Henri Cartier-Bresson
Cartier-Bresson is known as the father of modern photojournalism. He’s an innovator who took some of the most famous photographs ever. He co-founded Magnum Photos, possibly the greatest collection of photojournalists ever assembled. But Cartier-Bresson makes the list for one simple reason: When I elicited responses from my photographer friends, one wrote back “Cartier-Bresson (duh…).”
3) Nick Ut
Sometimes you become famous for being in the right place at the right time. Ut’s defining moment is a photo of a group of crying Vietnamese children running down the road after their village was napalmed. The photograph won Ut a Pulitzer Prize and helped end that disastrous war. In addition to being a great photographer, Ut proved himself to be a great man—he didn’t return to his bureau to publish the photograph until he had rushed a little girl to the hospital, saving her life.
4) Charles Peterson
Annie Leibovitz is probably the best known rock ’n’ roll photographer, but the Seattle scene wouldn’t have been Seattle without Charles Peterson. His gorgeous action shots of bands such as Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden are often slightly overexposed or out of focus, but they provided the perfect illustration for a grunge sound that was equally muddy and unfocused yet brilliant.
5) Gordon Parks
Few photographers could move back and forth between the worlds of journalism and fashion as deftly as Parks. His photographs for Life depicted life at both the top and bottom of black culture, and his fashion photos for Vogue were groundbreaking for the simple fact that they were shot by a black man. After a lengthy career, Parks tried his hand as a film director, scoring a hit with Shaft in 1971.
1) Lee Miller
Model, Photographer, Reporter, Muse: Lee Miller had an extraordinary life on both sides of the camera. As a young model, she graced the cover of Vogue in the 1920s, then learned photography (and a few other things) from her relationship with Man Ray, making abstract photographs. In the 1930s, she became a photojournalist for Vogue and Life magazines, covering World War II in France and North Africa. And she was the only photographer with the American troops when they entered the Buchenwald concentration camp, sending her images of dead and dying bodies back to her editors with only the words “Believe It.”
2) Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky creates wall-size photographs that often act as if they were paintings, often capturing large-scale scenes such as infinite layers of hotel balconies or the eye-popping colors of a huge 99-cent store. His free and open use of digital alterations also brings in the question the nature of the medium, which Gursky clearly believes is as malleable as paint.
3) Taryn Simon
A working contemporary photographer, Taryn Simon’s trademark is getting access to remote or off-limits areas to take “forbidden” images. A recent show at the Whitney Museum held pictures of green-glowing nuclear waste, the Death Star prop from Star Wars (packed in storage in a Hollywood lot), and a portrait of Kenny, a white tiger with mental retardation and other problems due to massive inbreeding.
4) Gordon Parks
Aside from being the photographer of the Civil Rights Movement, Gordon Parks also produced hundreds of images of simple beauty. And, yes, he directed Shaft.
5) Ryan McGinley
Ryan McGinley is definitely the toast of the town at the moment, and he should be. A young, working photographer in New York, his images capture the spirit of the 2000s in a way no one else does. Young, beautiful hipsters frolic in a park, find ecstasy at a Morrissey concert, and graffiti-bomb buildings at twilight. They seem to think they will always be young and beautiful, and in these pictures, they will be.
Top Guy
1) Richard Avedon
I often had been struck by beauty in photographs, but I had never really been moved by a still image until seeing Richard Avedon’s In the American West series. American West featured striking photographs of common people living hardscrabble lives as oil workers, cowboys and drifters. Walker Evans and Robert Frank also have captured the essence of the American soul, but Avedon’s work made a deeper impression on me because I saw it first.
2) Henri Cartier-Bresson
Cartier-Bresson is known as the father of modern photojournalism. He’s an innovator who took some of the most famous photographs ever. He co-founded Magnum Photos, possibly the greatest collection of photojournalists ever assembled. But Cartier-Bresson makes the list for one simple reason: When I elicited responses from my photographer friends, one wrote back “Cartier-Bresson (duh…).”
3) Nick Ut
Sometimes you become famous for being in the right place at the right time. Ut’s defining moment is a photo of a group of crying Vietnamese children running down the road after their village was napalmed. The photograph won Ut a Pulitzer Prize and helped end that disastrous war. In addition to being a great photographer, Ut proved himself to be a great man—he didn’t return to his bureau to publish the photograph until he had rushed a little girl to the hospital, saving her life.
4) Charles Peterson
Annie Leibovitz is probably the best known rock ’n’ roll photographer, but the Seattle scene wouldn’t have been Seattle without Charles Peterson. His gorgeous action shots of bands such as Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden are often slightly overexposed or out of focus, but they provided the perfect illustration for a grunge sound that was equally muddy and unfocused yet brilliant.
5) Gordon Parks
Few photographers could move back and forth between the worlds of journalism and fashion as deftly as Parks. His photographs for Life depicted life at both the top and bottom of black culture, and his fashion photos for Vogue were groundbreaking for the simple fact that they were shot by a black man. After a lengthy career, Parks tried his hand as a film director, scoring a hit with Shaft in 1971.
1 comment:
This list would be great if not for Ryan McGinley. Hack! Photojournalists scoff at such corporate catalog fare. (Nevermind my secret crush on his work). Love the blog, guys.
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