Artist Profiles

1. Nadar (1820-1910)
Nadar, also known as Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, was a french photographer, writer, and caricaturist. His is mostly famous for his photographic portraits, some of the best of the nineteenth century. Nadar was set out to be a doctor, but he decided to take up writing instead to make a living. This quickly turned into a caricaturist job, and finally, already exposed to art, he became a great photographer. He even had his very own studio. Nadar started his first big project, Pantheon-Nadar, for which he photographed famous poet Charles Baudelaire and illustrator Gustave Dore. The expert photographer patented the technique of aerial photography for map-making and surveying. His first successful aerial photography was taken from a balloon in 1858. That same year, Nadar began to photograph by electric light, taking a series of photos of Paris sewers. In 1886, he made the first "photo interview". This was a series of twenty one photographs of Michel-Eugene Chevreul, a French scientist, in conversation.

Sarah Bernhardt,  1865

First aeriel photograph by Nadar

The first photograph that I chose is one of Nadar's many portrait photographs. He took this portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, a famous french stage and early film actress in Paris, in 1865. I love this portrait because it clearly shows the actress's personality, and it might even tell a story. I think this photograph is truly beautiful and it gives off a romantic mood.
The second photograph is the first aerial photograph. It is a photo of Monmartre, Paris. He took this photograph from an air balloon. He was the first photographer to use this type of photography technique and it turned out really well. This picture is not only art, but it can be used for mapping purposes and government purposes.

I found a contemporary artist called Marc Thirouin who is a French photographer. Like Nadar, one of Thirouin's most known types of photography is portrait photography. He took the photograph below. This portrait is from his collection called "Las Mujeres" and it reminds me of Nadar's portraits, because it also has this romantic kind-of quality and the portrait shows a part of the person's story. In addition, the woman in the picture is positioned slightly sideways like most of the subjects in Nadar's pictures.

2. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
Julia Margaret Cameron received her first camera in the year of 1863, and film photography became her way of living and her way of expressing her memories. Many photographers did not admire her photographs and they said that she had sloppy craftsmanship, but it was the opposite. Julia Margaret Cameron just chose to pay more attention to the lighting, soft focus, long exposures, and the set up of her Victorian-style photos. She liked the grainy or blurry photos that came out of this style of photography.

Both of these portraits are so beautiful. The way the girls are photographed and the blur of the images gives them a romantic quality. The first photograph reminds me of the pictures of my mom as a little French school-girl. The lighting and exposure seems really fitting in both photographs. There are multitudes of shades of brown, grey, black, and white in both photographs. 

3. Edward Steichen (1879-1973)

Edward Steichen was born in Luxembourg and eventually most to the United States as a young child. This is where Steichen debuted his career as a very talented artist. He was known for creating posters for the American Fine Art Company. Steichen was quickly introduced to photography and he bought his first camera, a Kodak 50-exposure box camera. Steichen's work was widely exhibited in Paris and all over Europe. In Paris, Steichen experimented with pigmented processing. He also worked with gum bichromate, platinum, and gelatin silver carbon. Steichen is known for having started the fashion photography revolution and having modernized fashion photography, inspiring it still today. Edward Steichen's work was feature in many different museum all over the world and is still widely studied and appreciated.

Gloria Swanson behind a veil

This picture is one of Edward Steichen's most famous photographs. This is a picture of a famous movie star at the time, Gloria Swanson. It partly revolutionized the world of fashion photography. I think that this photograph is truly beautiful. It gives off a certain creepy and dangerous mood. It has many different shades of grey, white, and black which makes it more detailed and interesting.

A great example of Steichen's fashion photography.

I absolutely love this photograph. It's one of my favorites of his work. I think that the way that Steichen is able to showcase the clothes and the beauty of the women is amazing and unprecedented. This fashion photograph has a romantic quality to it. It looks like the kind of famous image that we would come up with today. In fact, it reminds me of a photograph taken of Blake Lively for Chanel (image below). Chanel took the same idea and mood, and it isn't the only company to have been inspired by Edward Steichen.

Image of Blake Lively

4. Eva Watson-Schutze (1867-1935)

Eva Watson-Schutze was an American portrait photographer and one of the members of the Photo Secession. She originally wanted to be a painter, but it lead her to photography. Her photography portraits are well-known to be romantic, yet powerfully composed. At a reasonably young age, Watson-Schutze opened her very own Philadelphia Portrait Studio.  

"A Study Head" by Eva Watson-Schutze

This is one of Watson's most known portraits. I love how you can only see that main subject of the girl and she fades into the background. I think that it gives off a romantic and innocent mood, because the colors are so light and gentle.

"The Rose" 

I really like the shades of brown and sepia in this photograph. I think that it is really beautiful, but it also has somewhat creepy aspect like the eyes that are white from a long exposure for example. This photograph seems to bring out such a feminist mood. It emphasizes that Eva Watson-Schultz was one of the best woman photographers of the time.

Farm Security Administration
The Farm Security Administration, once named the Resettlement Administration, was established in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States. This Farm Security Administration was an effort to fight against American rural poverty during the Great Depression. This association wanted to improve the lives of sharecroppers, tenants, poor landowning farmers, and more. The Farm Security Administration purchased land and used it to create something like a mass farming system which ultimately was supposed to eliminate as much poverty in the United States as possible. In 1943, the Farm Security Administration was eliminated because people said it was too expensive and time consuming.

5. Jack Delano

Jack Delano was one of the photographers that worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression. He was both a student of art and a teacher. He worked alongside Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks. Delano went to Puerto Rico for an FSA photography project. He liked Puerto Rico so much that he decided to live there permanently. In 1943, he stopped working for the FSA because it was cancelled.

Norwich, Conn., 1941

This is probably my favorite piece from Jack Delano. It feels like a very truthful and candid photograph. I love the way in which Delano focused on the boy in front is making such a weird expression and blurred out the boys behind him that are smiling. I also really like that he chose to make it black and white because it adds to the candid mood going on.

Chicago, 1942

This is another really great photograph by Jack Delano. I think that the color in the face and eyes is actually very beneficial to the picture because it increases the focus on the expression of the man's face and his features. It makes the photograph more striking in my opinion. I also like that the rest of the photograph is black because it also works towards the same goal. I believe that this photograph is really meaningful because it perfectly and truthfully shows the conditions of work and life at the time.

6. John Vachon (1914-1975)
John Vachon was known to travel around the world to take photographs. Before being recruited by Roy Stryker to join a small group of photographers working for the Farm Security Association, he was a filing clerk for the association. We learned under another FSA photographer, Walker Evans. Then, he worked alongside Gordon Parks. He used a 35mm Leica for many of his photographs. After the FSA was eliminated, John Vachon moved on to work for Look Magazine. 

Irwinville Farms

I love this photograph. I feel like it could be taken from an old movie because it really tells a story. This type of image is very commercialized today and I feel like I've seen it so much, but this is reality. I think that it was a good idea for John Vachon to use the rule of thirds, placing the newspaper boy on the left of the photograph. I also love that the boy isn't smiling because it is more real.

Minnesota, 1941

This photograph is extremely powerful because it tells a story, perfectly showing the living conditions during the Depression and the FSA. There were many kids in one tiny "house" or room and they didn't have very much at all. I think how truthful this photograph is even though John Vachon was working for the FSA and probably should have been commercializing the association rather than being candid.

Contemporary Artists

Lee Jeffries

This photograph reminds me of the FSA photographs. It looks like it was shot with film, even though it was only taken three years ago. Like the FSA photographs, it is very candid, probably because it can be considered "street" photography and I believe that that is the kind of photography that Vachon and even Delano were experimenting with.

Markus Hartel

This picture reminds me so much of Jack Delano's first picture above. The boys are, once again, in their element. It makes the photo extremely real and candid, much like Delano's. It is also in black and white and very focused on the main subject.

7. Europe- Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
Henri Cartier-Bresson was an extremely talented and famous french humanist photographer. His specialty was candid street photography. He mostly used 35mm film. Cartier-Bresson also painted in his early life, influencing his photography in many ways. He developed close relationships with surrealist painters in Marseille in the 1930s. Later, Cartier-Bresson exhibited his work in the United States. Cartier's photography took him to places all over the world.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

This photo is really amazing because it is so candid and full of technique. The quality of the photo is almost perfect. I mostly like the composition of this photograph. There's the silhouette of the man running in completely motion, but everything else is clear. The photographer also amplified the beautiful reflection on the ground.

8. Life Magazine- W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978)

Life was an American magazine that was started in 1883 and finished in 1972. It was initially created as a humor and interest magazine. The founder of the Time magazine, Henry Luce, bought Life in 1936. At this time, Life became a strong photojournalism magazine. After 1972, Life started being a monthly magazine rather than a weekly magazine.

W. Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist that was published in the Life magazine. He was a staff member of the Life magazine. W. Eugene Smith is very famous for developing the photo essay into a sophisticated visual form. Eugene Smith had an interest for photography starting at the age of fourteen. He traveled to Japan and many places in the United States.

W. Eugene Smith, George Karder

This is an example of the kind of work that Eugene Smith would do for Life Magazine. This photograph looks rather staged, but he also took more street-like photographs such as the one below. 

W. Eugene Smith

Eugene Smith took a lot of photographs of medicine. This is a photograph of a nurse checking a child's glands. 

9. F/64 Group- Paul Strand (1890-1976)

The f/64 group was founded by seven twentieth century San Francisco photographers who shared similar photography skills and personal interests. For example, they liked sharp-focused and well framed photographs. They all had a very western viewpoint when taking pictures. Most importantly, they wanted to promote a modernistic approach to photographer and life. At the time that this group was founded, the US had many horrible social and economic issues. This was the time of the Great Depression. The f/64 group took this time of hardship and transformed it into great works of art.

Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, with the f/64 group, helped turn photography into a true art form. Strand took many candid portrait photographs. They all seem somewhat staged but also very realistic for the time.

Paul Strand

10. Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

Ansel Adams, born in San Francisco, California, was a black and white photographer in America as well as an environmentalist. His conservative views widely affected his photography and photographic choices. Most of his photographs were taken in the American West. His most famous photographs were taken in Yosemite National Park.

This is one of Adam's most famous Yosemite Photographs.

11. Walker Evans (1903-1975)

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist for the FSA (Farm Security Administration) that I described earlier. He therefore mainly focused on the effects of the Great Depression on American society. He took crystal clear, elegant photographs. He started out by taking simple photographs using a Kodak camera, but eventually ended up using 35mm Contax Cameras and more. "Most of Evans’ early photographs reveal the influence of European modernism, specifically its formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures. But he gradually moved away from this highly aestheticism style to develop his own evocative but more reticent notions of realism, of the spectator’s role, and of the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects." 

I love the realistic aspects of all of Walker Evans' photos. They are so candid and I feel like they expose the truth, which is hard a rare quality to find. 

Bud Fields and His Family, Hale County, Alabama, photograph by Walker …

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Street scene in Vicksburg, Mississippi, photograph by Walker Evans, c. 1930s.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

12. Edward Weston (1886-1958)
Edward Weston was an incredibly American photographer during the twentieth century. Weston started photography at the age of sixteen when his father gave him a Bull's Eye #2 Camera. Later, he attended the Illinois College of Photography. "Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies." He opened a studio in Mexico City. He took many portraits and nudes while in Mexico. Weston finally became a founding member of the f/64 group. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for his experimental work. Weston died from Parkinson's disease.

Shell, 1927

Tina with Tear, 1924

13. Richard Avedon (1923-2004)

Richard Avedon, a New York photographer, was a master of portraiture and American fashion photography. He took many large-scale, character-revealing portraits that look incredible when you see them up close. The eyes of the subjects directly draw you in and his portraits are so crisp that they give a true sense of reality, as shown below. His portraits are usually very "straight forward" in the sense that the background is usually white and they are very candid photographs. 

One of Richard Avedon's well-known portraits

14. Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
Diane Arbus was a great American photographer and writer. She mostly took photos of what she called "freaks." She would consider dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers, people with disabilities, etctera "freaks." These people were usually considered "ugly" by society or left out by society. Her reasoning behind this subject choice was that these people's divergence from what she called "normal" intrigued her and sent her on an adventure, a new world almost. She didn't enjoy photographing anything ordinary or popular.

Diane Arbus, Child With a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, 1962

Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967

15. Robert Frank (1924-Present)

Robert Frank is an American photography and documentary film maker. His most notable work is his book of photographs, the Americans, in which he shows America from an outsider's point of view. He took these photographs while on a Guggenheim fellowship. 

Robert Frank