Photographers I wish I knew more about

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format
Title is self-explanatory.

For now (more will surely be added):

- Tod Papageorge: had Passing through Eden in my hand once in a used bookstore. Had other stuff to buy so passed on it. I regret it now. Papageorge's writings are brilliant and insightful: Tod Papageorge on Robert Adams
- Louis Draper: one of the founders of the Kamoinge Workshop. More info is available now than before through the Draper Archives, but I wish more could be found in book form.
- David Goldblatt: found Intersections at the Strand Bookstore in NYC a couple of weeks ago, so getting to know him better. Makes a nice trio of South African photographers with the books I already have by Ernest Cole (such a tragic life!) and Guy Tillim. As far as African photographers are concerned, the Kenyan Priya Ramrakha is also on my "getting to know better" list.
- Any photographer from India: too much stuff from tourists, foreign photojournalists—that damn prize-winning shot of human misery—or endless National Geographic clones. Would love to see more of India through the eyes of Indian photographers. Suggestions?
- Susan Meiselas: a recent discovery. The art of looking with compassion.

How about you?
 

gone

Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2009
Messages
5,505
Location
gone
Format
Medium Format
Robert Frank would be at the top of my list. I don't necessarily want to know about him, but about how he was able to do what he did. His street and documentary photography is right up there w/ Weston Evans and a few others.

Frank lived and worked during one the most dynamic eras in modern history, the 60's and 70's, when dissatisfaction and anger w/ the status quo was exploding everywhere. Somehow he captured that in his photographs. Looking at his work is an experience beyond a mere photographic recording of events, he can put you right there in the event itself. We identify w/ his subjects at a very deep level. He was as good as Walker Evans in my book.
 
Last edited:

sasah zib

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
192
Location
St Regis
Format
Hybrid
AB: regarding Susan Meiselas--
from "A List of Favorite Anythings," 2018.
Her list: Richard Rogers, Quarry
Edmundo Desnoes, Memorias delsubdesarrollo
Teju Cole, “Getting Others Right,” The New York Times Magazine, June 13,2017
Abigail Heyman, Growing up female:
Patricio Guzman, La batalla de Chile
John Berger and Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003

Finding anyone means finding a thread to many ones.

Aperture Fall 1987 contains articles about Meiselas and Goldblatt.

AND
Tod Papageorge gets to

Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An essay on influence. 1981​

 
Last edited:
OP
OP

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format

Found it — A list of favorite anythings. Thanks! Will check the other articles.
 
OP
OP

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format
Adding Charlie Phillips to my list, after reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/society...ritains-greatest-photographers-to-get-his-due

Seems to me that apart from Don McCullin, Bill Brandt and Martin Parr, there isn't that much written and celebrated about British photojournalists and documentary photographers, especially those working in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Charlie Phillips is an example of one on whom I at least should know more about, but so is Tish Murtha and Chris Killip.

Speaking of British photographers, I was lucky enough this past weekend to stumble upon David Hurn's Wales: Land of my Father in a used bookstore, right next to Tod Papageorge's American Sports, 1970. Bought both, of course.
 

sasah zib

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
192
Location
St Regis
Format
Hybrid
someone I wish I'd known more about 20 years ago is Pentti Sammallahti
He is much more widely known now; still, enjoy his books, but have never seen a print. I will fix this soon.

Pentti Sammallahti - Biography

Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Sammallahti was surrounded with works from his grandmother, Hildur Larsson, who was a photographer in the early 1900s. Sammallahti has been photographing the world around him with a poetic eye since the age of eleven. At the age of nine he...
www.peterfetterman.com

Pentti Sammallahti - Artists - Nailya Alexander Gallery

Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Growing up, he was surrounded by the works of his grandmother, Hildur Larsson (1882-1952), a Swedish-born photographer, who worked for the Helsinki newspaper Kaiku in the early 1900s. After visiting the exhibition The Family of Man at the...
www.nailyaalexandergallery.com
 
OP
OP

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format

Extremely interesting. Thanks!


Sammallahti was unknown to me until now. Love the images, and I will investigate more.
 

sasah zib

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
192
Location
St Regis
Format
Hybrid
saw this at library:

Photography in India: From Archives to Contemporary Practice

Photography’s prominence in the representation and experience of India in contemporary and historical times has not guaranteed it a position of sustained attention in research and scholarship. For a technology as all pervasive as photography, and a country as colossal as India, this scenario is...
www.routledge.com

 
OP
OP

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format

warden

Subscriber
Joined
Jul 21, 2009
Messages
2,994
Location
Philadelphia
Format
Medium Format
Alex Benjamin said:
Sammallahti was unknown to me until now. Love the images, and I will investigate more.
Click to expand...

Sammallahti is one of my absolute favorites, and Here Far Away is my most revisited photobook. I'll wear it out.

Fan Ho is on my list of photographers I want to know better.
 

Down Under

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2006
Messages
1,086
Location
The universe
Format
Multi Format
Three Australian contributions to this list -

Max Dupain - Rex Dupain - Olive Cotton

Some brief notes here. Max was the first Aussie photographer to apply modern techniques to the Sydney beach culture, going back to the 1930s. His most famous image has to be "Sunbaker", from 1937, one of the great icons of beach photography in its time and a classic minimalist image.

Rex is Max's son, rather a chip off his dad's block, but an eminently good photographer in his own right. Olive Cotton was Max's wife.

Obviously, artistic talent tends to run large in some families.

There were, and there still are, many others. I will post more as they pop into my brain, which is tired tonight, so I'll say no more for now.
 

Lachlan Young

Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
4,905
Location
Glasgow
Format
Multi Format
sasah zib said:
someone I wish I'd known more about 20 years ago is Pentti Sammallahti
He is much more widely known now; still, enjoy his books, but have never seen a print. I will fix this soon.
Click to expand...

The question with Sammallahti is whether the books/ portfolios (especially the Opus ones where he produced manual separations for duo/ tri/ quadtone or six-tone repro - and worked on refining a randomised halftone screen pattern over about 10 years - all of which is quite unusual for someone perceived largely as a photographer rather than as someone with considerably more expansive practice) are wrongly regarded by casual viewers as being somehow less important than original darkroom prints in terms of his practice. The extent of his influence on the emergence of fine art/ academic photography in Finland is massive, if perhaps a little less obvious now with the rise of the Helsinki School (who were in part taught by people he taught).
 

sasah zib

Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
192
Location
St Regis
Format
Hybrid
@Alex Benjamin [OP] -- in walking a different path, hit this website with minute camera photographers:

INDIAN MINUTE CAMERA PHOTOGRAPHERS - Fraglich Publishing

INDIAN MINUTE CAMERA PHOTOGRAPHERS by Sean Foley (author) with Lukas Birk (photography / design) 17x21cm / 296 Pages Hardcover – Clothbound Edition of 600 with 20 Special Edition Indian...
www.fraglich.com

the publisher of these books also built this site (the one I was searching)

Myanmar Photo Archive – Myanmar Photo Archive

www.myanmarphotoarchive.org
 

jtk

Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
4,943
Location
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Format
35mm

I've been fortunate to see dozens of his prints in Santa Fe NM and in Tucson AZ .... While his books are of course fine, the prints in galleries are better because they exist in well-lit and important contexts. They seem to have more life as objects than do the other fine, and much bigger prints around them.
 

nikos79

Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2025
Messages
422
Location
Lausanne
Format
35mm
Don Donaghy.
His photographs are excellent but cannot find more than 20-30 of them online no matter how hard I have looked. I contacted his family and apparently no-one has gone through his negatives yet.

Second on my list would be William Gedney. I discovered him only recently but I was glad I found a big online archive of his work. Tender, direct, and sensitive photographer

Third would be Michael Torosian. I like a lot of the books he curates and prints (he is an excellent printer with a deep knowledge about photography too) but only found a handful of his personal work scattered through some galleries.

Fourth would be the founder of Photo League, Sid Grossman. Not so much for his works but for his class lectures that were legendary and really difficult to find any excerpts from them.

Finally fifth would be Issei Suda. I wish I had known about him before but I am glad I discovered him recently from the seminars of my teacher Platon Rivellis.
 

Attachments

  • Don-Donaghy-(1936-2008)-0.jpg
    289.4 KB · Views: 39
  • Don-Donaghy-(1936-2008)-1.jpg
    250.1 KB · Views: 43
  • Don-Donaghy-(1936-2008)-2.jpg
    575.3 KB · Views: 38
  • Don-Donaghy-(1936-2008)-3.jpg
    77.8 KB · Views: 41
Last edited:

bjorke

Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2003
Messages
2,257
Location
SF sometimes
Format
Multi Format

Nazraeli Press reprinted his 東京景 (Tokyo-Kei) a few years back, I was lucky enough to get a copy. Can't recall where though! (SF Cameraworks? Art book fair?)
 

logan2z

Subscriber
Joined
Jan 11, 2019
Messages
3,696
Location
SF Bay Area, USA
Format
Multi Format
nikos79 said:
Second on my list would be William Gedney. I discovered him only recently but I was glad I found a big online archive of his work. Tender, direct, and sensitive photographer
Click to expand...

I'd recommend the book What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. Long out of print but used copies are easily found.

nikos79 said:
Fourth would be the founder of Photo League, Sid Grossman. Not so much for his works but for his class lectures that were legendary and really difficult to find any excerpts from them.
Click to expand...

Check out The Life and Work of Sid Grossman, published by Steidl. Great book and can still be found new for a reasonable amount of money.
 
OP
OP

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,367
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format
nikos79 said:
Fourth would be the founder of Photo League, Sid Grossman. Not so much for his works but for his class lectures that were legendary and really difficult to find any excerpts from them.
Click to expand...

logan2z said:
Check out The Life and Work of Sid Grossman, published by Steidl.
Click to expand...

I second that recommendation.

Also of note, if you're interested in the Photo League, is The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951. There's also an excellent documentary called Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League's New York.

Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League's New York | The Photo League Film

Ordinary Miracles Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League's New York is the first feature length documentary devoted to The Photo League.Produced and Directed
www.thephotoleaguefilm.com
 

nikos79

Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2025
Messages
422
Location
Lausanne
Format
35mm

Thanks a lot for all your recommendations!
 

nikos79

Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2025
Messages
422
Location
Lausanne
Format
35mm

Milpool

Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2023
Messages
705
Location
Canada
Format
4x5 Format
I wasn't sure where to post this but this is as good a thread as any in case anyone might be interested. Here is a short video of a photographer named Michael Massaia based in New Jersey. Cool stuff - and the prints matter.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…