Photographers I wish I knew more about

[Alex Benjamin]

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]

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.

 

[sasah zib]

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​

 

[Alex Benjamin]

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​

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

 

[Alex Benjamin]

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.

 

[drkhalsa]

For India, take a look at the work of photographer Raghu Rai and see if you find it interesting.

Raghu Rai: In His Own Words - India Art Fair

Iconic Indian photographer and Magnum member, Raghu Rai reflects on his career and offers advice to young artists

indiaartfair.in

 

[sasah zib]

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

 

[Alex Benjamin]

For India, take a look at the work of photographer Raghu Rai and see if you find it interesting.

Raghu Rai: In His Own Words - India Art Fair

Iconic Indian photographer and Magnum member, Raghu Rai reflects on his career and offers advice to young artists

indiaartfair.in

Extremely interesting. Thanks!

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

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

 

[sasah zib]

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

Foreword Anna Fox, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK 1. Introduction Aileen Blaney, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, India Part I: Photographic Time and Memory 1. In the Theatre of Memory: The Work of Contemporary Art in the Photographic Archive Raqs Media Collective 2. Lady Harriot Dufferin’s Indian Album: ‘My First Efforts in Photography, 1886’ Denise A. Wilson 3. Itinerant Photography: Medium and Translation in the work of Imran Channa Zahid Chaudhary 4. Images of Deaths and Marriages: Syrian Christian Family Albums and Oral Histories in Kerala Pooja Sagar 5. All ‘Dressed Up’: Costume, Fashion and Identity in the Photographs of Homai Vyarawalla Sabeena Gadihoke 6. Putting Women in the Picture: The Role of Photography in Mobilizing Support for the Indian Emergency (1975-77) Gemma Scott 7. Copying and De-synchronizing: Performing the Past in Contemporary Indian Photography.Christopher Pinney Part II: Photographies in Contemporary India 8. Photography at the Edge of Representation?: Rethinking Photographs of Rural India Kathleen L. Wyma 9. Interrogating ‘Credible Chhattisgarh’: Photography and the Construction of a New Indian State Avrati Bhatnagar 10. Silenced Ruptures, Images from 2002 Gujarat Riots Chinar Shah 11. Satellite Images in India: Remotely Sensed and Ambiguously Accessed Muthatha Ramanathan 12. The Self Is as the Selfie Does: Three Propositions for the Selfie in the Digital Turn Nishant Shah 13. The Unfolding of the Networked Image: An Oscillation between a Simple Visibility and an Invisible Complexity Fabien Charuau 14. Post-Photography and Missing Images Joan Fontcuberta, Translation by Ana Mahé Afterword Fred Richin

 

[Alex Benjamin]

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

Wow, thanks! I'll look into it.

 

[warden]

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

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]

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]

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.

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]

@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

 

[sasah zib]

small things worth doing many times

 

[jtk]

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

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.