Photographers you most admire

[rochephoto]

Thanks.

 

[Mark J]

Very tough, there is some hierarchy but it's fluid the further I go down -
1. Brett Weston
Next four -
Edward Weston
James Ravilious
Minor White
Eliot Porter
Then :
Saul Leiter
René Burri
William Eggleston
John Wimberley
Bradford Washburn

 

[snusmumriken]

Not all living, but did the exercice with only Black photographers.

1. Gordon Parks
2. Dawoud Bey
3. Roy DeCarava
4. Ernest Cole
5. Latoya Ruby Frazier
6. Kwame Brathwaite
7. Tyler Mitchell
8. Malik Sidibé
9. Santu Mofokeng
10. Deana Lawson

Tried to stick to 10, so a bit sorry to leave out Carrie Mae Weems, Seydou Keïta, Louis Draper, Anthony Barboza, Jamel Shabazz and Teju Cole off the list.

Thanks for this list. I'm ashamed to say that I had only heard of Gordon Parks and Ernest Cole, but I have followed up the rest since you posted. Quite an education, for which many thanks.

 

[cliveh]

At the same time, a lot of what's in the Aperture universe is very topical and socio-political and short on real artistry or any real visual "eye". I consider a lot of it as more reportage and short on the "Fine Art" side of things.

Well said.

 

[chuckroast]

At the same time, a lot of what's in the Aperture universe is very topical and socio-political and short on real artistry or any real visual "eye". I consider a lot of it as more reportage and short on the "Fine Art" side of things.

I have always found that art in the service of agenda is a disservice to the art. Art in service of socio-political causes is better understood to be propaganda. Art in the service of commerce is advertising or marketing. Art in the service of religion is pamphleteering.

That's not to say that there isn't great work done in such settings. Salgado's "Workers" is quite obviously a socio-political work, and it's really well executed. Ditto the fashion work of Richard Avedon. But in neither of these cases would I say the end result is great art - the work is tainted by the agenda peddling.

More difficult to categorize is the religious art of, say, the Renaissance and thereafter. We stand in awe of this work today because of it's durability over time and beauty. But even Bach wrote a great body of his work for church worship services. Handel wrote Messiah because he needed the money. So does that make the St. Matthew Passion pamphleteering? Maybe, in its time, that's exactly what it was, but today surely it's also great art that stands on its own. Perhaps the value of the art is exposed only when the proximate non-arts purpose it served is no longer relevant. Maybe Helmut Newton will someday come to be seen as the equal of Raphael or Monet ... but I doubt it.

But as much as I find agenda-driven art somehow diminished, it actually doesn't matter all that much. The true damage done to art today is at the hand of the contemporary theory fetishes found in the arts community (deconstructionism, postmodernism, feminist critque, intersectional theory, blah, blah, blah, puke) . Most "arts" publications, showings, and discussions end up being so polluted by this sewage that it loses all meaning. The only exception I have found recently is "New Criterion" magazine which covers all the arts and is a very fine arts criticism publication, albeit very New York-centric. At least the manage to cover photography now and again.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

At the same time, a lot of what's in the Aperture universe is very topical and socio-political and short on real artistry or any real visual "eye". I consider a lot of it as more reportage and short on the "Fine Art" side of things.

Not sure I would call it '"reportage," or, at least, certainly not in a photojournalism or documentary sense. Aperture isn't Polka. I see its focus these days as community oriented—in the large sense of the word, which includes questions of identity, while not being exclusively devoted to them—at the same time witnessing the new mixed-genre esthetics, in which documentary, photojournalism, portrait, fashion, landscape, fact and fiction, etc., mingle one with the other.

I subscribe to the Aperture archives, and it's fascinating to see how their editorial line has changed with the times. Under Minor White, for example, it was all "art and spirit", so to speak, and if you go through the 60s and early 70s, you wouldn't see anything close to reportage and, except one issue devoted to Eugene Smith, you wouldn't know that you were living in one of the most productive and imaginative era in street photography and photojournalism. Not to mention color photography, which took them years to acknowledge. I feel at least today they are closer to what is relevant to a new generation of photographers.

 

[rochephoto]

I have always found that art in the service of agenda is a disservice to the art. Art in service of socio-political causes is better understood to be propaganda. Art in the service of commerce is advertising or marketing. Art in the service of religion is pamphleteering.

That's not to say that there isn't great work done in such settings. Salgado's "Workers" is quite obviously a socio-political work, and it's really well executed. Ditto the fashion work of Richard Avedon. But in neither of these cases would I say the end result is great art - the work is tainted by the agenda peddling.

More difficult to categorize is the religious art of, say, the Renaissance and thereafter. We stand in awe of this work today because of it's durability over time and beauty. But even Bach wrote a great body of his work for church worship services. Handel wrote Messiah because he needed the money. So does that make the St. Matthew Passion pamphleteering? Maybe, in its time, that's exactly what it was, but today surely it's also great art that stands on its own. Perhaps the value of the art is exposed only when the proximate non-arts purpose it served is no longer relevant. Maybe Helmut Newton will someday come to be seen as the equal of Raphael or Monet ... but I doubt it.

But as much as I find agenda-driven art somehow diminished, it actually doesn't matter all that much. The true damage done to art today is at the hand of the contemporary theory fetishes found in the arts community (deconstructionism, postmodernism, feminist critque, intersectional theory, blah, blah, blah, puke) . Most "arts" publications, showings, and discussions end up being so polluted by this sewage that it loses all meaning. The only exception I have found recently is "New Criterion" magazine which covers all the arts and is a very fine arts criticism publication, albeit very New York-centric. At least the manage to cover photography now and again.

I largely agree with what you're saying and greatly appreciate your very considered perspective. There may be many things that motivate one to initiate a creative endeavor but one's dogma may be banal, as you suggest. There are many things that may motivate me to put myself in a position to take pictures, but in the end, what interests me the most is to extend my understanding of the visual paradigm. There is where the surprise and the extension of the visual/perceptual lexicon lies. For me, the rest of it is a bit banal for me. The nature of the purely visual realm is innately ambiguous. That's why reportage has captions and attendant diatribes. It has an obligation to push an agenda. I have no problem with that perspective and I myself have strong opinions about social issues myself. My question is wether the visual/"art" diatribe is more or less effective to affect social change than more direct political action. I myself participate politically in a more direct action for social change. I feel uncomfortable calling my artistic perceptual musings the most effect use of time and effort for the greatest tool for change.

 

[bjorke]

• Gene Smith
• Stefan van Fleteren
• Avedon
• Koudelka
• Sally Mann
• Daniel Schwarz
• Moriyama
• Penn
• Matt Black
• Winogrand

But ordered ranking is a mug's game. You might like de Carava in there, or Gilles Perress or Salgado. HCB or Rankin or Platon or or Hido or many other fine and lovely blossoms

Is the purpose of this to declare your good taste or to expand it?

 

[snusmumriken]

I have always found that art in the service of agenda is a disservice to the art.

It seems to me that you have dismissed the bulk of photography here! If I haven’t misunderstood you, photography without any agenda is pretty much limited to flower or pebble studies.

The OP requested lists of photographers we most admire. I reckon most of those listed so far (including your own list) are famous for work that was done on commission. There are exceptions who made a clear distinction (eg Elliott Erwitt, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe), but not that many. I suspect few could afford to turn down paying commissions, while many independently pursued topical themes that they believed would sell.

IMHO, art doesn’t lie in what you do or why, but in how you do it.

 

[bjorke]

8 Arthur Fellig

All hail mighty Weej!

 

[CMoore]

Lee Miller
M B White
Mary Ellen Mark
Linda McCartney
William Klein
Andre Kertesz

 

[guangong]

Letitia Battaglia
Arnold Genthe
These two photographers worked under very trying conditions.
Battaglia photographed Sicilian mafia when then a powerful force.
Genthe photographed SF Chinatown before earthquake, when
Chinese were still living under Ch’ing dynasty wearing que and
extremely camera shy, in first years of 1900s. Created his own
candid camera. I’ve just been looking at my 1912 edition of his
book Old Chinatown.
They practiced street photography at a different level.

 

[chuckroast]

I largely agree with what you're saying and greatly appreciate your very considered perspective. There may be many things that motivate one to initiate a creative endeavor but one's dogma may be banal, as you suggest. There are many things that may motivate me to put myself in a position to take pictures, but in the end, what interests me the most is to extend my understanding of the visual paradigm. There is where the surprise and the extension of the visual/perceptual lexicon lies. For me, the rest of it is a bit banal for me. The nature of the purely visual realm is innately ambiguous. That's why reportage has captions and attendant diatribes. It has an obligation to push an agenda. I have no problem with that perspective and I myself have strong opinions about social issues myself. My question is wether the visual/"art" diatribe is more or less effective to affect social change than more direct political action. I myself participate politically in a more direct action for social change. I feel uncomfortable calling my artistic perceptual musings the most effect use of time and effort for the greatest tool for change.

I actually don't think that dogma is so much banal as just so loud that it shouts over the art, thereby obscuring it.

 

[chuckroast]

It seems to me that you have dismissed the bulk of photography here! If I haven’t misunderstood you, photography without any agenda is pretty much limited to flower or pebble studies.

The OP requested lists of photographers we most admire. I reckon most of those listed so far (including your own list) are famous for work that was done on commission. There are exceptions who made a clear distinction (eg Elliott Erwitt, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe), but not that many. I suspect few could afford to turn down paying commissions, while many independently pursued topical themes that they believed would sell.

IMHO, art doesn’t lie in what you do or why, but in how you do it.

Well, I've only "dismissed" it as important art when it's the handmaiden of agenda. As I said, there is terrific work being done in advertising, social commentary, photojournalism, and so on, it's just that the motivation of these fields most usually obscures the art as art. It's the difference between being a painter and a house painter. Both are important, both have value, but I don't look at the guy backrolling my ceiling for artistic expression.


Yes, many of the people under discussion here worked commercially. But that doesn't automatically make the output agenda bearing. For example, I've seen marvelous portraits hanging the in Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam that were clearly made on commission and are today regarded as high art. I would say that the portraits of Yousuf Karsh trend that way as well. It's not in the making of money that the art is lost. In my view, the art gets lost when someone feels the need to promote an agenda with it. The agenda then predominates and blots out the artistic sun (usually). I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I'm struggling to think of one.

I think art in it's best form serves only one agenda: To pursue beauty and lift the human spirit. Once you depart from that, people start declaring their own particular social/political/cultural biases and fetishes as "art". That's how you get people calling Riefenstahl's
"Triumph Of The Will" art. That's how you get heroin-withdrawal fueled fantasies of Burroughs "Naked Lunch" called art. That's how you get Warhol's soup can painting called art. That's how Serrano's crucifix in a urinal gets called art. When agenda overshadows beauty, art simply gets lost.

I also think that art should stand on its own. It should not require paragraphs of arts school blather to be described, whether in a 20 page introduction to a photography book or some painfully self-involved "Artist's Statement" (oh how they make me cringe). Understanding something of the history of the artist or the artifact can be useful for context but great art stands on it's own two feet. When I first saw "Night Watch" at the aforementioned Rijksmuseum, I of course knew who Rembrandt was, but I knew pretty much nothing about the history of the painting or the subject. But that art just leaps off the wall. The light appears to radiate from the surface of the painting. I stood with awe and joy in front of it ... and all I knew is what I was looking at. It did, indeed, "stand on its own two feet".

Notice that none of this is about what you- or I like (or not). Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings are generally regarded as art. Aesthetically, I consider them to live at the same level as shower curtains. People pay millions for these. Perhaps they have elite showers ...

 

[snusmumriken]

I think art in it's best form serves only one agenda: To pursue beauty and lift the human spirit.

You have clearly thought about this a lot more than I have, and I respect your POV. All the same, that’s a very narrow and limiting definition of art. There are an awful lot of paintings and photographs that are downright depressing or even shocking, yet widely regarded as great art. Personally, I wouldn’t want them on my shower curtain, but I’m glad there are galleries to house them.

 

[Don_ih]

I think art in it's best form serves only one agenda: To pursue beauty and lift the human spirit.

I like it. Art as refreshment. It's like Nestea.

 

[chuckroast]

You have clearly thought about this a lot more than I have, and I respect your POV. All the same, that’s a very narrow and limiting definition of art. There are an awful lot of paintings and photographs that are downright depressing or even shocking, yet widely regarded as great art. Personally, I wouldn’t want them on my shower curtain, but I’m glad there are galleries to house them.

I'll leave you with this final thought. Ask yourself just why these artifacts are "downright depressing or even shocking". Is it the art or is it the agenda?

Thanks for the civil discourse.

 

[faberryman]

I'll leave you with this final thought. Ask yourself just why these artifacts are "downright depressing or even shocking". Is it the art or is it the agenda?

You would need to know the agenda, if any, to make that call.

 

[rudyumans]

I just wrote a blog post about my favorite photographers and why. I don't know if it is against the forum rules to post a shameless plug, but if you search for "Our Arts Magazine" (by Abbie shores) it should be on page one. (people seem to like it)

but here we go:

1) Alfred Stieglitz
2) John Sexton
3) Margaret Bourke-White
4) Eugene Atget
5) Eliot Porter
6) Ernst Haas
7) Peter Lindbergh

Those are the ones I wrote about for now (some in length)

Others on my top 10 are:

8) Fan Ho
9) Joseph Sudek
10) Robert Glenn Ketchum

These 3 plus 15 or so others I mention in my article and will write about at a later date

On a side note: reading all the responses in this thread, it is an honor to be among photographers who actually care about photography and not just light tight boxes, glass, and the latest shortcut (or worse) in photoshop

 

[MattKing]

I think art in it's best form serves only one agenda: To pursue beauty and lift the human spirit.

I would suggest "move" instead of "lift". And I'm not sure that "beauty" is the only thing worth pursuing.
And I would also suggest that art comes in many, very important forms. It is a mistake to discount the value of the forms that may not be the "best" ones.

 

[bjorke]

Same commenter:

​

Frank, Koudelka, Arbus, Matt Black, Winogrand, Friedlander, Parr, Evans, Texas Salvan (?), Larry Sultan​

followed by a complaint about newer photography as

very topical and socio-political and short on real artistry or any real visual "eye". I consider a lot of it as more reportage and short on the "Fine Art" side of things.​

This, ladies and gentleman, is either a blind eye or a troll. There is no photography - of great merit or low - that is free of its time and politics. The list provided illustates this vividly, every one of them has a considerable topical, socia-political agenda.

 

[rochephoto]

Same commenter:

​

Frank, Koudelka, Arbus, Matt Black, Winogrand, Friedlander, Parr, Evans, Texas Salvan (?), Larry Sultan​

followed by a complaint about newer photography as

very topical and socio-political and short on real artistry or any real visual "eye". I consider a lot of it as more reportage and short on the "Fine Art" side of things.​

This, ladies and gentleman, is either a blind eye or a troll. There is no photography - of great merit or low - that is free of its time and politics. The list provided illustates this vividly, every one of them has a considerable topical, socia-political agenda.

I can assure you that after 55 yrs. of doing photography both professionally and artistically and having both a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design '78 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute '81 that I am neither blind nor a troll. I will agree that none of us, whether one is an artist or not, is free of their time and it's politics. It is quite another thing to do lame "art". It is indeed a sign of the times that with all the avenues out there to present one's POV that there is very little discrimination as to what is of real value. This is not just in the art world, but in politics, philosophy, medicine/health, law, and even science. I think there is a real case to be made for credibility and expertise. I'm sorry if that offends you or anybody else. I suppose we could just throw it all up in the air and see what ends up on top of the heap at the end of the alley next to the dumpster.
P.S. - Please excuse the auto correct in the original post. Those in the know would surely know I was referring to Texma Salvans - you should check him out.

 

[cliveh]

All hail mighty Weej!

Some years ago I went to an exhibition of his images in Oxford. The prints were positioned on the wall by drawing pins (unmounted) and they were fabulous. The blacks in these gloss prints were as black as coal.

When I was about thirteen, I saw an advert in the local paper that said the Great Weegee would be in the camera department at Owen and Owens on Saturday in Coventry. I think he was doing a promotional tour to promote Zenith cameras. I went along to see him and I was the only person there. He was smoking a big cigar and showed me a Zenith with a 500mm telephoto lens pointed out the window. He must have thought I was a crazy kid interested in photography. Later in life, I thought what an honour to meet him and chat for several minutes.

 

[Chrismat]

Off the top of my head in no particular order:
Jerry Uelsmann
Robert Doisneau
Elliott Erwitt
Bruce Davidson
John Sexton
Ansel Adams

And a couple of photographers that did a lot of work printing with Cibachrome:
Douglas Vincent
Christopher Burkett

 

[chuckroast]

I can assure you that after 55 yrs. of doing photography both professionally and artistically and having both a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design '78 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute '81 that I am neither blind nor a troll. I will agree that none of us, whether one is an artist or not, is free of their time and it's politics. It is quite another thing to do lame "art". It is indeed a sign of the times that with all the avenues out there to present one's POV that there is very little discrimination as to what is of real value. This is not just in the art world, but in politics, philosophy, medicine/health, law, and even science. I think there is a real case to be made for credibility and expertise. I'm sorry if that offends you or anybody else. I suppose we could just throw it all up in the air and see what ends up on top of the heap at the end of the alley next to the dumpster.
P.S. - Please excuse the auto correct in the original post. Those in the know would surely know I was referring to Texma Salvans - you should check him out.

I love all the arts ... well except for dance which feels to me like something that's hard to do but not that interesting to watch, but that's just me. I personally have only made a significant investment of time in music and photography. Like you, I have spent over 5 decades pursuing how to make photography as art and I would hope no one needs to know anything about me, my politics, my worldview, my religious faith, my inseam size, or my preferred pronouns ("Your Majesty"/"Your Lordship") to judge the merits of my work. Whether it's good or bad, it needs to stand or fall on it's own merits.

But you, my dear fellow, are in for a severe drubbing. You are straying from the One Approved Way that modern intellectuals demand of us all. We must, must. must, contemplate our sins, the sins of our fathers, and and anything they deem as offensive AND whether we have apologized sufficiently for these before we make "art". Even then, the art must directly support their demanded agenda or it will be labeled as "racist", "classist", "xenophobic" and a host of other imagined new sins. But if you do bow to their demands, you get to produce execrable drivel, call it art, and probably get a show at a major gallery for it. These people cannot imagine a world in which art stands on its own merits because ... they're incapable of doing anything that well themselves.

This injecting of agenda has always been somewhat present in art, likely from the beginning of human existence. What's different today is that the demand now is that the agenda replace the art because it's so verrrrrrrrrry important. If you want a close look at the levels of lunacy this has reached in the arts circle, I highly commend the brilliant "Rape Of The Masters" by Robert Kimball. He's a fine art critic and he just disembowels the agenda peddlers and the academic high priests that pimp for them, in that book.