Portrait photographers

[cliveh]

By the measure of response, I guess my original post was incorrect.

 

[Dan Quan]

to me it would seem fame begets fame. perhaps you are inquiring about photographers on the brink of fame?

 

[nwilkins]

Clive are you asking because you're simply wondering if people can gain renown as portrait photographers only if they shoot famous people (ie subject is more important than picture), or are you asking just so you can find some examples of great portraiture involving non-famous people?

 

[cliveh]

Clive are you asking because you're simply wondering if people can gain renown as portrait photographers only if they shoot famous people (ie subject is more important than picture), or are you asking just so you can find some examples of great portraiture involving non-famous people?

A bit of both I think.

 

[nwilkins]

Well for what it's worth I think the people who will become famous today outside of the small universes of the art world or photography world are:

a) a few lucky people for whom a particular project takes off hugely in popularity
b) those who are photographing famous people, and then become famous by association

So outside of art and photography worlds no portrait photographer will become famous unless they take pictures of famous people or they fall into category a, which would be very rare.

Inside the "non photography-specific art world" it doesn't seem like the majority of photographers are concentrating on just portraiture, just landscapes, etc. Of course there are always exceptions to this, but most photographers seem to be working on mixed projects, and there is lots of fantastic portraiture happening in this context. But I wouldn't call those photographers "portrait photographers" per se. Nor are they particularly famous unless they also fall into category a.

Inside the photography world there are still lots of people who specialize in landscape, and there are lots of photographers who specialize in portraiture, but the audience for this work is even smaller than the already small "art world" so they will probably only ever be famous to people like us

Important Disclaimer: By spearating art world and photography world I am not at all suggesting that photography is not art, just trying to find a way to make a distinction between the kind of photography which is project based and currently in vogue in contemporary art circles, and the kind of photography which is popular in a more purely photographic context. ie Alec Soth is art world, Clyde Butcher is photography world. I love both of them for different reasons.

Here are some "art world" projects which mix portraiture and landscape and result in some great portraiture:

http://www.thegreatleapsideways.com...bility-vanessa-winships-she-dances-on-jackson
Dead Link Removed

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

You'll need to reformat your OP in past tense of course, if Edward Curtis is being counted as an exception to the rule. There weren't many celebs back then! Indian or otherwise...

I would totally disagree with this statement, at least as regards "celebrities" in the 19th century. It's true if you use people famous for being famous as a definition of celebrity, but there were plenty of stage performers, politicians, writers, just plain old rich people and military figures who would qualify as celebrities. There were certain photographers who you went to if you were famous (or wanted to be) to get your portrait done, even in the mid-19th century. In New York, there were a cluster - Brady, Bogardus, Gurney & Sons, C.D. Fredricks, to name a few. In Washington DC there were Brady and Gardner, in San Francisco there was Myron Shew, in London there was the London Stereoscopic Co., and several others whose names escape me at the moment. I have photos in my collection of actors (Henry Irving, actor and owner of the Lyceum theater in London where Bram Stoker was the manager and worked while he wrote Dracula), circus freaks (Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia Warren, who were two of the most highly paid entertainers of the later half of the 19th century - at the peak of his career he was pulling down $20,000/year - think Robert Downey Jr, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg kind of money), generals (most of the generals of the Civil War were photographed and their photos were reprinted and sold like 20th century baseball cards, collected by a voracious audience), royalty (Napoleon III, emperor of France) and politicians (Manuel Murillo Toro, twice president of Colombia) just to point out a few examples.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Indeed. There were celebs, self-promoters and their agents all over the map. Look at the careers of Col Custer, Mark Twain, Clarence King, John Muir, Buffalo Bill Cody, even Geronimo. Politicians needed publicity. They had their stars of stage, literature, and music, just like today. The great robber barons were immortalized in film by those great photographers whom they subsidized just this specific purpose, one way or the other. Nothing has really changed except the details of the technology itself. Matthew Brady wasn't as much a photographer and an industry,
and he made a lot of money at it.

 

[ScarletBrown]

According to me Ansel Adams is most famous photographer and He is master of darkroom. I like all photographer that he captured. All photographs shows reality of life with nature. He always used large format cameras.

 

[mdarnton]

Irving Penn.