Photographers 21st century
Herbert Ritts Jr. was an American fashion photographer and director known for his photographs of celebrities, models, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s. His work concentrated on black and white photography and portraits, often in the style of classical Greek sculpture, which emphasized the human shape.
Robert Adams is an acclaimed American photographer known for his profound exploration of the American West's changing landscapes. His work, which gained prominence in the mid-1970s, delves into the tension between the natural beauty of the land and the marks of human encroachment. Adams's photography is a reflection on humanity's relationship with the environment, offering both a critique and a celebration of the landscape.
Robert Adams's notable series, such as "Turning Back" and "The New West," showcase his unique perspective on environmental and urban development issues. His work extends beyond just capturing images; it is a thoughtful commentary on the balance between nature and industrialization. His photographs, often devoid of people, focus on the land itself, telling a story of alteration and resilience.
Exhibitions of Adams's work, such as "American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams" at the National Gallery of Art, provide insight into his 50-year career and his ability to capture the silent yet profound narratives of the American landscape. His pieces are part of major collections and have been featured in numerous retrospectives, underlining his influence and significance in the world of photography.
For art collectors and enthusiasts, Robert Adams's work offers a poignant perspective on the American West, blending aesthetic beauty with critical environmental commentary. Engaging with his work invites reflection on our interaction with the landscape and our role in shaping the environment.
If you're interested in staying updated on Robert Adams's work and exhibitions, consider subscribing to newsletters from galleries and museums that feature his art. This way, you'll be informed about new displays of his work and opportunities to engage with his insightful perspectives on the American West.
Terry Roger Adkins was an American artist. He was Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Adkins was an interdisciplinary artist whose practice included sculpture, performance, video, and photography. His artworks were often inspired by, dedicated to, or referred to musicians or musical instruments; specific installations and exhibitions were sometimes labeled "recitals." Sometimes, these arrangements of sculptures were "activated" in performances by Adkins' collaborative performance group, the Lone Wolf Recital Corps.
Jack W. Aeby is an American environmental physicist and photographer.
Aeby attended the University of Nebraska and was one of the first civilian employees of the Manhattan Project beginning in 1942. He worked on the project in many areas, starting with human transportation, then he was assigned as the chemical warehouse superintendent.
On July 16, 1945, while at base camp with all the official photographic equipment, Aeby took the only well-exposed color photograph of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon at the Trinity Nuclear Test Site in New Mexico, for which he became famous. The rest of the film was destroyed by the explosion. At the time of the photograph, Aeby was a civilian working in the health physics group with Emilio Segre.
Jack Aeby continued to work at Los Alamos during the Crossroads tests and eventually witnessed nearly 100 nuclear explosions. He then returned to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Department of Health Physics.
Urs Aeschbach is a Swiss media artist working in various techniques. Nature is always a pictorial theme in Urs Aeschbach's paintings. Her main characters are mushrooms, woody plants, animals, jellyfish, as well as dogs and horses. The artist's paintings are inspired by photographs and illustrations. In addition to paintings, Eschbach creates art and construction projects, video works, as well as constructions and installations.
Darren James Almond is an English artist, based in London. He was nominated for the 2005 Turner Prize. He works in a variety of media including photography and film, which he uses to explore the effects of time on the individual.[3] He uses "sculpture, film and photography to produce work that harnesses the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places and situations, producing works which have universal as well as personal resonances"
Manuel Álvarez Bravo was an Mexican visionary photographer whose work vividly illustrates the cultural heritage of Latin America. His unique perspective on life and superb photographic skills have inspired generations of photographers around the world.
Alvarez Bravo was known for his experiments with light and shadows, composition and form. His surreal photographs were often full of mystery and enigma, while also reflecting the difficulties and contradictions of Mexican society in the first half of the 20th century.
Alvarez Bravo's work marvellously combined aesthetic beauty with profound social context. His work is not only inspiring in its beauty but also a reminder of the importance of preserving peoples' cultural heritage and history.
Ellen Auerbach, born Ellen Rosenberg, is an American photographer of German-Jewish descent and a master of avant-garde photography.
Ellen studied at the Baden State School of Art and continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart before meeting photographer Greta Stern (1904-1999) in Berlin. Together they opened Ringl+pit, a photography and design studio specializing in advertising, fashion and portrait photography. The photographer is most remembered for her groundbreaking work at this particular studio. Ellen, who also experimented with film, made two short black-and-white films.
In 1933, Ellen emigrated to Palestine and opened a children's portrait studio there. A few years later she moved with her husband Walter Auerbach to the United States, where she worked in a private art collection, taught photography, made films and photographs to study children's behavior, and worked as an educational therapist.
The Ringl+pit works and photographic oeuvre of Ellen Auerbach and Greta Stern were rediscovered in the 1980s, and a series of solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Germany followed.
Richard Avedon was an American photographer and artist known for his iconic portraits and fashion photography.
Avedon began his career as a photographer in the late 1940s, working as a freelance photographer for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He soon became known for his distinctive style, which was characterized by his use of simple, uncluttered backgrounds and his ability to capture the essence of his subjects.
Throughout his career, Avedon photographed some of the most famous people of his time, including Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, and The Beatles. He was also known for his fashion photography, and his work appeared in many fashion magazines, including Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
Avedon's work was often controversial, as he challenged traditional notions of beauty and fashion. He was known for his willingness to push boundaries, and his work was often seen as a reflection of the social and political issues of his time.
Today, Avedon is regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, and his work continues to inspire artists and photographers around the world.
John Baeder is an American painter closely associated with the photorealist movement. He is best known for his detailed paintings of American roadside diners and eateries. His interest in small towns across America began when he was young by photographing old cars and other relics. He started working as an art director in Atlanta for a branch of a New York advertising agency in 1960, and subsequently moved to New York City in 1964. He went on to have a successful career in advertising through the early 1970s, while continuing to paint, draw and photograph on his own time. Baeder left the advertising field in 1972 to pursue his artistic career full-time. The same year, OK Harris Gallery in New York began exhibiting his artworks. Since then, he has had more than thirty solo exhibitions at art galleries. His work includes oil paintings, watercolors and photographs. Baeder’s work aims to chronicle the disappearing aspects of American culture. Baeder is the recipient of the Tennessee Governor's Distinguished Artist Award in 2009.
Roger Ballen is an American and South African photographer who lives and works in Johannesburg.
Roger Ballen studied psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and this specialty helps him to better comprehend and study the world around him. Travels around the world brought him to South Africa, which has become his new home.
Ballen is one of the latest photographers to shoot exclusively in black and white, approaching forms of minimalism.
Lewis "Duke" Baltz was an American visual artist, photographer, and educator. He was an important figure in the New Topographics movement of the late 1970s. His best known work was monochrome photography of suburban landscapes and industrial parks which highlighted his commentary of void within the "American Dream". His work is focused on searching for beauty in desolation and destruction. Baltz's images describe the architecture of the human landscape: offices, factories and parking lots. His pictures are the reflection of control, power, and influenced by and over human beings. His books and exhibitions, his "topographic work", such as The New Industrial Parks, Nevada, San Quentin Point, Candlestick Point, expose the crisis of technology and define both objectivity and the role of the artist in photographs. He wrote for many journals, and contributed regularly to L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui. Baltz's work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art etc.
Frank Balve is a German conceptual artist.
He creates paintings, photographs, sculptures, performances and films, and his work is often inspired by literary works, from Dante to the Marquis de Sade. Balve designs his images with paint, builds them from stone or paper, stages them in front of the camera, and puts them into language. In special installations he combines his works to create spaces of experience for the viewer to work on.
Lillian Bassman was an American photographer and artist.
A magazine art director and fashion photographer, she became famous in the 1940s and '50s for her high-contrast, dreamy portraits of sylph-like models. Bassman's unique graphic style of photography illustrates the feminine mystique and glamour, as well as the boldness of an artist who blurs the lines between fashion photography and fine art. Working as art director for Bazaar magazine in 1945, she helped launch the careers of many of the century's most famous photographers.
Alexandra Baumgartner is a German artist working in various fields of art: collage, installation, painting and object art. Her work is most often based on found photographs, as well as on furniture and everyday objects. Historical portraits and images are cut out, partially painted over and combined, putting mostly anonymous source material into new contexts.
Peter Hill Beard was an American artist, photographer, diarist, and writer who lived and worked in New York City, Montauk and Kenya. His photographs of Africa, African animals and the journals that often integrated his photographs, have been widely shown and published since the 1960s.
Bernhard (Bernd) Becher and Hilla Becher were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. As the founders of what has come to be known as the 'Becher school' or the 'Düsseldorf School' they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists. They have been awarded the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award.
Berndt Becher was a German conceptual photographer. Becher is well known for his industrial photography.
Together with his wife and collaborator Hilla Becher won the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Prize. In the mid-1970s the Bechers founded the Düsseldorf School of Photography.
Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor, specializing in the field of dystopian surrealism.
Beksiński made his paintings and drawings in what he called either a Baroque or a Gothic manner. His creations were made mainly in two periods. The first period of work is generally considered to contain expressionistic color, with a strong style of «utopian realism» and surreal architecture, like a doomsday scenario. The second period contained more abstract style, with the main features of formalism.
Valérie Belin is a French art photographer. She lives and works in Paris.
Her work takes the form of photographic series. In the 2000s she started using digital post-production tools which gave her greater freedom to change and control the chromatic values of the prints. She now produced her first series in colour. In 2009 Belin began to use other kinds of digital manipulation, heightening the hybrid, graphic and artificial dimension of her work. These include solarisation and overprinting. Since then, she has also worked with other abstract vectorial forms, like digital "readymades" found on the internet, which she reworks on the computer, melding them with her images.
Walead Beshty is an American conceptual artist, photographer, sculptor and writer who lives and works in Los Angeles.
Born in London, Great Britain, he studied at Bard College and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 2002, and holds academic positions at universities across the United States.
Beschty is best known for his work in photography, but his creative interest spans a wide range, including sculpture, painting, installation and video. For example, in one of his popular works, the artist mails a series of glass windows of various sizes in cardboard boxes, and then displays the cracked and broken windows, damaged in transit, over the boxes in which they were packed.
Peter Thomas Blake is an English pop artist. He co-created the sleeve design for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. His other works include the covers for two of The Who's albums, the cover of the Band Aid single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and the Live Aid concert poster. Blake also designed the 2012 Brit Award statuette.
Blake is a prominent figure in the pop art movement. Central to his paintings are his interest in images from popular culture which have infused his collages. In 2002 he was knighted at Buckingham Palace for his services to art.
Dieter Blum is a contemporary German photographer who has worked for well-known and influential publications (German magazines Spiegel and Stern, American Time, Vanity Fair). At the beginning of his career he took pictures of American cowboys, now he prefers to work with musicians and ballet dancers.
Bernhard Johannes Blume is a German art photographer.
Bernhard Blume and his wife Anna Blume created many staged black and white photographs in which they themselves took part. They are considered among the pioneers of staged photography.
Oliver Boberg is a German artist, working with photography and video, whose work has been exhibited internationally. Mainly reflecting on the process of creating and recalling memories, Boberg's works are in the collections of institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum ( London, England) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY).
Derek Paul Boyle is a contemporary American visual artist whose work often deals with the anthropomorphism of everyday objects and absurdist interventions.
Boyle received his BFA from Emerson College in Boston and his MFA in Digital and Media Studies from Rhode Island School of Design.
Boyle has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Saatchi Gallery in London. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art and others.
In addition to his studio practice, Boyle also teaches art and works as a visiting artist at various institutions, including the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts and the University of Michigan.
Mark Boyle is a Scottish media artist from the British underground.
Since 1985 he and his wife Joan Hills and their children Sebastian and Georgia formed a collaborative art group called The Boyle Family. The Boyle family experimented with different techniques and styles. This included performances and events, films and projections, sound recordings, photography, electronic micro-photography, drawing, assemblage, painting, sculpture and installation.
However, their most famous long-term project remains Journey to the Earth's Surface, which they began in 1964 and which is a continuum of strange and interesting works. These paintings-very precise drawn casts, something in between painting and sculpture-are careful recreations of randomly selected sections of the earth's surface using resin and fiberglass, as well as real materials collected from the site under investigation.
Miguel Rio Branco, full name Miguel da Silva Paranhos do Rio Branco, is a Brazilian photographer, artist, director and creator of multimedia installations.
His father was a diplomat and as a child Miguel lived in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and the USA, now living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After earning a degree in photography from the New York Institute of Photography, Miguel first worked as a cameraman and then worked with the Magnum agency. Miguel is known for exploring and crossing two different art forms: painting and photography. He has also shot 14 short films and eight long films, he is recognized in the world as one of the best color photojournalists.
Miguel Rio Branco's photographs are part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Peter Brandes is a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist and photographer.
Brandes' art is abstract and often in brown colours. He had his breakthrough as artist in the beginning of the 1980s. He has, inter alia, done artwork on Roskilde Domkirke and mosaic (colored glass) windows in a church at Nordkap and the church Village of Hope, south of Los Angeles. In 1998, he created the enormous Roskilde Jars which stand outside the main Roskilde Railway Station.
Brandes is self-taught and his art circles around themes from Christianity. Ancient Greek mythology has also inspired his art. Brandes has illustrated a number of books, for example Homer’s Iliad. A great part of Brandes' ceramic works are inspired by ancient Greek art and mythology.
Nick Brandt is a British photographer. He is known for his black and white photographs of wildlife and landscapes in Africa.
Brandt began his career in photography working as a music video director in the 1990s before transitioning to fine art photography. His work often depicts the animals of Africa in a powerful and emotive way, highlighting the beauty and fragility of these creatures and their natural habitats.
Brandt's photographs have been widely exhibited and are included in the collections of many major museums, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. He has also published several books of his photography, including "On This Earth," "A Shadow Falls," and "Across The Ravaged Land."
In addition to his photography, Brandt is also the founder of the Big Life Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of wildlife and ecosystems in East Africa. He has received numerous awards and honors for his photography and conservation work, including the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
Mona Breede is a German photographer.
Mona Breede studied photography at the Bavarian School of Photography in Munich and at the Higher Art School in Karlsruhe. From 2001-2002 she taught photography and design at the Merkur Akademie in Karlsruhe. After working for some time in Chicago, in 2007 Mona Breede traveled to Asia and Russia and brought back a series of photographs from Shanghai, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Today, it is places and people that interest the photographer the most. As a photographer, Mona Breede has a receptive and sensitive eye. Her work interprets reality, imprints on it and has a great power of expression.
Micha Brendel is a German artist living and working in Hohendorf/Lower Lusatia.
Brendel started his career as an assistant artist, then studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and at the HfBK Dresden. He was one of the founders of the Auto-Perforations-Artisten association and editor of independent magazines for artists.
Brendel's early works centered on self-portraits and photographs of his own body, distorted with photographic techniques. He also made extensive use of organics, including animal bones and skin, in the creation of a wide variety of works. A common theme is self-destruction and alienation, shock and disgust. Brendel wrote detailed accounts of his creative process that became the basis for books.
Brendel's work, which often crosses boundaries, includes drawings, photographs, inscriptions, artist's books, taxidermy objects, installations and performances. He is currently intensifying his work with writing and nature and curating exhibition projects.
Johannes Brus is a German artist. He lives in Essen.
Brus works mainly as a sculptor and as a photographer. He experiments with different techniques with which he breaks the conventions of the respective genre. Many of his works are characterised by an idiosyncratic humour. Brus addresses aspects of cultural memory and the functions of images.
Daniele Buetti is a Swiss visual artist who works in several modes including installation and intervention. The media he works with includes photography, sculpture, drawing, sound, video and digital forms. He is professor at University of Fine Arts Munster where he has taught since 2004. He lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland and Münster, Germany.
His work has been described as "an expression of world-weariness and the individual’s precarious existential orientation." In the 1990s Buetti's work served as a visual critiques of the consumption of beauty. This work often appropriated images of models and high-fashion consumer products from magazines that were pierced with a ballpoint pen.
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime, a trait established by the grand scale of the work he creates, though they are equally disturbing in the way they reveal the context of rapid industrialization.
Cornell Capa is an American photographer, photojournalist and founder of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, the younger brother of the famous war correspondent Robert Capa.
Cornell Capa was known for his humanistic approach to photography, often capturing the lives and struggles of ordinary people. Throughout his career, he covered many important events, including the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War. Capa also photographed many famous people including John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Pablo Picasso.
In 1974, Cornell Capa founded ICP, which has since become one of the world's leading photography education and exhibition institutions. The ICP's mission is to promote the understanding and appreciation of photography as an art form as well as a means of communication and social change.
Throughout his career Capa has received numerous awards and honours, including the National Medal of Arts in 1988. His photographs continue to be exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and his legacy lives on through ICP.
Yoan Capote is a Cuban sculptor. He received the UNESCO prize during the 7th Havana Biennial with the artists' collective DUPP (Desde Una Pragmática Pedagógica).
Yoan Capote follows the line of many other internationally known artists, working at the same time with different medias and genres (painting, photography, performance sculptures and installations). One of his works entitled Open Mind 2006 is a labyrinth based on the drawing of the human brain where people can walk. People become metaphors for neurons transmitting information as they walk around the maze. This work inspires reflection on the interrelation among persons, who attempt to coexist with each other. Yoan Capote work can be found in many private collections around the world, and institutions such as the Kendall Art Center / The Rodriguez Collection, Miami, Florida.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist renowned for his groundbreaking work in photography, particularly in the realms of photojournalism and street photography. Born on August 22, 1908, in Chanteloup, France, Cartier-Bresson's early artistic endeavors were in painting, which he began studying at the age of five. His transition to photography was marked by his adoption of a 35mm Leica camera in 1931, a tool that became synonymous with his work.
Henri Cartier-Bresson's photography is celebrated for its unique blend of spontaneity and composition, capturing moments that reveal deeper truths about their subjects. His theory of "the decisive moment" – that is, capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, yet significant – has had a profound influence on the field of photography. His work has been exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is held in high esteem in art collections worldwide.
In addition to his personal achievements, Henri Cartier-Bresson was a co-founder of Magnum Photos in 1947, a cooperative agency for worldwide photographers that significantly influenced photojournalism. Later in his career, Cartier-Bresson returned to painting and drawing, demonstrating his lifelong commitment to the arts.
For art collectors and experts, Henri Cartier-Bresson's work offers a pivotal exploration of 20th-century photography, blending artistic vision with the unguarded moments of life. His influence extends beyond his images, shaping the way we perceive and engage with visual narratives.
To explore more about Henri Cartier-Bresson's influential career and works, and to stay updated on exhibitions or sales featuring his photography, you might consider subscribing to updates from art institutions or galleries that frequently showcase his work.
Larry Clark is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for his controversial teen film Kids (1995) and his photography book Tulsa (1971). His work focuses primarily on youth who casually engage in illegal drug use, underage sex, and violence, and who are part of a specific subculture, such as surfing, punk rock, or skateboarding.
Lucien Clergue is a French photographer of black and white photography, the first photographer elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.
Lucien Clergue is one of the most famous photographers in France and founder of the annual Arles Festival, which has become the main event in the world of artistic photography, attended by up to 100,000 people. His famous photographic works - modernist black and white studies of female nudes, harlequins, dead animals, gypsies and bullfighting - are considered exemplary of the photographer-artist. Clergue is also known for his friendship with Pablo Picasso, which lasted some 30 years, until the artist's death.
Anne Collier is an American visual artist working with appropriated photographic images. Describing Collier's work in Frieze art magazine, writer Brian Dillon said, "Collier uncouples the machinery of appropriation so that her found images seem weightless, holding their obvious meaning in abeyance".
Writing in The New York Times, Karen Rosenberg said "Anne Collier’s photographs of vintage books, album covers, posters and other ephemera, taken in an antiseptic white studio, look studiously detached at first. But after some time they reveal themselves as sensitive and involved responses to an earlier generation's visual culture".
