Tina Barney has been lurking around the edge of my consciousness for a couple of years. I was aware of her work in the vaguest sort of way; I knew she was a woman from the privileged classes who shot large format portraits of other … Keep readingTina Barney
Robert Frank is, and always will be, best known for The Americans, a work that’s shaped modern photography. But despite its startling originality, that book didn’t just spring up out of nowhere; it was molded by the circumstances of Frank’s life—by his childhood, by the … Keep readingRobert Frank (II)
There are photographers whose work is so influential in scope, in style, and in approach that to attempt to write anything about them is intimidating in the extreme. For me, Robert Frank is one of those photographers. His work not only changed the way modern … Keep readingRobert Frank (I)
Who knows where art comes from? Surely, it must be influenced—if not actually shaped—by the artist’s life experience. In Japan, there was a generation of artists born before the Second World War, who grew up during that war, and who began to make art in … Keep readingEikoh Hosoe
He wanted to be a painter. How many times have I written that about a photographer? Richard Billingham wanted to be a painter—an unlikely future for a poor boy growing up in a grimy council flat in an anonymous tower complex in a bleak neighborhood … Keep readingRichard Billingham
Los Angeles. Unlike Paris or New York City or Prague, the city of Los Angeles has a reputation among photographers for being notoriously difficult to photograph. That’s because LA exists as much in myth as in reality. It lacks a single identity. LA is the … Keep readingGuillaume Zuili
Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins takes photographs of anonymous places that hold no particular meaning to the viewer. Airport runways, vacant beaches, highway road barriers—locations and sites with which we’re all familiar, but which are largely barren of any personal connection. He then emphasizes the absence … Keep readingEdgar Martins
He was born in 1941 in Wells, Somerset in the Southwest of England, where he was given the unfortunate name of Holroyd Anthony Ray-Jones. His father, an engraver whose work was collected by the British Museum, died when he was only eight months old, after … Keep readingTony Ray-Jones
NUDES NUDES NUDES There is a forlorn and tragic rhythm to the life of Czech photographer František Drtikol. Born in 1883 in Příbram, a mining town in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and is now the Czech Republic), Drtikol rose to become a prominent … Keep readingFrantišek Drtikol
Let me start with a confession. When I first came across Juliana Beasley’s work, I wasn’t very impressed. The photographs I first encountered were from her first book, Lapdancer, which is usually described as a gritty photographic journey into the underbelly of strip clubs. My … Keep readingJuliana Beasley