1. Master of Photography:
Born:
Ansel Adams
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
April 22nd 1984
His black and white photographs of nature
Type of Photography:
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Died:
February 20th 1902
nature
Black and white
Biographical Information:
Ansel Adams was a visionary figure in nature photography and wilderness
preservation. Adams' role in the Sierra Club grew rapidly and the Club became
vital to his early success as a photographer. Adams was often criticized for not
including humans in his photographs and for representing an idealized
wilderness that no longer exists.
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Description of Work:
Ansel Adams work can be described as black and white photographs of nature.
These pictures have a high contrast and have a wide range of grey’s. His
photographs are crisp and clear and have unique angels.
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2. Master of Photography:
Born:
Mathew Brady
Died:
May 18th 1822
Famous For:
First to photographically document the civil war.
Type of Photography:
B&W or Color:
Sample Image
January 15, 1896
portraits
Black and white
Biographical Information:
Mathew Brady is often referred to as the father of photojournalism and is
most well known for his documentation of the Civil War. At his own
expense, he organized a group of photographers and staff to follow the troops
as the first field-photographers. In 1862 Brady shocked the nation when he
displayed the first photographs of the carnage of the war in his New York
Studio in an exhibit entitled "The Dead of Antietam."
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Description of Work:
Mathew Brady’s photographs can be described as black and white
photographs of the civil war. They have a grim feeling to them.
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3. Master of Photography:
Born:
Julia Margaret Cameron
Died:
June 11, 1815
Famous For:
For her techniques used in her portraits.
Type of Photography:
B&W or Color:
Sample Image
January 26, 1879
portraits
sepia
Biographical Information:
In December 1863, little more than a year after Roger Fenton retired from
photography and sold his equipment, Julia Margaret Cameron received her
first camera. Photography became Cameron's link to the writers, artists, and
scientists who were her spiritual and artistic advisors, friends, neighbors, and
intellectual correspondents. Her photographs were not universally
admired, especially by fellow photographers. Cameron dismissed the
condemnation of the photographic establishment, writing later that it would
have dispirited her "had I not valued that criticism at its worth," basking
instead in the positive judgment of artists and friends.
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Description of Work:
Julia Margaret Cameron has an unusual method of taking pictures. She uses
the cameras focus to create a blur in her photographs. She likes to take
portrait pictures and uses a sepia tone.
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4. Master of Photography:
Born:
Alfred Stieglitz
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
July 13, 1946
Known for his work in promoting the medium of
photography as an art form.
Type of Photography:
Sample Image
Died:
January 1, 1864
Every Day Life
Black and White
Biographical Information:
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1864, and schooled as an engineer in
Germany, Alfred Stieglitz returned to New York in 1890 determined to prove
that photography was a medium as capable of artistic expression as painting
or sculpture.
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Description of Work:
Alfred Stieglitz uses black and white photography and he tends to use
different subject matter instead of focusing on the same object or person. His
photo’s have a wide range of grey’s and a high contrast.
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5. Master of Photography:
Born:
W. Eugene Smith
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
October 15, 1978
Humanistic Photography
Type of Photography:
Sample Image
Died:
December 30, 1918
Portrait
Black and White
Biographical Information:
In 1950, he was sent to the United Kingdom to cover the General Election, in
which the Labour Party, under Clement Attlee, was narrowly victorious. In
January 1972, Smith was attacked by Chisso employees near Tokyo, in an
attempt to stop him from further publicizing the Minamata disease to the
world. Although Smith survived the attack, his sight in one eye deteriorated.
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Description of Work:
Eugene Smith focuses on themes that bring out emotions such as grief and
sorrow from the viewer. The subject matter along with the black and white
coloring give the photo’s a depressing feel.
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6. Master of Photography:
Born:
Dorothea Lange
Died:
May 26, 1895
Famous For:
Photographing the great depression.
Type of Photography:
B&W or Color:
Sample Image
October 11, 1965
Portrait
Black and White
Biographical Information:
in 1919 she set up a successful portrait studio where she took works such as
Clayburgh Children, San Francisco . In the late 1920s she became dissatisfied
with studio work and experimented with landscape and plant
photography, although she found the results unsatisfactory. With the Stock
Market crash of 1929 Lange decided to look for subjects outside her studio.
Turning to the effects of the economic decline she took photographs such as
General Strike, San Francisco.
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Description of Work:
Dorthea Lange uses models that have a worn and sad look to them in hopes to
make the viewer feel sorry for the people in the photographs. Her photos have
high lighting and not many shadows.
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7. Master of Photography:
Born:
Alexander Rodchenko
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
December 3,1956
His bold and unusual prespectives.
Type of Photography:
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Died:
December 5, 1891
Portrait
Black and White
Biographical Information:
He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage
and photography.
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Description of Work:
Alexander Rodchenko uses different objects in his photo’s instead of focusing
on a single model or object. His photo’s have high contrast and a large spread
of grey’s.
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8. Master of Photography:
Born:
Robert Frank
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
N/A
His use of grainy, dramatic, blurred and tilted shots.
Type of Photography:
Sample Image
Died:
November 9, 1924
Every Day Life
Black and White
Biographical Information:
Though Frank and his family remained safe in Switzerland during World War II,
the threat of Nazism nonetheless affected his understanding of oppression. He
turned to photography, in part as a means to escape the confines of his
business-oriented family and home, and trained under a few photographers
and graphic designers before he created his first hand-made book of
photographs, 40 fotos, in 1946. Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947,
and secured a job in New York City as a fashion photographer for Harper's
Bazaar.
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Description of Work:
Robert Frank’s photo’s can be described as tense, slightly out of focus and
angled in an odd way. There’s low contrast in his photographs.
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9. Master of Photography:
Born:
Lennart Nilsson
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
N/A
Macro Photography
Type of Photography:
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Died:
August 24, 1922
Macro Photography
Color
Biographical Information:
Lennart Nilsson was born in Strängnäs, Sweden. His father and uncle were both
photographers. His father gave him his first camera at age twelve. When he was
approximately fifteen, he saw a documentary about Louis Pasteur that made him
interested in microscopy. Within a few years, Nilsson had acquired a microscope
and was making microphotographs of insects.
In his late teens and twenties, he began taking a series of environmental portraits
with an Icoflex Zeiss camera, and had the opportunity to photograph many
famous Swedes
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Description of Work:
Lennart Nilsson uses color pictures of microscopic objects. His photographs
have this cartoony feel to them. His photo’s are bright and have a high
contrast of colors.
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10. Master of Photography:
Born:
Annie Liebovitz
Famous For:
B&W or Color:
N/A
Controversial portraits of celebrities.
Type of Photography:
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Died:
October 2, 1949
Portrait
Black and White and Color
Biographical Information:
When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career
as staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine..
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Description of Work:
Annie Liebovitz uses lighting, angle and focus to create beautiful images that
have high contrast and crisp detail.
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11. Master of Photography:
Born:
Richard Avedon
Died:
May 15, 1923
Famous For:
Pushed the boundaries of fashion
Type of Photography:
B&W or Color:
Sample Image
October 1, 2004
Portraits
Black and White
Biographical Information:
He was the son of Jacob Israel Avedon, a Russian-born immigrant who after
working menial jobs started a successful retail dress business on Fifth Avenue
called Avedon’s Fifth Avenue. His mother Anna, came from a family that
owned a dress manufacturing business. She had encouraged his love of
fashion and art. At the age of 12, Richard Avedon’s interests sparked in the
photography world when he joined the Young Men’s Hebrew Association
(YMHA) Camera Club. In 1944, Avedon began working as an advertising
photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexe
Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar.
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Description of Work:
His photographs have high contrast and the models are always showing some
different emotion.
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12. Master of Photography:
Born:
Jerry Ueslmann
Died:
June 11, 1934
Famous For:
Seamlessly grafted photographs
Type of Photography:
B&W or Color:
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N/A
Composite Images
Black and White
Biographical Information:
Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan. While attending public schools, at
the age of fourteen, there sparked an interest in photography. He believed
that through photography he could exist outside of himself, to live in a world
captured through the lens. Despite poor grades, he managed to land a few
jobs, primarily photographs of models. Eventually Uelsmann went on to earn a
BA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and M.S. and M.F.A. degrees
from Indiana University. Uelsmann is a master printer, producing composite
photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses
up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images, and has a large
archive of negatives that he has shot over the years.
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Description of Work:
His photographs have an unrealistic and fantasy theme to them.
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