Hi
everyone! Today we are going to talk about 5 of the most famous
American photographers from the 19th century to
nowadays. Those we have chosen have left a mark in the American
photography history because of their creativity, singularity and
innovation.
1.
Edward Weston (Illinois, 1886-1958)
His
father gave him his first camera for his 16th birthday and
he quickly fell in love with photography. This passion became the
salvation of his stormy and lonely adolescence.
Some
years later, he opened his own studio in Tropico (California), where
he made simple portraits to earn a life. Even if it was not the kind
of pictures that he loved to take, the portraits made him win a
national reputation and appear in many photography magazines. Thanks
to his growing reputation, he could travel a lot and so, met new
important artists that made him change his style: when he met
Margrethe Mather, he started to take nudes; and when he met Tina
Modotti, he became interested in everyday objects. Then, due to
Henrietta Shore, he was attracted by sea shells; and when he began a
relationship with Sonya Noskowiak, he fell intrigued by fruits and
vegetables.
If
you observe his lately photographs, you can see that he tried to find
human forms in daily life objects as simple as a pepper or a lettuce
leaf:
 |
| Pepper Nº 30 |
 |
| Cabbage Leaf |
In
our opinion, at the first sight, the pepper looks like someone's back
while the cabbage is someone kneeled under a fine tissue.
 |
| Nautilus |
Regarding
his “sea shells” period, we have to stand out the “Nautilus”,
which has
been considerated "one of the most famous photographs ever made".
This
photographs, sold for 1.1 million dollars in 2010, was thought to be
an erotic symbol but Weston himself declared «No! I had no physical
thoughts, ‒ never have.».
2.
Dorothea Lange (New Jersey, 1895-1965)
Lange,
who has been named the America's greatest documentary photographer, is
well known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her
photographs of migratory farm workers.
After
having studied photography at Columbia University in New York, she
decided to open her own portrait studio, which became very
successful, but she true desire was to work on street and not to be
coop up indoors all day. It
was the Great Depression era so she decided to focus
on poor people and, thanks
to these works, she was employed by the Resettlement
Administration (which
relocated
struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the
federal government)
and also by the Farm Security Administration (which tried to combat
American rural poverty).
Both administration hired Lange in order to made her capture the
sharecroppers,
displaced farm families, migrant workers, unemployed and homeless
people situation during this period of time and
then publish them in newspapers. Her striking and hard photos became
a symbol of this era.
 |
Migrant Mother
|
During
one of her many road trip in California, she and her husband (who was
in charge of taking notes of the disadvantaged living conditions)
found the “Pea Pikers's Camp”. There, she saw a woman surround by
her four hungry children who told her that they were surviving with
frozen vegetables and little birds. Lange took a picture of them
without knowing that the “Migrant Mother” will became one of the
most famous picture of the history and a true symbol of the
Depression. The image had such impact on the people that the
government decided to send twenty thousand pounds of food to the
migrants.
Besides
this picture, she made other memorable ones of black tenant farmers, Japanese-Americans in internment camps during the WWII and women and
children all over the world.
3.
Ansel Adams (San Francisco, 1902-1984)
Adams
is known as a pioneer in the
movement to preserve the wilderness and one of the first to promote
photography as an art form.
Probably
because of his hyperactivity and dyslexia, Ansel Adams he was not
successful at school neither in studies nor with his classmates. But
as a result of his solitary childhood, Adams found joy in nature;
this is something that later would influence his pictures. For
example, his first famous landscape picture “Monolith,
the Face of Half Dome”, or
the “Moonrise,
Hernandez, New Mexico”,
which was exhibited in the Museum
of Modern Art in
1944.
 |
| Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico |
Adams
is also well known for having been contracted
by
the Department
of the Interior to
make photographs of National Parks, Indian reservations, and other
locations for use
them as decoration
of the Department's new building (for
example, the “The
Tetons and the Snake River “).
As
you can see, his photographs are very pure and straight: this is a
principle that he defended during life together with his work
colleague that reunited themselves in the Group f/64.
 |
| The Tetons and the Snake River |
He
is now remembered for having formulated the Zone System photographic
technique –according to which photographers
could
precisely
define
the relationship between the way they visualize the photographic
subject and the final results– and
the visualization concept, that is, the fact to previsualise the
picture before take it.
 |
| Mount Williamson, The Sierra Nevada |
4.
Annie
Leibovitz (Connecticut,
1949)
She
is a photographer who has became famous for her portraits
of musicians, sportspeople, actors
and
other celebrities that she has taken working for
well-known magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vogue and
Vanity Fair.
At
first, she focused on painting at the San Francisco Art Institue both
a simple photography class made her change her entire life. In 1970,
she started to document the rock music scene for the new Rolling
Stone magazine. Working for this magazine she has done some of
her most famous photographs: the nude John Lennon curled around a
clothed Yoko Ono photographed the day Lennon died; the Bruces
Springsteen's Born in the USA album cover or the Cyndi
Lauper's True Colors one.
 |
| John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Rolling Stone |
Others
of her legendary and criticized portraits are: the actress Demi Moore
nude and pregnant; Whoopi Goldberg partially submerged in a bathbub
of milk or the official portrait of the Queen Elizabeth without her
crown.
 |
| Queen Elizabeth (2007) |
In
her work for Disney World's Year of a Million Dreams, Leibovitz asked
many celebrities to play the roles of famous storybook charachters
such as Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella or Beyoncé Knowles as Alice
in Wonderland. Here, you have a video with the “Behind the Scenes”
of the Captain Hook portrait made by Russell Brand:
Annie Leibovitz: Behind the Scenes with Russell Brand as Captain Hook
As
you can see, the Disney pictures have been digitally manipulated but
Leibovitz always look after the perfect lighting, furniture,
backgrounds, clothing and poses and she is the one who select the
final images to be considered for publication.
5.
Steve
McCurry (Pensilvania,
1950)
He
is recognized
universally as one of today's finest image-makers, best known for his
evocative color photography, in
which he captures
the essence of human struggle and joy.
After
working at a newspaper for two years, he left for India to freelance
and
there he learned to watch and wait before take a photo. He realized
that waiting, people forget his
camera and their soul drift up into view. His
career took off when he decided to crossed the Pakistan border into
rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. There,
he took pictures that would traveled around the whole world, like the
famous “Afghan Girl”.
 |
| Afghan Girl |
 |
| Portraits - Mumbai, India |
McCurry
has covered many areas of international and civil conflict,
including
the Iran-Iraq
War,
Lebanon
Civil War,
the Cambodian
Civil War,
the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines, the
Gulf War and
the Afghan
Civil War.
He
focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing its
impact on the
landscape but also
on the human face. Here
you have some of his incredible and impressive captures but we highly
recommend you to visit his official website
(http://stevemccurry.com/) where you will see hundreds of his amazing
pictures.
 |
| Eloquence of the eye - India |
In
our
opinion, he has the ability to find people whose captivating
eyes
tell
a thousand words, do not you agree?
This
post has finally come to its end. As a conclusion, we think these
photographers show a clear evolution of the American, and probably
worldwide, photography style: from a simple vegetable and the pure
and simple landscapes to the colorful, brightly and even retouched
portraits. Some prefers the first ones, simple and pure, and other
the contemporary one; but for us, they are all beautiful somehow: you
just need to find the beauty that somebody captures in a precise
place and a precise moment trying to tell you a story through an image.
Hope you have enjoy it! See you soon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
● INFORMATION:
-
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-steve-mccurry/
● PICTURES:
-
Poor mother and
children:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Poor_mother_and_children,_Oklahoma,_1936_by
_Dorothea_Lange.jpg
-
John Lennon and Yoko Ono: - Yoko:
http://periodistas-es.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/C-Annie-Leibovitz.-John-Lennon-y-Yoko
Ono-550.jpg
-
Queen Elizabeth: Reina:
http://periodistas-es.com/12-fotos-grandiosas-cargo-de-annie-leibovitz-18679#!prettyPhoto/4/
-
Portraits – Mumbai, India:
http://photos.stevemccurry.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sites/default/files/gallery/INDIA-10209NF.jpg
-
Eloquence of the eye – India:
http://www.artslife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mccurry1.jpg
.jpg)
