Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden is a Magnum photographer who's work primarily includes New York City as well as work in Haiti and Asia. He has been photographing since the early late 1960's and is a master of street and documentary photography. He is uncommon in that he uses a flash, in tandem with his Leica, when taking street shots. As most street photographers opt for total immersion in a crowd, getting shots where the subject is unaware they are being photographed, Gilden pushes the boundries simpling by flashing a bright light in people faces. Although somewhat intrusive are his methods, his shots stand out from most other street work and are unique in their perception of New Yorkers.

Weegee

(b. June 12th 1899, d. December 26th, 1968)

Born Authur Fellig in Galicia, Ukraine, Weegee's work as a press and street photographer are among the best in their class. Many of Weegee's photographs were taken before the police arrived at the scene. This sixth sense style taken to photographing gave Weegee unprecidented opportunties to capture gruemsome murders. He based himself in the Lower East Side of Manhattan working as a press photographers for various newspapers. He kept all his equipment in the back of car, always ready to get straight to the action He would contantly listen in on the police scanner and eventually was given permission to have his very own police radio so that he would track each incident.

Roger Fenton

(b. 28 March, 1819, d. 8 August 1869)

Roger Fenton's work as a war photographer during the Crimean War was the first of its kind to record events on the battlefield and thus creating photojournalism. His photographs, however, were not successfull and truly exposing the horrors of war and instead included scenes where the subjects would dress up and pose for the camera. His famous shot of cannonballs scattered across a road in The Crimea has widely been disuputed to be faked or staged. It is unkown whether or not the cannonballs were placed by Fenton as there is another shot without the cannonballs.

He is best known for his photographs taken during the Crimean War. Although, his career spanned fifty years. During which time he photographed Muslim life in London using non-arab models dressed up as muslim people. These photographs were in demand for their exotic appeal.

Joel Meyerowitz

(b. 1938)


Joel Meyerowitz is a street photographer who's works are famous for introducing color as an accepted format for serious, fine art photography. He was one of the first proponents of color film and has worked with it exclusively since the early 1970's. His highly detailed and fluidly colorful photographs capture an essence of New York City, which is where he mostly photographed, that will never exist again. His prints are beautiful and his subject matter along with his unique look and accomplished technique street photography has earned him a well established reputation in the current photographic world.

Meyerowitz with born in the Bronx to Jewish parents. In 1999, Meyerowitz made a documentary about his father Hy named Pop. The film won some critical acclaim and is a good insightful into the personal life of Meyerowitz.

In 1962, while fulfilling the position of an art director and illustrator, Meyerowitz soon became bored of working in an office and soon became entranced by photography and being in the street. After telling his boss of his plans, his boss was surprisingly sympathetic to his wishes and even gave him a Pentax camera that he owned. This is what Meyerowitz started on as what later came to be a great career in photography. Meyerowitz really came into his own during the early seventies when color photography was beginning to become mainstream but still not accepted by the fine art photographic world, which still only viewed photographs to be artful when they were in black and white. Color photography was considered a thing of commercialism and advertising. Meyerowitz broke down these barriers and insisted that color was worthy of being artful in the street photography sense.

Meyerorwitz also began using a 9x10 view camera along with his 35 millimeter work. This proved to give Meyerowitz's work incredibly rich detail and texture. And the fluid, saturated tones of the color prints create a gushing, almost psychedelic quality to the photo's richness.

During the weeks after September 11th, 2001, Meyerowitz was the only photographer granted access to Ground Zero. The only photographs we have of the immediate aftermath of that event were taken by him and are now held by the Museum of the City of New York.

Joel Meyerowitz still continues to photograph and hold exhibitions in America and abroad. Along with Mitch Epstein, he is important for laying the foundation of photography's transition to color.

Richard Avedon

(b. March 15th, 1923, d. October 1st, 2004)
Richard Avedon was a highly successful fashion photographer who transformed the face of fashion photography into an art form instead of purely a way in which to sell clothes and magazines. He began his career as a staff photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris just after the end of World War Two. He was brought in to revitalize the French economy and restore Paris to its pre-war, chic environment. He worked under Harper's Bazaar's founder Alexey Brodovitch and Carmel Snow. He's stated in interviews that these people provided him with the necessary mentoring and nurturing for him to truly develop the unique look his photographs possess. In 1966, he left Harper's Bazaar to work for Vogue. He's also stated in interviews that the switch to Vogue was a transition into a more compromising, commercial mentality that he was forced to adopt in order to maintain his job. This, however, did not thwart his unique character and charisma in the studio.

Many of his models shmooze on how he would interact with them and move as they moved with his camera. Avedon' is also known for his large prints and documentary photography where he would photograph the streets of Harlem, mental institutions, and the American West. However, these works are significantly shrouded by his fashion work. Avedon worked almost exclusively with portraiture using a pure white backround and little or no props so as to not distract the viewer from anything besides the subject being photographed. This serves to give his work a minimalistic yet elegant feel. Avedon also only worked in large format and would frequently use view cameras to photograph his subjects. His last portrait was of Barack Obama during his latest project named "Democracy," a project carried forth during the 2004 presidential election. The portrait of the current day President is eerie in its foresight. Richard Avedon died from a brain hemorrhage on October 1st, 2004. He was 81 years old. Since then, he has remained an iconic fashion photographer along with Irving Penn.

I HATE GOD.

Samuel B. Morse (b. 1791, d. 1872)


Samuel B. Morse was the first man to introduce the Daguerreotype to the United States after meeting Daguerre and witnessing what he called "one of the most beautiful discoveries of the age". After his meeting with Daguerre, he promptly wrote to the New York Observer to let them know of this new invention which was gaining vast popularity in Europe but not yet in the United States. Morse soon discovered that his brand of American photography was not as profitable as he'd hoped and later moved on to other ventures. He did however expose the art to Mathew Brady, one of the greatest photographers of the 19th century.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sfbmhtml/sfbmlesseressay.html

Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (b.1787, d.1851)

Born in Carmeilles-en-Parisi. He became an apprentice to a local painter and later went on to become an acclaimed stage designer in Paris. He frequently used a camera obscura as a drawing aid. Later he discovered the work of Nichephore Niepce and quickly formed a partnership with him to aquire and learn this new technology before Niepce took the secret to the grave. After Neipce died in 1833, Daguerre continued to experiment with glass plates and an assortment of different chemicals in attempts to capture and fix an image. Daguerre was finally able to do this by an accidental discovery in which he put an exposed plate in a cabinet and came to find days later that the image on the plate had developed due to the mercury vapour from a broken thermometer. This discoer was very important because it allowed Daguerre to greatly reduce exposure times from 8 hours to around 30 minutes. This process is what became the 'Daguerreotype'.

Because Daguerre had political connections and powerful friends such as Francois Arago who presented the invention of photography to the Academies of Fine Arts and Sciences, he was able to put his invention on a fastrack to success. In truth, Daguerre was not the first to properly expose and fix an image. It was Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887). However, Bayard was not acknowledged for his work and as a matter of fact was tricked by Francois Arago to postpone his invention so that Daguerre could take the credit. For the rest of Bayard's life, he felt wronged and betrayed by Arago and Daguerre which is most evident in a self portrait he did which depicts him drowning himself. After Arago gave photography its premier, it agreed upon that anyone Frenchmen was allowed to use the new technology free of charge although anyone outside of France had to pay an equivalent to a patent fee. This, however, was loosly if ever enforced which led to photography diffusing across Europe and subsenquently, America.http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/daguerr.htm
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/D/Daguerre/1.html

First Post. Al Hazen, Thomas Wedgwood, Camera Obscura

The date is January 25, 2011 and today I learned about the invention of Camera Obscura (latin for 'dark chamber), the first device invented for the function of capturing images. The concept of Camera Obscura was first devised by an amazing guy named Al Hazen. Al Hazen lived between 965-1040 A.D. during which time he made incredible contribution to science and optics, essentially laying the foundation for Trigonometry, Calculus, Physical Science, Opthamology, Engineering, and of course the concept of Photography. He came up with all of these ideas well before Leonardo Da Vinci. What's fascninating is how totally revolutionary and ahead of his time his ideas were, quite literally predating modern science by a thousand years.

His concept of the Camera Obscura came from the notion of light being trapped and inverted to a backwards upside down image. Since light travels in a straight line, it could be projected through an aperture, or in this instance, a hole cut through one of the sides. This in turn lead to an exposure onto a light sensitive compund. The compound, however, wouldn't come until much later. Al Hazen was the person ever to conduct optical experiments such as this and layed the foundation for future experiements and the subsequent invention of Photography.

Another individual who contributed greatly to the art of photography was a man by the name of Charles Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche. He lived from February 19, 1722 until August 11, 1774. His contributions to Photography are recognized by his prediction of it prior to its actual fruition. He also predicted television and synthetic foods.http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~jeff/115a/history/alhazen.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/timeline/people/alhazen.html