Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis (May 3rd, 1849- May 26th, 1914). Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark. He was a Danish-American journalist photographer, and social reformer. His work is mostly known for its dedication to help the less fortunate people in New York City. Jacob Riis immigrated to the United States from Denmark in 1870. After years of extreme poverty and hardship he finally found employment as a police reporter for the New York Tribune in 1877. His journalistic photographs of these became very influential to the social welfare of New York City. Jacob Riis employed a blend of reporting, reform and photography that made him a unique legend in all three fields. Theodore Roosevelt held Riis in very high esteem offering him positions of power and influence in his administration and calling him, "the most useful citizen of New York". Instead Riis continued his creative work, producing books on the plight of poor children, immigrants and tenement dwellers. He worked for many publishers such as the New York Evening Sun, the New York Tribune, and the Brooklyn News.

Eugene Atget

Atget was born in France at 1856. He lost his parents when he was very young, so he was raised by his uncle. After his education was finished, he started to do several jobs such as fisherman and actor. However, he did not have much of success from those jobs; therefore, he started to do art designs. Then he began to take photos, since he was settled in Paris. For 30 years, he had taken photos for artists who wanted to paint landscape or the towns in Paris. At the time period when the century was about to change to 20th century, he started to take photo of workers and people in Paris. He became a “documentary photographer”. He had such an amazing skill to use the shutter speed. Nowadays, his most of the work is in the museum in New York.

Bernice Abbott

Bernice Abbot was born in Springfield, Ohio and attended Ohio State University. In 1918 she moved to New York to leave college and meet up with friends and family. Later, Abbott moved once again to Montparnasse, France where she would have her first major incounter with photography. Within the span of one year in France she nearly died from the Spanish flu epidemic hitting the area. She started as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray in 1923, and found a new inspiration in photography called Eugene Atget. Abbott managed to go off and buy whatever negatives were left from Atget's collection and published multiple books on his photos. Abbott can easily be considered the main reason for Atget's fame today. In early 1929 Abbott went back to New York for a visit, and came to realize the value of the town to a photographer and his/her career. In 1958 Abbott took multiple pictures for a high school physics text book. Most of these pictures are very famous and still depicted today. After living many full years in New York Abbott was advised to move from the city due to its high amount of air pollution. She bought a cabin in Maine where she resided until her eventual death in 1991.


Bernice Abbott






Fl






James Joyce, 1928

Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904. After graduating from high school she attended Columbia University, University of Michigan, Purdue University, Western Reserve University, and Cornell University. She has a degree in herpetology, which is the study of reptiles. However, from a very young age Bourke-White was interested in photography and after she graduated from Cornell in 1927 she decided to pursue it as a career. Her first job was photographing industry for the Otis Steel Company. Two years later she got a job with Fortune magazine. After her photographs of the Soviet Union were revelead, she was offered a job with LIFE magazine, which she took and is most well known for. Her first big breakthrough was with the photographs of the Fort Peck Dam, which were featured on the cover of LIFE magazine in 1936. She is most noted for her photographs during World War II. She was on assignment in Europe and took many pictures of the horrible conditions of the concentration camps as well as Nazi suicides. After the war she had various assignments for Life magazine including the India Pakistan conflict, where she has some very famous photograghs, including one of Ghandi at his spinning wheel. Unfortunately, Bourke-White was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in the 1950s, which ended her career as a photographer. She died in 1971 after battling the disease for many years and undergoing numerous surgeries.









Gold Miners in Johannesburg, South Africa (1950)
This photograph was taken when Bourke-White was on an assignment in South Africa for LIFE magazine. She went two miles underground into the mines and spent four hours photographing these men working in the 100 degreee heat. Despite their horible working conditions underground, when these men were finished with their work and arrived at the surface they were full of joy which was apparent through their dancing (which Bourke-White also photographed)





Jewish Prisoners at the Fence at Buchenwald (1945)
Margaret Bourke-White photographed many dead and dying prisoners at this camp. Her photograghs of the prisoners were published in LIFE magazine and they revealed the horrors of the concentration camps. Bourke-White was traveling with a general and his army when they stumbled upon the camp.





George Washington Bridge (1933)
Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York and was interested in taking pictures of her hometown. This bridge in New York City is an example of her desire to capture the architecture of New York City.

Wynn Bullock

Wynn Bullock was an American photographer born in 1902 and died in 1975. He was most famous for his pictures of landscapes and of nudes. The majority of his landscapes were taken on the west coast where he lived most of his life and eventually died there. Bullock was inspired by a trip to France where he saw many art works which touched him, notable Cezanne. When he returned to America he started his career in photography. He has many pictures in museums all over the world and is a very famous and influential artist.


Stormy Night
This picture shows a misty night but with a certain degree of light coming through the clouds illuminating the tree.








Misty Mountain Range
The mist seeping over the mountains but showing a few of the peaks jutting out through the mist.







Del Monte F0rest

Robert Capa

Robert Capa was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1913. His real name was Endre Erno Friedmann. At the age of 17, he started photograph. He started to work for several photography agencies in Europe. In 1935, he takes the name Robert Capa. In 1936, while he was photographing the Spanish Civil War, his works were published in several famous magazines such as LIFE, ILLUSTRATED. Capa started his career as news photographer. During World War II, he went to Europe to photograph the war for LIFE. Also, after the war, Capa went to Israel to photograph the Jewish immigrants. in 1951, he became president of Magnum magazine. However, he went to Indochina in 1954 where he assigned to photograph, but he steps on a mine and killed.




This was in Israel in 1950, when the Jewish immigrants were coming to Israel.




This photo was took in Spain in 1936. Soon this photo became very famous because this photo was very dynamic and it's a moment when a person is dead.

Edouard Boubat

Boubat 1923 - 1999

Eduard Boubat (1923-1999)
He was born on September 13th 1923 in Paris, France. In 1938 Boubat began working in a photofactory and in 1945 Boubat began creating his own photographs. He began to take photographs because he wanted to capture the happy moments in peoples lives. This was a direct reaction to the Second World War. In 1947 Boubat recieved the Kodak prize in the International Hall of Photography located in the National Library of Paris. In the 1950's and 1960's Boubat traveled and worked as a freelance photojournalist for the french magazine "Realites". After his time with the magazine Boubat continued to travel and visited places such as ; Italy; China; Egypt; Greece; and Japan. Edouard Boubat died on June 30th 1999 in Paris, France.

1983
Taken in Parc de Sceaux, Paris




1962
Taken in India




1985
Taken in Brasil

Elliot Erwitt

Elliot Erwitt...
Born: Paris, 1928

Lived: USA 1939 after parents emigrated from Russia
Moved to NY in 1948

Studied: Photography in LA, Film in NY

Worked: Freelanced for Life, Colliers and more...
Met and learnt from Capa and Steichen
1953 - Became a part of Magnum Photographers

Most Commonly Photographs: Dogs, Beaches, Nudes, Humorous subjects...

New York City, USA (1974)
Erwitt is well known for using dogs as his subjects, and also tends to use almost ironic humor in his shots. This image illustrates both, making it not only interesting to look at, but also a good way to understand the way that Eriwitt worked and what appealed to him.


Colorado, USA (1955)
Erwitt again uses irony and a sort of twisted humor to illustrate his photo of the boy in the car. Obviously the shot was not made at the boy, and the crack was there before, but the placement shows a sort of grim emotion. The picture really evokes a thought which Erwitt was famous for.

Acapulco, Mexico (1991)
This picture represents the subjects as a reflection as opposed to actual people. It is an interesting shot of Erwitt's favorite place to shoot - the beach. The picture is interesting and rather happy and care free, leaving the observer thinking about what the people may look like in person as opposed to being reflected in the water.


Ireland, UK (1968)
This print really displays Erwitt's knack of capturing the comical side of life. The picture gives the appearance of the dog being a part of the woman's face as they blend together. It also incorporates man's best friend, and Erwitt's favorite subject - the dog.

Josef Koudelka

Josef Koudelka was born the year 1938 in Boskovice, Czechoslovakia. He began taking photographs of his family and the surroudings of his hometown with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera. At the age of 23, he earned a degree at the Technical University in Prague and soon started working as an aeronautical engineer. In the meanwhile, Koudelka began photographing theatre productions on an old Rolleiflex camera in his free time.

In 1968, when the Soviet armies invaded the city of Prague, Koudelka was there to witness the event, and the pictures he took helped him to win the Robert Capa Gold Medal. Koudelka soon found himself at the peek of his career as a photographer, and after flying to Czechoslovakia in 1970, he managed to win asylum in England, were he spent the next 10 years of his life.

Throughout the next decades, Koudelka continued his work travelling all around Europe and won numerous grants and awards, such as the Prix Nadar in 1978 or the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in the year 1989.

Josef Koudelka became a French citizen in 1987, and he currently resides in France and is nowadays continuing his work documenting the vast diversity of the European landscape.

Wrist Watch (1968)
Photograph taken in Prague (Czechoslovakia) during the Soviet invasion.



Russian Tank in Prague (1968)
Photograph taken during the Soviet invasion in Prague.



Soviet Tank (1968)
Photograph taken in Prague during the Soviet invasion.

James Nachtwey

James Nachtwhey was born in Syracuse, New York. He was raised in Massachusetts, went to Leomenster high school and from 1966 to 1970 he attended to Dartmouth College. There, he studied political science and art history. He was mainly influenced by the American Civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. However, in the photography area, he was self-taught. After graduating from college, in 1976, he started working as a photographer in a newspaper company in Mexico. After moving to New York in 1980, he became a freelance photographer. From then on, he has been working as a photographer for TIME since 1984. He also worked for Black Star from 1980 to 1985. After that, he became a member of Magnum Photos from 1986 to 2001. He also worked with Thomas E. Franklin in the World Trade Center where he made the famous photograph called “Rising the Flag at Ground Zero.” From then on, he concentrated working with the subject of the 911 attack and also the Sudan Conflict on civilians. Nachtwhey uses Canon lenses and a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II as his camera.

Sebastiao Salgado

Sabastiao Salgado was born in Brazil in 1971. He took his first serious pictures while on holiday with his wife and was later asked to work with Magnum Photographers. Magnum photographers is a company of documentary photgraphers; they are not allowed to edit a picture in any way once it is taken. He always spent at least a year living with his subjects. He traveled mostly in South America and also in Africa. All of his Photographs are portrait- type with a story behind each one. He was interested in Photo Essays and capturing the lives of obscure people. He is also very interested in religion and many of his pictures feature religious symbols or painting, often comparing normal people to angels or Jesus by using photographs that mirror images described in the bible. He Has now started his own company similar to Magnum and works diligintly to educate people about world suffering and has set up many charities to help the people he has photographed. He has won many awards for all of his work both in charity and photography. His most recent project has been working with Unicef, WHO (World Health Organization), and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to help find a cure for polio in developing countries, especially among children. For more in formation on Salgado's work, life and photography go to http://www.unicef.org/salgado/

Indian Miners (1989)
Proud miners in India working for $1.30 a day--Salgado spent a year in India with workers and with gypsies.


Fleeing Refugee (1985)
Mother and child flee to Sudan, on the lookout for Ethiopian planes. - Salgado Spent about two years traveling with Ethiopian refugees as they fled to Sudan.

Hiding Refugees (1985)
A large group of refugees fleeing to Sudan hide from Ethiopian planes in the early morning.



"I shoot globally and I want to show globally...”
—Sebastião Salgado