Period Five 2006-2007 TASIS England Photo Class Reports/Mr. Jones

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

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.