Favorite Photographers
To improve your skill as a photographer, invest not in more camera gear but instead in time spent looking at the work of other photographers. I encountered this little piece of advice years ago, and it has served me quite well ever since.
Taking time to articulate why a particular photographer’s work has such stopping power helps one identify those characteristics that make it so compelling: its composition, its use of what Andreas Feininger called the “symbols of photography,” or even the sheer power of simple timing. Doing this is not an exercise of imitation but rather one of inspiration. The work of master photographers shows us what is possible with the medium.
Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995)
Setting aside his better known work—think for instance of that ubiquitous image of an American sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square upon Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II—I find that Alfred Eisenstaedt’s more understated candids are far more interesting.
More information:
Andreas Feininger (1906-1999)
In both his photographic technique and his style of writing, Andreas Feininger’s work possesses a level of precision that I admire. Perhaps lacking a kind of human warmth that makes the work of other photographers come alive, Feininger’s photography has a great deal of power nonetheless. It effectively uses perspective to convey a sense of what he must have felt when he experienced those expansive landscapes or those close-up objects he photographed.
When I was in college, I bought and framed a poster-sized copy of his 1953 image of Route 66 in Arizona. It’s been hanging on my wall for decades now. The lonely two-lane highway and the buildings alongside it appear almost ancillary to the sky filled with cumulous clouds that dominate the composition. Feininger succeeds in capturing on film what he must have felt when he experienced Arizona’s expansive and empty landscape.
I also understand that Feininger could be somewhat detached, a personality characteristic that I can often relate with. But I think Feininger knew himself well enough to be comfortable with that. In his 1965 book The Complete Photographer, Feininger made an honest assessment of himself when he wrote (p. 326):
Whatever my shortcomings, I have learned to accept them because I have found through experience that it is impossible to change basic traits. Instead, I try to make the best of what I am, to express myself through my pictures as precisely as possible, and to use my camera to give people new insight into some of the endlessly varying aspects of our world.
Rather than try to be someone that I am not or mimic the kind of photography that I might admire but that my own personality type will never lend itself to, I have grown more and more comfortable with my own character traits and use them to their fullest potential in the way that Feininger encouraged his reader to do.
Feininger was a precise and rather prolific writer whose contribution to photography went well beyond the images he created.
A selection of books by Andreas Feininger:
- Feininger on Photography.
- The Complete Photographer (requires free Internet Archive account to access).
- A Manual of Advanced Photography (requires free Internet Archive account to access).
More information:
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
Perhaps the best-known practitioner of what has become known as street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson showed me what one could do with nothing more sophisticated than a small, simple, and inconspicuous camera. By today’s standards, his outfit of choice, a completely manual rangefinder camera and 50mm lens that accompanied him everywhere, is hopelessly crude. Yet it was all he needed to capture with masterful skill what he famously coined “the decisive moment.” And for him, that moment often did not occur during the excitement of a high-profile event but rather during the far more mundane moments of everyday life.
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work is a constant reminder to me to focus not on ogling camera gear but instead on getting out there, using what I already have, and seeking out the best photographs I can make.
More information:
- “Henri Cartier-Bresson: ‘There Are No Maybes’” (New York Times, June 21, 2013).
- Wikipedia.
Robert Doisneau (1912-1994)
I first encountered Robert Doisneau’s work during my freshman year in college. On one page in the textbook that accompanied my modern art history survey course was one example from a series Doisneau completed for LIFE magazine showing passers-by reacting to a painting of a nude in a Paris shop window.
His ability to show those candid, unguarded moments still makes me smile.
More information:
Ernst Haas (1921-1986)
I’m not sure if there’s an element of poetic appropriateness to this, but it was actually at Ikea that I first saw Ernst Haas’s work. The image I encountered was one he captured on Route 66 in Albuquerque not long after a rainstorm passed. With the sun close to the horizon and dark clouds in the distance, his pioneering use of color film, which many in the high art world frowned upon as garish, and his use of a telephoto lens makes the cluster of activity on that highway pop. The sheen of fresh rainwater on the ground only adds to the image’s power.
This is but one image in a vast catalog of color photography through which Haas explored the possibilities of a medium that some may have seen as limited in capability. He used the slow speed of the color film of his day to his advantage by blurring and abstractualizing his subject matter.
In another image of a pair of railroad tracks reflecting the deep red light of dusk, Haas succeeded in conveying the lonely beauty of an expansive New Mexico landscape with stunning effectiveness.
More information:
- ernst-haas.com.
- Atlas Gallery exhibition entitled Ernst Haas: New York in Colour, 1952-1962. See also the print book by the same title that is very much worth owning.
- DPC episode on Ernst Haas.
- Wikipedia.
Saul Leiter (1923-2023)
Not terribly dissimlar to Ernst Haas’s color photography of New York in the 1950s and 60s, Saul Leiter work has a gentle subtlety of its own. His effective application of blur, his creative use of window reflections, and his way of shooting straight through foggy or dew-laiden windows all produced a calm quality to his images. By means of these techniques coupled with his pioneering use of color film, Leiter achieved a distinctly impressionistic quality in his photographs. Perhaps this may not be surprising considering that he was also a painter. Leiter’s unconventional composition, perspective from high above, and his use of photographing through narrow gaps have all made me reconsider my own techniques and experiment with different ways of rendering my own photographic subject matter. I also very much like his frequent use of telephoto lenses to compress foreground and background.
Some street photographers are fearless in the way they photograph people by means of an in-your-face approach. Not Saul Leiter. His approach was not at all confrontational or aggressive. It was instead peacefully candid, something I can completely relate with.
More information:
- Saul Leiter Foundation.
- Saul Leiter: The Centennial Retrospective.
- Saul Leiter: Early Color (requires free Internet Archive account to access).
- Wikipedia.
Leonard McCombe (1923-2015)
His image of Clarence Hailey Long, foreman of the JA Ranch, gives us a close-in look at the stoic grittiness that’s etched into the hardened face of someone who looks like he’s seen it all. And his photograph of mobster Frank Costello conveys a sense of his subject’s casual indifference that ironically compels one to examine the image closely. But I think my favorite example of Leonard McCombe’s absolutely first-rate work is his 1956 image of Kim Novak on the New York-bound 20th Century Limited. Here, we see not the foreground subject in sharp focus but instead the leering eyes of a row of men in the background. McCombe captures the feeling of that quickly passing moment with a frankness that one simply cannot miss.
More information:
Michael Rougier (1925-2012)
Sometimes it’s the simple moments that make the most powerful photography. The challenge lies in capturing them. When he photographed a fleeting moment of a bride-to-be looking out a window in 1962, Michael Rougier succeeded marvelously. The anticipation that is obvious in this image makes it a powerful one. The leaning motion of the bride in her wedding gown and her tilted stance echoed by the diagonal lines of the ceiling above and the bed below all contribute to a stunning composition.
Rougier’s photograph of a Japanese model seated in the foreground with the blurred motion of men behind her is another wonderful example of his work.
More information:
- Profile on life.com.
- Essay on life.com entitled “Photographer Spotlight: Michael Rougier.”
Elliott Erwitt (1928-2023)
Good photography doesn’t always have to be serious photography. Along with a strong sense of candidness, Elliott Erwitt’s work has a playfulness that reminds me to have my camera ready for capturing those fun or humorous moments in life that make me smile.
More information:
- elliotterwitt.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 50-51.
- Wikipedia.
Fred Herzog (1930-2019)
Along with a handful of his contemporaries, Fred Herzog made use of color at a time when most photography critics did not think it was worthy of high art. And like those other contemporaries, Herzog proved them wrong. Roaming the streets of Vancouver, he captured streetscapes that burst with vivid color or that possess a more tempered pastel quality. I especially like his use of telephoto lenses to compress the busy nature of a Vancouver that no longer exists.
More information:
Paul Schutzer (1930-1967)
Although he often photographed those in power, as LIFE magazine noted, Paul Schutzer knew what made a truly powerful image. “It’s the quiet things that happen around us every day that are the really important things,” he said.
Foremost for me among his images is one that came from Schutzer’s series on the men of Italy. In it, a young man attentively combs his partner's hair, his warm gaze fixed on his lover and nothing else. She returns the affection with a simple look of quiet satisfaction, eyes closed, head turned back and to the side toward him. What a wonderfully simple yet extraordinarily powerful image!
Another favorite of mine from Schutzer’s work is an image of photographers clustered on the back end of a Chevy convertible. When I do a photo shoot of a local event, I often find myself doing the same thing: taking pictures of photographers taking pictures.
Schutzer was tragically killed on assignment during the first day of the Six Day War at the young age of 36.
More information:
- Profile on life.com.
- Essay on life.com entitled “LIFE’s Ode to the Men of Italy.”
- Essay on life.com by Alice Gabriner entitled “The Kennedys and So Much More: The Brilliant Photography of Paul Schultzer.”
- Profile on icp.org.
- Wikipedia.
William Eggleston (1939- )
There is a certain lonely emptiness that William Eggleston’s photography often conveys to me. I see this especially in the case of images that are devoid of people. Using the color film of his time, he portrayed everyday scenes and everyday people with a stoic beauty that inspired many others to follow in his creative footsteps.
More information:
Nils Jorgensen (1958- )
Nils Jorgensen has a wide breadth of command over the medium of photography. Even a cursory glance over his work reveals his ability to communicate the aura of a high-profile event or the humorous candor of a chance street encounter. All of his work is incredibly engrossing. In particular, his sequences influenced me to look for similar opportunities.
More information:
- nilsjorgensen.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 90-91.
Shin Noguchi (1976- )
Shin Noguchi has a great eye for capturing wonderful images, and he also uses his website to tell his viewers a story about them. This is something I try to remember to do with my own photography. I find his abstractualized image of a woman in white and red seen through a translucent window to be especially compelling.
More information:
- shinnoguchiphotography.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 102-103.
- Wikipedia.
Marcin Ryczek (1982- )
With a great talent for using minimalism, Marcin Ryczek combines a sharp eye for locating the perfect place to make his images with his keen ability to portray his subjects in the context of that place, making that context part of the composition just as much as the people he photographs.
More information:
Merel Schoneveld (1983- )
People’s expressions: in my own work, this is the most elusive thing of all. Yet whenever I do manage to capture that candid, unposed expressiveness in my images, I feel like I hit the jackpot.
Merel Schoneveld is either very lucky or extraordinarily talented, and I think she’s definitely the latter. No other modern street photographer captures the expressiveness of people in urban spaces better than Merel Schoneveld. She does this not only in overwhelming volume but also at the highest level.
More information:
- merelschoneveld.nl.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 78-79.
Craig Whitehead (1988- )
Whitehead’s photography demonstrates a masterful use of several techniques to abstractualize. His interesting use of obstructions in front of people’s faces, shadows, light, blur, and lots of irony all combine to form a truly distinct body of work.
More information:
- sixstreetunder.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 178-179.
David Gaberle (1989- )
Gaberle’s photography features interesting tonality with few people. There is a kind of a haunting, airy, and empty quality to his images that I find rather compelling.
More information:
- davidgaberle.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 150-151.
Alan Schaller (1989- )
In his series entitled Metropolis, Alan Schaller’s exploration of the theme of disconnection immediately struck a chord with me. In our largely urban and always online world, we are far too disconnected from each other. Considering his wider work, I love his use of light to cast his subject matter in high and striking contrast across all of his photography.
More information:
- alanschaller.com.
- Essay on My Modern Met by Jessica Stewart entitled “Street Photographer Captures the Solitude of Urban Life Through Light and Shadow.”
Melissa Breyer
Breyer excels with making candids of people that feature strikingly bold contrast mostly in black and white. She makes interesting use of shadows, reflections, blur, and depth of field to capture the expressiveness in people’s faces as they go about their day-to-day life. Her work is truly captivating.
More information:
- melissabreyer.com.
- David Gibson, Street Photographer’s Manual, pp. 124-125.