What interesting photographers should I know about?

September 27, 2008 3:30 PM

Homeworkfilter: what obscure (viz. not Ansel Adams) photographer should I explore? Who is doing creative and (intellectually) challenging work that I might not be familiar with?

I'm currently taking an interesting class dealing with photography and culture. Eventually I'm going to have to write a case study, on either a specific photographer or a specific aspect of photography. I'm particularly interested in artists who have used the nature of the image to present unexpected ideas about the physical world, and I'm double-particularly interested in artists whose work has questioned and played with our presuppositions about the image itself; for instance, I'm currently fascinated about the compositional formalities of things like crime-scene and documentary (not photo-journalistic/nature) photography, and am interested in situations where these formalities are co-opted for non documentary purposes; I'm thinking of stuff like Warhol's 'empire' and the screen tests, but with still images. I'm sure somebody must be working in this space, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about finding them.

posted by cmyr to media & arts (26 comments total)

Some photogs that I love:

Rosamond Purcell
Jeff Wall
Andreas Gursky
Diane Arbus
Gregory Crewdson
Sally Mann (did work related to crime scenes)
Collier Schorr
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 3:43 PM on September 27, 2008

I'm not sure if this fits your bill, but Irving Penn was a Vogue fashion photographer who also did some great work using a portable "north-light" studio. Some of the more well-known images are of the native people of New Guinea. From a cultural standpoint, there's something fascinating about photographing people in this studio instead of in their natural surroundings.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 3:46 PM on September 27, 2008

Rebekka Gudleifsdóttir? Aside from her interesting work, much of which is on Flickr, she has reasonable press coverage to at least begin working with, and there's always the metafilter brewhahahas about her/her work.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:47 PM on September 27, 2008

Richard Avedon
posted by Zebtron at 3:54 PM on September 27, 2008

Sounds like you might be into William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Jeff Wall, or Andreas Gursky - none of these artists are particularly 'obscure', but they're definitely not Ansel Adams, either.
posted by oulipian at 3:55 PM on September 27, 2008

Your mention of crime scene photos reminds me of an exhibit I saw that featured work from Melanie Pullen.

You might want to check out Todd Hido too.
posted by extramundane at 4:10 PM on September 27, 2008

I know very little about fine art photography, but I'd have to second Andreas Gursky, he does seem to fit what you'd be interested in.
posted by Large Marge at 4:16 PM on September 27, 2008

Myoung Ho Lee takes interesting pictures of trees. It's nature photography I suppose, but it seems to fit this: I'm particularly interested in artists who have used the nature of the image to present unexpected ideas about the physical world, and I'm double-particularly interested in artists whose work has questioned and played with our presuppositions about the image itself...
posted by carsonb at 4:22 PM on September 27, 2008

Wolfgang Tillmans, Richard Prince, early William Wegman...
posted by apetpsychic at 4:35 PM on September 27, 2008

The newest edition of pdn has an article about a photographer - Josh Azzarella - who takes iconic news images and Photoshops out the disturbing part. Example: the photo of the naked little boy fleeing the napalm attack in 1972 Vietnam - without the little boy the scene looks ordinary. But the scene with the boy is burned in my memories. So seeing the photoshopped image is both disturbing and in some way calming.
posted by cda at 4:49 PM on September 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Heather Mcclintock
posted by chrisalbon at 5:07 PM on September 27, 2008

Joel-Peter Witkin (some photos).
posted by cocoagirl at 5:10 PM on September 27, 2008

Maybe Hiroshi Sugimoto's diorama project or Abelardo Morell's camera obscura work would fit the bill.
posted by xo at 5:30 PM on September 27, 2008

Bill Hensen is an interesting photographer, certainly challenging and confronting.
posted by mattoxic at 6:06 PM on September 27, 2008

when you said crime scene, I thought of Les Krims and his "The Incredible Case Of The Stack O'Wheat Murders" photos.
posted by nimsey lou at 7:05 PM on September 27, 2008

I happened across an excellent exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago last year. A lot of the artists who were included work a space/ investigate themes related to your interests.
An archived link to the show, with a list of the exhibiting photographers, is here.
posted by stagewhisper at 8:01 PM on September 27, 2008

I'm double-particularly interested in artists whose work has questioned and played with our presuppositions about the image itself

Not crime sceney, but I recently saw an exhibition of Miroslav Tichý's work at the Pompidou, taken with his self-made caveman camera, and it certainly does what you mention.
posted by Beardman at 8:05 PM on September 27, 2008

(one of the artists included in the MoCP link, Paul Shambroom, also has a great series entitled "meetings" if you are interested in a "documentary as art" angle, with humans as the subject rather than landscapes.)
posted by stagewhisper at 8:19 PM on September 27, 2008

2nd on the Gregory Crewdson. Really interesting stuff. Makes you think. A lot of his photos are staged however
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:45 PM on September 27, 2008

David LaChapelle. Brings surrealism to modern photography - the colors really pop! Incredible.
http://www.davidlachapelle.it/gallery/gallery.htm
posted by wuzandfuzz at 9:27 PM on September 27, 2008

Footnote to cda: that's not a little boy, it was a girl named Kim Phúc who survived the attack and now lives in Canada.
posted by zadcat at 9:34 PM on September 27, 2008

How about W. Eugene Smith. The BBC did a thing on him it its "The Genius of Photography" series. He basically turned a 3 week assignment into his magnus opus and stayed in Pittsburgh for 3 years and shot thousands of shots. it wrecked him mentally and financially, but he got some great shots.
posted by sanka at 10:26 PM on September 27, 2008

How can we talk about crime scene photos and not mention Weegee.
posted by idiopath at 1:04 AM on September 28, 2008

2nding David LaChapelle, amazing photos.
posted by Mach5 at 7:02 AM on September 28, 2008

Go through the conscientious website and i heart photograph. That's a lot of photographers and posts to look at.
posted by xammerboy at 7:44 PM on September 28, 2008

2nd on Arbus: greatest portrait ever is Mia Farrow for Harper's
2nd on Joel Peter-Witkin
2nd on Eggleston

Surprised nobody has mentiond Nan Goldin yet

LaChapelle's pics make my eyes feel like a kid's tummy the morning after Halloween.
posted by Lukenlogs at 12:07 AM on November 10, 2008