T here have been many great photographers throughout history who have left their mark on the industry. Cecil Beaton is an inspiring fashion photographer from the 1930s. He was born in 1904 in Hampstead, England, he moved to London and continued to live there until his passing in 1980.
This British photographer launched his career as a society photographer in 1926 (A Gallery for Fine Photography, 2001). His first camera was a Kodak 3A which was a very popular model in its time. Beaton used this camera to teach himself the basics of photography often using his family members as subjects. Ignoring his dislike of further education Beaton studied history, art and architecture at ST John’s College, Cambridge (Search.com Reference, 2010). In time he came to be known for his portraits of celebrities, royalty and high society (A Gallery for Fine Photography, 2001). His most popular images were his fashion portraits depicting elegance, glamour and style (National Portrait Gallery, 2009).
Beaton took his inspiration from the most successful magazine photographers of the 1910’s and 1920’s including E.O. Hoppe, Edward Steichen and Baron de Meyer (Victoria & Albert Museum, 2010). Vogue published its first portrait by Beaton in 1928 (Harrison, 1987). It was his exhibition in London that won him this contract that later led much of his work to appear in the magazine. He went on to work with Vogue for over fifty years with both the American and British editions (Patrick, 2009).
During this time he photographed members of high society such as Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn as well as members of the royal family including Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles. His work portrayed elegance and grace, which he achieved by creat...
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...ry of a moment in history. Beaton was there to document the lives of the high society members in his time. His inspiring photographs and intriguing persona were the keys to his success. The link between flattery and portraiture influenced Beaton early on in his career. This influence is still clearly evident in the works of many contemporary photographers today. Beaton had an art for sculpting his subjects bodies, in a way that deemed quite effective. His creative styling of the body allowed his photographs to capture a different depth of atmosphere.
Beaton’s most memorable pieces were taken throughout the 1930s. Although many of his personal opinions were far from elegant this was not evident within his work. He is known as one of the great photographers of high society. And was, as I believe responsible for recording the elegance, glamour and style of his time.
For Emerson, the reticent beauty of nature was the motivator. To him, photography should be recognized because its still-life beauty was able to persuade the public’s appreciation of the life and nourishment
Born of Irish immigrants in 1823 in a little place called Warren County, New York; Mathew Brady is known as “The Father of Photojournalism.” While a student of Samuel Morse and a friend of Louis Daguerre (inventor of the “Daguerreotype,” a method of photography that the image is developed straight onto a metal coated surface), in which he had met while under the study of Morse, Brady took up his interest in photography in the year of 1839, while only seventeen years of age. Brady took what he had learned from these two talented and intellectual men to America where he furthered his interest in the then-growing art of photography.
Johnson, Brooks. Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on their Art.” New York: Aperture Foundation Inc., 2004. Print.
3. His revolutionary nude studies, fashion work, and portraits opened a new chapter in the history of photography.
To be named one of the top photographers of the 20th Century is a substantial credit on its own, but to do so with no formal training or background in the art is remarkable, yet accomplished by Philippe Halsman. It all started at the young age of fifteen, when Philippe would photograph friends and family with his father’s 9x12-cm view camera, developing the glass plate “miracles” in the family’s bathroom sink. Even in these early years, using rudimentary equipment, it was evident Halsman had a gift and would leave a definitive mark on the photographic industry. With his ability to capture the true spirit of the subject and his advanced technical abilities, his career was destined to be nothing short of successful (B. Johnson 180).
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was one of the most successful painters of her time. Over the course of her life, spanning from 1755-1842, she painted over 900 works. She enjoyed painting self portraits, completing almost 40 throughout her career, in the style of artists she admired such as Peter Paul Rubens (Montfort). However, the majority of her paintings were beautiful, colorful, idealized likenesses of the aristocrats of her time, the most well known of these being the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, whom she painted from 1779-1789. Not only was Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun the Queen’s portrait painter for ten years, but she also became her close, personal friend. She saw only the luxurious, carefree, colorful, and fabulous lifestyle the aristocracy lived in, rather than the poverty and suffrage much of the rest of the country was going through. Elisabeth kept the ideals of the aristocracy she saw through Marie Antoinette throughout her life, painting a picture of them that she believed to be practically perfect. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s relationship with Marie Antoinette affected her social standing, politics, painting style, and career.
5 Light, Ken. Tremain, Kerry. Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
Each of the artists mentioned here met Andy Warhol at different phases of his career. While the majority of them were seen at the infamous Factory, some came both before and after. Regardless of where they met and knew Warhol, they each had their own individual lessons and impacts. Jean-Michel Basquait was perhaps the last artist to come around and really know Andy Warhol. Julia Warhol was certainly the first. In between were very many amazing artists, almost too many artists to talk about. The most important, of course, have been mentioned in this paper. Andy Warhol is a man still impacting art long after his death. His visionary style changed forever the face of both commercial art and gallery art. Hopefully this paper communicated a bit of that genius.
...hotographs right up until her death in 2009 (Williamson 2009). She hated attention, and was what some would call a “photographers photographer” (Block 2002), as she was far more acclaimed by her peers than she ever was by the public. In her lifetime and after her death she has been called a street, documentary and lyrical photographer, and compared to the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, someone she drew great inspiration from.
Juliet Margaret Cameron was a pioneer Victorian photographer during the nineteenth century. She took up photography later in life at the age of forty-eight when her daughter presented her with a camera. This simple gift sparked enthusiasm in Cameron and led her to become one of the most colorful personalities in photography. Cameron was born in Calcutta in 1815 to a well-to-do British Family. After being educated in Europe, she returned to the Cape of Good Hope in 1836.
The photographers like Bailey and Cowan were the string stop for the new era pf photography, “before the mini skirt and the classless ‘pop-ocracy’ of the Beatles and the Stones, there was David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton”- who took New York and Diana Vreeland, editor of American Vogue, by a storm in the frigid Jan of ’62 (Muir 2007)”, they were the products of a changing world. David Bailey also depicted his style and masculinity in the changing of photography. David Baileys breakthrough photography of the 1960’s was of Pauline Stone. The photograph depicts Pauline Stone feeding squirrel in a autumnal London Park. This photography was the anecdote that exemplified the mythology that would be 1960s fashion photography. Norman parkinson showed off his personality through is photography style as well. According to Michael Gross “ Parkinson dressed for the excess in caftans and gold jewellery or a decades old vanilla bespoke suit make for him by the British tailor Tommy Nutter (1995). Given his eccentric oriental persona, Parkinson never warmed to the formal “see pieces” favoured by French. Parkinson enjoyed photographing his models in natural settings and dynamic poses; “If a girl looks like a model, she is not for my lens” Parkinson said (quoted by Muir 2004). Terence Donovan also helped set up London as the place were people went to go gain inspiration. With the help of his gritty photographs, the whole “youth quake” was
After the war, Avedon went back to school, at the New School for Social Research, to pursue photography and learn from Alexey Brodovitch, a well known photographer and designer at the Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Brodovitch influenced Avedon to take high caliber photos and eventually hired him as a staff photographer at the magazine. It was at Harper’s Bazaar where Richard’s career really took off. He was sent to France in the late 1940’s to take a fashion photo shoot. From then on Avedon was renowned as an extremely talented photographer, who captured everyone’s attention with his pictures of flowing dresses and unposed fashion portraits.
Born in Russia, Alexey Brodovitch (1898-1971) is known foremost for his work as a graphic designer. His career started in Paris, then he decided to immigrate to the US in 1930, where he began to leave a significant influence on America graphic design and photography at the peak of his career as an art director of Harper’s Bazaar. The use of white space, asymmetrical layouts and dynamic imagery have made Brodovitch himself distinctive from other designers at the time, thus shifted the nature of magazine design into the next level. With the first poster “Bal Banal” in a competition, Brodovitch career as a graphic designer brought him many opportunities of various designers and agencies, as speaking of Harper’s Bazaar and Portfolio. Carmel Snow, an editor-in-chief of the Harper’s Bazaar once said when she offered him a job.
As seen in paintings of battle scenes and portraits of wealthy Renaissance aristocracy, people have always strived to preserve and document their existence. The creation of photography was merely the logical continuum of human nature’s innate desire to preserve the past, as well as a necessary reaction to a world in a stage of dramatic and irreversible change. It is not a coincidence that photography arose in major industrial cities towards the end of the nineteenth century.
...encing and affecting the art movement and its contribution in shaping how art is produced and critiqued based on the standards that it had set.