In memoriam of incredible photographers who left us in 2014. We will always remember their work and the man/woman behind the camera. You might not know them all but each one is worthy of remembrance for pursuing till the end the passion we share with them: photography.
Phil Stern (1919-21014)
An intimate chronicler of Hollywood and the Jazz scene, Phil Stern's iconic photographs and remarkable 75-year career convey an extraordinary access and mutual trust between the photographer and his luminous subjects. Phil pioneered a behind-the-scene approach to documenting Hollywood and his straight forward style and charming demeanor earned him exclusive access to the likes of President John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean among many other iconic personalities.
René Burri (1933-2014)
Legendary Magnum photographer René Burri's body of work is a chronicle of the political and cultural people and events that shaped the last half of the 20th century. At the age of 13, Burri made his first photo of Winston Churchill as the prime minister zipped through his hometown in an open-top car. His first photo essay documenting a school for deaf and mute children in Zurich was published in Du magazine when he was just 23. His work would go on to be published in LIFE, Look, Geo, Stern, The New York Times, and Paris Match among many others. He became an associate member at Magnum Photos in 1955 and a full member in 1959. He created iconic and intimate portraits of Che Guevara, Le Courbousier, Picasso, Giacometti and Baragnan; he photographed the Suez Canal crisis, the Vietnam War, and a divided Berlin with a sensitive and humanist eye; he made studies of the architecture and urban landscapes in Latin America, Asia and Europe that verge on abstract without ever losing what he referred to as 'the pulse of life'.
Ray K. Metzker (1931-2014)
Ray K. Metzker, a modernist photographer who called himself "an intellectual wanderer" and proved it over six decades of audacious experiment - he sometimes overlapped exposures to make a single picture from a roll of film - died on Thursday in Philadelphia. He was 83.
Laurence Miller, a Manhattan gallery owner who is now showing a retrospective exhibition of Mr. Metzker's work, announced the death.
"He wasn't just trying to be different," Mr. Miller said in an interview on Friday. "He was terrifically different. He was never satisfied with simplicity."
Mr. Metzker captured scenes from gritty city streets, sunlit beaches, the Southwestern desert and idyllic rural landscapes in black and white. In the darkroom, he manipulated light to create effects that ranged from eye-catchingly stark to soothingly gentle to perplexingly peculiar. One of his techniques was to hold up white cards or other objects in front of the camera to disrupt real-world scenes into bold abstractions.
He once said his goal was "a unique way of seeing," one in which "new eyes replaced the old." To critics, it was a goal achieved.
Lucien Clergue (1934-2014)
Rencontres d'Arles festival founder and photographer Lucien Clergue died at the age of 80 on Nov. 15. Clergue began his life modestly, dropping out of school to work as a clerk in the food distribution industry after the death of his mother when he was 18. She had given Clergue a camera several years earlier and as he worked, he found time to assemble a series of images of post-war ruins and animals drowned by the Rhone river. He was long an admirer of Picasso and in 1953 at the age of 19, he approached the artist outside of a bullfight in Arles, presenting him with a stack of prints. The meeting was fortuitous and over time the two became friends and collaborators. Picasso encouraged his artistic development and introduced him to Jean Cocteau, with whom he would also collaborate. Clergue photographed both artists, as well as local gypsies, but became best known for his nudes. His work would go on to be shown in many exhibitions, including one curated by Edward Steichen at MoMA, collected by several museums, and published in numerous monographs. In 1968 he co-founded the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival with writer Michel Tournier. The festival continues to this day.
Camille Lepage (1988-2014)
The body of French photojournalist Camille Lepage, who was 26, was discovered by French peacekeeping troops in a car being driven by Christian anti-balaka militiamen in the Bouar region of the Central African Republic on May 13. The manner of her death is still uncertain. Lepage, a deeply committed photojournalist, had been covering the escalating violence in C.A.R. for several months. "When she arrived at the end of 2013, it wasn't covered at all. Nobody was talking about C.A.R.," photojournalist William Daniels, who worked in the region with Lepage, told TIME. "She was very interested in these types of places where the people were completely forgotten, undercovered, and where hopefully working as a photographer could make a difference." She had previously been based in Juba, South Sudan and had dedicated herself to photographing those she felt were marginalized and overlooked. "She has put a bit of light on what the people in South-Sudan and C.A.R. have experienced," Lepage's brother Adrien wrote to TIME. "If one day those two countries live in peace, we will think about her, imagining her, somewhere, with a little smile."
Arthur Leipzig (1918-2014)
Arthur Leipzig, a documentary photographer known for his crisp, detailed, emotionally provocative images, particularly those of children at play on the streets and piers of mid-20th-century New York City, died on Friday at his home in Sea Cliff, N.Y. He was 96. Mr. Leipzig (pronounced LIPE-zig) was one of the last surviving members of a generation of socially minded photographers - others included Helen Levitt, Roy DeCarava, Jerome Liebling and Gordon Parks - who took to the streets to record life as they encountered it.
He began photographing New York children in the early 1940s and continued, off and on, into the mid-1960s. He said his inspiration was "Children's Games," a 1560 painting by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Mr. Leipzig was intrigued, he said, that the games played in Renaissance-era Flanders were similar to the ones he observed outside his window.
Lewis Baltz (1945-2014)
Lewis Baltz, whose caustic but formally beautiful black-and-white images of parking lots, office parks, industrial garage doors and the backs of anonymous warehouses helped forge a new tradition of American landscape photography in an age of urban sprawl, died on Saturday in Paris. He was 69. Mr. Baltz was one of a group of photographers - including Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Joe Deal, Nicholas Nixon and Frank Gohlke - who helped establish the New Topographics movement, named for a highly influential 1975 exhibition, "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape," at the George Eastman House in Rochester.
Their work was united by a seemingly dispassionate, affectless presentation - the critic Ken Johnson, writing in The New York Times, once compared it to pictures taken by an insurance adjuster - of the rapid transformation wrought across the countryside in the 1960s and '70s by suburban development, strip malls, highways and motels.
Anja Niedringhaus (1965-2014)
Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus was killed today, shot to death by an Afghan policeman while covering the upcoming national election. She covered conflicts from Bosnia to Afghanistan for more than 20 years, earning a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, as part of a team of AP photographers covering the Iraq War. Last November I was very happy to be able to feature her amazing work in a photo essay titled "Afghanistan: Seen Through the Lens of Anja Niedringhaus." What I wrote then remains true: Documenting a decades-long story like the Afghanistan War is a challenge for any photojournalist, from simple logistical issues, to serious safety concerns, to the difficulty of keeping the narrative fresh and compelling. Niedringhaus did a remarkable job, telling people's stories with a strong, consistent voice, an amazing eye for light and composition, and a level of compassion that clearly shows through her images. A remarkable voice has been lost today.
Michel du Cille (1956-2014)
Michel du Cille, a Washington Post photojournalist who was a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his dramatic images of human struggle and triumph, and who recently chronicled the plight of Ebola patients and the people who cared for them, died Thursday while on assignment for The Post in Liberia. He was 58.
He collapsed while returning on foot from a village in the Salala district of Liberia's Bong County, where he had been working on a project. He was transported over dirt roads to a hospital two hours away but was declared dead on arrival of an apparent heart attack.
Mr. du Cille won two Pulitzer Prizes for photography with the Miami Herald in the 1980s and joined The Post in 1988. In 2008, he shared his third Pulitzer, with Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull, for an investigative series on the treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
David Armstrong (1954-2014)
Photographer David Armstrong died Sunday after a battle with liver cancer. He was 60. Best known for his intimate photographs of young men and later for his soft focus landscapes, his work encompassed both the art and fashion worlds.
Armstrong was a close friend of artists Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe and Jack Pierson and is broadly recognized as having influenced a generation of young photographers, including Ryan McGinley.
He was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and his work appeared in Paris Vogue, Japanese Vogue, GQ and Arena Homme+ among many others.
"Photographing is like a seduction," Armstrong said in a 2012 New York magazine interview, "it's intimate when you're alone with them."
