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Mark Mann
Mark Mann

Mark Mann

Country: United States
Birth: 1970

Mark Mann is a celebrity and advertising photographer. He was born in Glasgow, where he lived until he went to study in the prestigious photographic program at Manchester Polytechnic. Before long, the recent graduate was assisting innovative fashion photographers Nick Knight and Miles Aldridge, learning the ropes and building his own body of work. Three years later, Mark started shooting on his own, relocating to New York City.

Mark’s editorial work has appeared in Esquire, Men’s Health, Vibe, Spin, Fortune, Billboard, Parade and Complex, among others. He has shot countless celebrities, including Robert Redford, Michael Douglas, Iggy Pop, Jack Black, the Black Eyed Peas, Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Rihanna, Queen Latifah, Simon Baker, Stevie Wonder, Bradley Cooper, Willie Nelson, Sean Connery, John Hamm and Jennifer Hudson. Mark has amassed a sizable advertising portfolio, as well. His clients run the gamut: Reebok, Adidas, Hennessy, Bombay Sapphire, Pepsi, Gillette, Vitamin Water, NHL, Zumba, Ford, Chrysler and Svedka to name a few.

Mark has just completed a yearlong project for Esquire Magazine, The Life of Man. He shot 80 American men ages 1 through 80, to celebrate 80 years of Esquire Magazine. This project took Mark to the White House where he was honored to shoot the sitting president, as well as former President Clinton. He also shot numerous other notable people and celebrities all across the country.

Source: www.markmannphoto.com


Because so many of Mark Mann’s striking celebrity portraits are taken from just a few feet away, he’s often asked, “Why so close?”

“I’m not exactly sure where that idea of getting so close to my subjects came from. The simple answer is that I don’t like to have to shout to talk to people so—over the years—I’ve moved closer and closer. If you’re more than a few feet from someone, the nuances of what you are saying can be lost. And I always try to have a conversation to help make a connection with everyone I am photographing.”

He may start out four or five feet away from a subject but “bobs and weaves” or “creeps” (as he terms it) closer to three feet or so while chatting and shooting. “That means the camera can be just 24 inches from a person’s face, or smelling distance,” says Mann. He never uses a tripod because he’s always moving, changing his distance and angles.

He also shoots close up because he enjoys shooting wide open, explaining that helps give a "dimension” to his images. “They have a shallow depth of field, but I like that they almost feel three-dimensional,” he says.

“There’s another reason I like shooting close,” says Mann. “I just love faces. I love looking at them. I can inspect every detail, every angle of a face when I’m just a few feet from someone as I look through my lens. I could never get that close without the camera in front of me.”

Source: PPA


 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Stephen Shore
United States
1947
Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is an American photographer known for his images of banal scenes and objects in the United States, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. His books include Uncommon Places (1982) and American Surfaces (1999), photographs that he took on cross-country road trips in the 1970s. In 1975 Shore received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1971, he was the first living photographer to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where he had a solo show of black and white photographs. In 1976 he had a solo exhibition of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2010 he received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. Shore was born as sole son of Jewish parents who ran a handbag company. He was interested in photography from an early age. Self-taught, he received a Kodak Junior darkroom set for his sixth birthday from a forward-thinking uncle. He began to use a 35 mm camera three years later and made his first color photographs. At ten he received a copy of Walker Evans's book, American Photographs, which influenced him greatly. His career began at fourteen, when he presented his photographs to Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Recognizing Shore's talent, Steichen bought three black and white photographs of New York City. At sixteen, Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent Warhol's studio, the Factory, photographing Warhol and the creative people that surrounded him. In 1971, he was the first living photographer to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, with a show of black and white, sequential images. Shore then embarked on a series of cross-country road trips, making "on the road" photographs of American and Canadian landscapes. In 1972, he made the journey from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, which provoked his interest in color photography. Viewing the streets and towns he passed through, he conceived the idea to photograph them in color, first using 35 mm hand-held camera and then a 4×5" view camera before finally settling on the 8×10 format. The change to a large format camera is believed to have happened because of a conversation with John Szarkowski. In 1974 a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant funded further work, followed in 1975 by a Guggenheim Fellowship. Along with others, especially William Eggleston, Shore is recognized as one of the leading photographers who established color photography as an art form. His book Uncommon Places (1982) was influential for new color photographers of his own and later generations. Photographers who have acknowledged his influence on their work include Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Martin Parr, Joel Sternfeld, and Thomas Struth. Stephen Shore photographed fashion stories for Another Magazine, Elle, Daily Telegraph and many others. Commissioned by Italian brand Bottega Veneta, he photographed socialite Lydia Hearst, filmmaker Liz Goldwyn and model Will Chalker for the brand's spring/summer 2006 advertisements. Shore has been the director of the photography department at Bard College since 1982. His American Surfaces series, a travel diary made between 1972 and 1973 with photographs of "friends he met, meals he ate, toilets he sat on", was not published until 1999, then again in 2005. In recent years, Shore has been working in Israel, the West Bank, and Ukraine.Source: Wikipedia Shore emerged in the 1970s as one of the major exponents of color photography, shooting bleak yet lyrical scenes of the North American landscape. Documenting everyday settings and objects, from hotel swimming pools and televisions to parking lots, gas stations, and deserted roads, Shore exhibited an ability to transform commonplace surroundings into compelling works of art, working with a subject matter similar to Walker Evans. Between 1973 and 1979, Shore made a series of road trips across North America, documenting the vernacular landscape through his view camera, and taking a more formal approach to photographing than in his earlier work. A number of these images later formed Shore's now-classic book, Uncommon Places (first published by Aperture in 1982 and republished in 2004 and 2007). These images arouse recollections of experiences, but in an artful, carefully crafted and calculated manner. His images are made with a large-format camera, which gives his photographs a precise quality in both color and form that has become a signature trait of his work. Shore's use of the large-format camera and innovative color printing has made him one of the most influential photographers to emerge in the last half of the twentieth century, credited with inspiring numerous contemporary photographers.Source: International Center of Photography
Peter Sekaer
Denmark
1901 | † 1950
Peter Sekaer was a Danish photographer and artist. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sekaer came to New York in 1918 to seek freedom and opportunity. By 1922 he had a reputation as a master sign painter and had his own successful business producing posters. Several years later he began to take classes at The Art Student's League. Sekaer soon became acquainted with Ben Shahn, who may have been the one to introduce him to photography and who later introduced him to Walker Evans. After 1933, he devoted himself exclusively to photography, studying with Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research, and assisting Walker Evans on the project of photographing the Museum of Modern Art's African sculpture collection. In 1936 Sekaer accompanied Evans, who was hired by the Resettlement Administration (RA, later to become the FSA) on a photographic journey throughout the South, often shooting the same subject. Like many of his contemporaries, Sekaer sought to capture the real world with photographs that combined artistic expression with a personal commitment to social change. From 1936 to 1942 Sekaer became a professional photographer and was hired by the federal government agency, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), and later became the head of the REA's graphic department. In 1938 the REA sent Sekaer to the United States Housing Authority (USHA). The photographs Sekaer made for the USHA, an agency primarily concerned with the removal of city slums and sponsorship of public urban housing, reveal his continued interest in the richness of human experience and environment. Transferred again in 1940 Sekaer photographed Navajo and Pueblo Indians for the Office of Indian Affairs. That same year, he worked as photographic researcher and still photographer for the REA film Power and the Land. After 1942 he continued working for other federal agencies photographing briefly for the Office of War Information (OWI), and the American Red Cross-agencies whose agendas conflicted with his own, and limited his freedom in artistic expression. Continually frustrated by this, Sekaer left Washington, DC for New York where he freelanced for several years, doing fashion and editorial assignments until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1950. Although Sekaer's photographs were widely published and exhibited during his lifetime, his work largely became forgotten after his death until an exhibition held in 1980 at the Witkin Gallery in New York and later in 1990 at the Royal Library in Copenhagen for which a catalog was published. Many of Sekaer's photographic prints can be seen in the public collection of the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta acquired a trove of more than seventy rare vintage prints by Sekaer, the largest holding of its kind in any American art museum. Many of these works have never been on public view. From June 2010 until January 2011, the museum staged an exhibition of Sekaer's work titled Signs of Life.Source: Wikipedia
Szymon Brodziak
What you see, is who you are - says Szymon Brodziak, the master of black and white photography. The youngest aritist exhibited at the Museum of Photography - Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin (2015). The best black & white campaign photographer of the world, acclaimed by the jury of FashionTV Photographers Awards, during 2013 Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, Brodziak confrmed his mastery by winning 1st Place in World's Top 10 Black & White Photographers contest curated by OneEyeland. He loves to photograph women. He's inspired mainly by locations, where he brings to life his monochromatic visions. Brodziak received Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Award for constant fulflment of dreams and passion for setting new paths in the search of beauty. In Europe, Brodziak received numerous medals and honourable mentions in various editions of the renowed Prix de la Photographie Paris, both for commercial and personal projects, including the title of Advertising Photographer of the Year (2016). In the USA, he won frst place in Fashion category in two photo competitions: International Photography Awards (2016) and Black and White Spider Awards (2016), which rewards the best monochromatic images from all over the word. His frst photo album ONE had its ofcial premiere in Rome (2014). It presents the frst 10 years of his professional activity. The publication starts with a personal dedication from June Newton, wife to the legendary photographer Helmut Newton. Szymon's new photographic book entitled WHAT YOU SEE IS WHO YOU ARE won a Gold Medal (Book: Cover) and 2 Bronze Medals (Book: Fine Art & Other) at Prix de la Photographie Paris 2019 and also Honorable Mention at 2019 International Photography Awards (USA). The artist's work can be seen and ordered in his own galleries of photography located in Poland and are also available worldwide at Online Shop www.szymonbrodziak.com as well as www.saatchiart.com/brodziak.
Richard Avedon
United States
1923 | † 2004
Richard Avedon (1923-2004) was born and lived in New York City. His interest in photography began at an early age, and he joined the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) camera club when he was twelve years old. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he co-edited the school's literary magazine, The Magpie, with James Baldwin. He was named Poet Laureate of New York City High Schools in 1941. Avedon joined the armed forces in 1942 during World War II, serving as Photographer's Mate Second Class in the U.S. Merchant Marine. As he described it, "My job was to do identity photographs. I must have taken pictures of one hundred thousand faces before it occurred to me I was becoming a photographer." After two years of service, he left the Merchant Marine to work as a professional photographer, initially creating fashion images and studying with art director Alexey Brodovitch at the Design Laboratory of the New School for Social Research. At the age of twenty-two, Avedon began working as a freelance photographer, primarily for Harper's Bazaar. Initially denied the use of a studio by the magazine, he photographed models and fashions on the streets, in nightclubs, at the circus, on the beach and at other uncommon locations, employing the endless resourcefulness and inventiveness that became a hallmark of his art. Under Brodovitch's tutelage, he quickly became the lead photographer for Harper's Bazaar. From the beginning of his career, Avedon made formal portraits for publication in Theatre Arts, Life, Look, and Harper's Bazaar magazines, among many others. He was fascinated by photography's capacity for suggesting the personality and evoking the life of his subjects. He registered poses, attitudes, hairstyles, clothing and accessories as vital, revelatory elements of an image. He had complete confidence in the two-dimensional nature of photography, the rules of which he bent to his stylistic and narrative purposes. As he wryly said, "My photographs don't go below the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues." After guest-editing the April 1965 issue of Harper's Bazaar, Avedon quit the magazine after facing a storm of criticism over his collaboration with models of color. He joined Vogue, where he worked for more than twenty years. In 1992, Avedon became the first staff photographer at The New Yorker, where his portraiture helped redefine the aesthetic of the magazine. During this period, his fashion photography appeared almost exclusively in the French magazine Égoïste. Throughout, Avedon ran a successful commercial studio, and is widely credited with erasing the line between "art" and "commercial" photography. His brand-defining work and long associations with Calvin Klein, Revlon, Versace, and dozens of other companies resulted in some of the best-known advertising campaigns in American history. These campaigns gave Avedon the freedom to pursue major projects in which he explored his cultural, political, and personal passions. He is known for his extended portraiture of the American Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam war and a celebrated cycle of photographs of his father, Jacob Israel Avedon. In 1976, for Rolling Stone magazine, he produced The Family, a collective portrait of the American power elite at the time of the country's bicentennial election. From 1979 to 1985, he worked extensively on a commission from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, ultimately producing the show and book In the American West. Avedon's first museum retrospective was held at the Smithsonian Institution in 1962. Many major museum shows followed, including two at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1978 and 2002), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (1970), the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (1985), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1994). His first book of photographs, Observations, with an essay by Truman Capote, was published in 1959. He continued to publish books of his works throughout his life, including Nothing Personal in 1964 (with an essay by James Baldwin), Portraits 1947-1977 (1978, with an essay by Harold Rosenberg), An Autobiography (1993), Evidence 1944-1994 (1994, with essays by Jane Livingston and Adam Gopnik), and The Sixties (1999, with interviews by Doon Arbus). After suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while on assignment for The New Yorker, Richard Avedon died in San Antonio, Texas on October 1, 2004. He established The Richard Avedon Foundation during his lifetime. Source: The Richard Avedon Foundation Born in New York, Richard Avedon attended city public schools and Columbia University, and served in the photographic section of the merchant marines. He studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research from 1944 to 1950, and became the elder designer's protégé. Avedon was a staff photographer for Junior Bazaar and then Harper's Bazaar for some twenty years, and became a staff photographer at Vogue in 1966. In 1994 he was the first staff photographer hired by The New Yorker. For a photographer whose roots are in publication work, Avedon has been exceptionally successful in museums as well. He was included in the 1955 landmark exhibition The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, and has received solo exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many other institutions. Most recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Evidence: 1944-1994, a career retrospective of his work, and the International Center of Photography organized Avedon Fashion 1944–2000 in 2009. In 1993, Avedon received the Master of Photography Infinity Award from ICP. Since the late 1940s--when Avedon's blurred black-and-white portrait heads were acclaimed for capturing the raw dynamism of youth--his photography has changed to reflect the style, energy and dynamism of the moment. He helped set the standard for sleek, urbane elegance in mid-twentieth century fashion photography, and his gift for highlighting the allure and drama of his subjects has made him one of the most iconic photographers of the late twentieth century. Avedon maintains that "a photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks."Source: International Center of Photography
Samuel Bourne
British
1834 | † 1912
Samuel Bourne, an English photographer born in 1834, is celebrated as one of the foremost figures in early Indian photography. His journey into the world of photography began in Nottingham, England, where he initially worked as a bank clerk. However, his passion for the burgeoning art of photography soon eclipsed his banking career, leading him to pursue it full-time. Bourne's meticulous attention to detail and his technical proficiency quickly set him apart in the photographic community. In 1863, Bourne embarked on an ambitious voyage to India, a decision that would define his career and cement his legacy. He arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and joined forces with the established photographic studio Howard & Shepherd, which later became known as Bourne & Shepherd. This partnership allowed Bourne to explore the Indian subcontinent extensively, capturing its diverse landscapes, architecture, and people with an unprecedented level of precision and artistry. Bourne's expeditions were both challenging and groundbreaking. He undertook several arduous journeys to remote and often inaccessible regions of India, including the Himalayas, where he captured stunning photographs of the mountains, rivers, and valleys. His images of Kashmir, Simla (now Shimla), and Darjeeling are particularly renowned for their clarity and composition. Bourne's work required immense physical stamina and technical skill, as he often had to transport heavy photographic equipment through difficult terrains. Throughout his time in India, Bourne produced an extensive portfolio that vividly documented the subcontinent's natural beauty and architectural grandeur. His photographs provided a window into India for the Western world and were widely acclaimed for their artistic merit and documentary value. Bourne's work was regularly featured in British photographic journals, and he received numerous accolades for his contributions to the field. Samuel Bourne returned to England in 1870, leaving behind a lasting legacy in the world of photography. He continued to be involved in the photographic industry but never again embarked on such extensive travels. Bourne's Indian photographs remain a significant historical record, offering a glimpse into the 19th-century Indian landscape and culture. His pioneering efforts not only advanced the technical aspects of photography but also set a high standard for future generations of photographers. Samuel Bourne passed away in 1912, but his work continues to be celebrated for its artistic and historical importance.
Edmund Teske
United States
1911 | † 1996
Edmund Rudolph Teske (March 7, 1911 – November 22, 1996) was a 20th-century American photographer who combined a career of taking portraits of artists, musicians and entertainers with a prolific output of experimental photography. His use of techniques like: combined prints, montages and solarizations led to "often romantic and mysterious images". Although he exhibited extensively and was well known within artistic photography circles during his lifetime, his work was not widely known by the public. He has been called "one of the forgotten greats of American photography."Source: Wikipedia Born in Chicago, Edmund Teske began taking photographs at age seven with his mother's Kodak Scout 2-C camera. In 1931, while attending evening classes at the Huttle Art Studio, he installed a photographic studio in his family's basement. Soon he purchased a view camera and started photographing the streets of his hometown. After working for a commercial studio in Chicago, Teske was awarded a photographic fellowship in 1936 that enabled him to study under the guidance of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Teske taught in the late 1930s at Chicago's New Bauhaus (later the Institute of Design), then moved to New York to work as Berenice Abbott's assistant. In 1943, Teske settled in Los Angeles, where he became interested in cinema, and in the early 1950s he was active with several small theater groups. During this period Teske refined the experimental photographic processes that he had begun to explore in the 1930s, such as solarization, combination printing, and chemical toning, and began to regularly exhibit and publish his work. In the 1960s, Teske was an influential visiting professor of photography at UCLA and other schools.Source: International Center of Photography Edmund Teske believed in the transformative potential of photography. He was interested in more than the inherent characteristic of the medium to record a specific moment in time. For Teske photography was a way to explore the soul of his subjects and creating the negative was only the beginning. His composites of multiple negatives and his use of solarization, as well as his exquisite gelatin silver prints, express the complexity and depth of his personal vision. His composites often layered images from different periods and places and sometimes outside sources. As the assemblage artist George Herms suggested, Teske's composites and solarizations are like Jazz variations on a theme. Though they often contain allegory and symbolism, they are not nostalgic. Rather, they exist as expressions of his various beliefs. Teske believed in the coexistence of both the masculine and the feminine within every individual. Furthermore, he believed in the connectedness of all life and that time is both fluid and cyclical. In the 1930s, Edmund Teske gained experience in theater and portraiture photography and became friends with Nathan Lerner, who introduced Teske to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. During the depression, he photographed for Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Strand (for his film, Native Land), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and he printed for Berenice Abbott. In 1943 Teske traveled to Arizona to photograph at Wright’s Taliesin West and continued on to Los Angeles where he became friends with Man Ray and Anaïs Nin. Teske was introduced to Vedantic thought, a Hindu philosophy, and its mythology and symbolism greatly influenced Teske’s later work. In 1950 he moved to Topanga Canyon where he became a part of an enclave of artists, black-listed actors and intellectuals, including Wallace Berman, Will Geer, George Herms, Walter Hopps and Dean Stockwell. It was during this time within a nurturing environment of like-minded, creative, free-thinking individuals that Teske's singular style evolved. Teske’s work was included in Museum of Modern Art’s 1960 The Sense of Abstraction show and it was Edward Steichen who named Teske’s innovative process “duotone solarization.” While teaching at UCLA in the 1960s, Teske was a colleague of Robert Heineken and became a mentor to many local photographers.Source: Gitterman Gallery
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