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Nakaji Yasui
Nakaji Yasui

Nakaji Yasui

Country: Japan
Birth: 1903 | Death: † 1942

Nakaji Yasui was one of the most prominent photographers in the first half of the 20th century in Japan. Yasui was born in Osaka and became a member of the Naniwa Photography Club in 1920s and also became a member of the Tampei Photography Club in 1930. His photographs cover a wide range from pictorialism to straight photography, including photomontages. He appreciated every type and kind of photograph without any prejudice and tried not to reject any of them even during wartime.

Source: Wikipedia


Nakaji Yasui was born in 1903 in Osaka and passed away in 1942. From the 1920s on, Yasui was an active photographer in the Kansai region of Japan; he is now seen as one of the most prominent Japanese photographers of the prewar period. At the very beginning of an era in which Japanese photography would express itself in a way that was both more international and more in step with the times, Yasui produced his photographs while enthusiastically incorporating many new theories of art into his work—and thinking extremely carefully about how these theories might impact his own development within the context of that time in Japan.

Although Yasui’s career was short, his work has influenced Daido Moriyama and many other important contemporary Japanese photographers. In 2010, His major photography publications include the essay Landscape Photography in Practice (1938) and the photography book Nakaji Yasui photographer 1903-1942 (2004). Taka Ishii Gallery produced “Nakaji Yasui Portfolio” (a set of 30 modern prints in a limited edition of 15).

Source: Taka Ishii Gallery

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Germaine Krull
Germaine Krull
Germany
1897 | † 1985
Germaine Krull was a photographer, political activist, and hotel owner. Her nationality has been categorized as German, Polish, French, and Dutch, but she spent years in Brazil, Republic of the Congo, Thailand, and India. Described as "an especially outspoken example" of a group of early 20th-century female photographers who "could lead lives free from convention", she is best known for photographically-illustrated books such as her 1928 portfolio Métal. Germaine Luise Krull was born in Wilda, Poznan, then on the border between Germany and Poland in East Prussia, of an affluent German family. In her early years, the family moved around Europe frequently; she did not receive a formal education, but instead received homeschooling from her father, an accomplished engineer and a free thinker but a bit of a ne'er-do-well. Her father may have influenced her in at least two ways. First, he let her dress as a boy when she was young, which may have contributed to her ideas about women's roles later in her life. Second, his views on social justice "also seem to have predisposed her to involvement with radical politics." Between 1915 and 1917 or 1918 she attended the Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie, a photography school in Munich, Germany, at which Frank Eugene's teaching of pictorialism in 1907-1913 had been influential. She opened a studio in Munich in approximately 1918, took portraits of Kurt Eisner and others, and befriended prominent people such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Pollock, and Max Horkheimer. Krull was politically active between 1918 and 1921. In 1919 she switched from the Independent Socialist Party of Bavaria to the Communist Party of Germany, and was arrested and imprisoned for assisting a Bolshevik emissary's attempted escape to Austria. She was expelled from Bavaria in 1920 for her Communist activities, and traveled to Russia with her lover Samuel Levit. After Levit abandoned her in 1921, Krull was imprisoned as an "anti-Bolshevik" and expelled from Russia. She lived in Berlin between 1922 and 1925 where she resumed her photographic career. She and Kurt Hübschmann (later to be known as Kurt Hutton) worked together in a Berlin studio between 1922 and 1924. Among other photographs, Krull produced in Berlin were nudes that one reviewer has likened to "satires of lesbian pornography." Having met Dutch filmmaker and communist Joris Ivens in 1923, she moved to Amsterdam in 1925. After Krull returned to Paris in 1926, Ivens and Krull entered into a marriage of convenience between 1927 and 1943 so that Krull could hold a Dutch passport and could have a "veneer of married respectability without sacrificing her autonomy." In Paris between 1926 and 1928, Krull became friends with Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Eli Lotar, André Malraux, Colette, Jean Cocteau, André Gide and others; her commercial work consisted of fashion photography, nudes, and portraits. During this period she published the portfolio Métal (1928) which concerned "the essentially masculine subject of the industrial landscape." Krull shot the portfolio's 64 black-and-white photographs in Paris, Marseille, and Holland during approximately the same period as Ivens was creating his film De Brug ("The Bridge") in Rotterdam, and the two artists may have influenced each other. The portfolio's subjects range from bridges, buildings (e.g., the Eiffel Tower), and ships to bicycle wheels; it can be read as either a celebration of machines or a criticism of them. Many of the photographs were taken from dramatic angles, and overall the work has been compared to that of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Rodchenko. In 1999–2004 the portfolio was selected as one of the most important photobooks in history. By 1928 Krull was considered one of the best photographers in Paris, along with André Kertész and Man Ray. Between 1928 and 1933, her photographic work consisted primarily of photojournalism, such as her photographs for Vu, a French magazine. also in the early 1930s, she also made a pioneering study of employment black spots in Britain for Weekly Illustrated (most of her ground-breaking reportage work from this period remains immured in press archives and she has never received the credit which is her due for this work). Her book Etudes de Nu ("Studies of Nudes") published in 1930 is still well-known today. Between 1930 and 1935 she contributed photographs for a number of travel and detective fiction books. From 1935–1940, Krull lived in Monte Carlo where she had a photographic studio. Among her subjects during this period were buildings (such as casinos and palaces), automobiles, celebrities, and common people. She may have been a member of the Black Star photojournalism agency which had been founded in 1935, but "no trace of her work appears in the press with that label." In World War II, she became disenchanted with the Vichy France government, and sought to join the Free French Forces in Africa. Due to her Dutch passport and her need to obtain proper visas, her journey to Africa included over a year (1941–1942) in Brazil where she photographed the city of Ouro Preto. Between 1942 and 1944 she was in Brazzaville in Republic of the Congo, after which she spent several months in Algiers and then returned to France. After World War II, she traveled to Southeast Asia as a war correspondent, but by 1946 had become a co-owner of the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, a role that she undertook until 1966. She published three books with photographs during this period and also collaborated with Malraux on a project concerning the sculpture and architecture of Southeast Asia. After retiring from the hotel business in 1966, she briefly lived near Paris, then moved to Northern India and converted to the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. Her final major photographic project was the publication of a 1968 book Tibetans in India that included a portrait of the Dalai Lama. After a stroke, she moved to a nursing home in Wetzlar, Germany, where she died in 1985.Source: Wikipedia
Julia Nathanson
Julia Nathanson
Canada
1974
Julia Nathanson earned a degree in psychology from McGill University in 1996. She then went on to develop her visual skills at the New York Film Academy. Later, she began to explore street and urban-style landscape photography. She has since been published in Hipstography, The App Whisperer, and National Geographic. Her awards include Hipstography’s Street Series of the Year, the Mobile Photo Grand Prize at PhotoIndependent and a special award by acclaimed photographer Ben Watts for her series "In the Lane." Her prints adorn the walls of several private collectors and have been exhibited throughout North America and Europe. When not shooting, she manages to feed and clothe her two girls (who also happen to be unpaid models.) Julia lives and works in Toronto. About my work: I am endlessly fascinated by nature’s will to persist. Brilliant flowers growing through cracked concrete, weedy vines creeping along rusty eaves. I am perpetually dazzled by the colours of the city. I marvel at how they contrast, or become chameleons by chance. It reminds me that poetry is everywhere, even if it’s inconspicuous. There is harmony in unexpected places, there is life that wants to live. Equally alluring is the magic of children in the summertime. That fleeting time evokes my own fractured and dreamy recollections of childhood. Regardless of the subject, I hope that my work elicits a memory, a hope, a reverie.
O. Winston Link
O. Winston Link
United States
1914 | † 2001
Ogle Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk & Western in the United States in the late 1950s. A commercial photographer, Link helped establish rail photography as a hobby. He also pioneered night photography, producing several well-known examples including Hotshot Eastbound, a photograph of a steam train passing a drive-in movie theater, and Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole showing a train crossing a bridge above children bathing. O. Winston Link and his siblings, Eleanor and Albert Jr., spent their childhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, where they lived with their parents, Albert Link, Sr. and Anne Winston Jones Link. Link's given names honor ancestors Alexander Ogle and John Winston Jones, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 19th century. Al Link taught woodworking in the New York City Public School system, and encouraged his children's interest in arts and crafts, and first introduced Winston to photography. Link's early photography was created with a borrowed medium format Autographic Kodak camera. By the time he was in high school, he had built his own photographic enlarger. After completing high school, Link attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, receiving a degree in civil engineering. Before his graduation in 1937, he spoke at a banquet for the institute's newspaper, where he served as photo editor. An executive from Carl Byoir's public relations firm was present and was impressed by Link's speaking ability. He offered Link a job as a photographer. O. Winston Link worked for Carl Byoir and Associates for five years, learning his trade on the job. He adapted to the technique of making posed photographs looking candid, as well as creatively emphasizing a point. On his first major assignment, to photograph part of the state of Louisiana in the summer of 1937, he found himself in New Iberia, the location where Cecil B. DeMille's 1938 movie "The Buccaneer", about Jean LaFitte was being filmed. Here he met his future first wife, a former Miss Ark-La-Tex, now actress/model/body double, Vanda Marteal Oglesby, who stood-in for lead actress Franciska Gaal. They 'took a shine' to one another and later that year she posed for some of his photographs in the French Quarter of New Orleans. They eventually married in 1942, but later divorced. Some of Link's photographs from this time included an image of a man aiming a gun at a pig wearing a bulletproof vest, and one eventually known as What Is This Girl Selling? or Girl on Ice, which was widely published in the United States and later featured in Life as a "classic publicity picture. According to Thomas Garver, a later assistant to Link, during his employment at Byoir's firm, Link "clearly defined a point of view and developed working methods that were to shape his entire career." While in Staunton, Virginia, for an industrial photography job in 1955, O. Winston Link's longstanding love of railroads became focused on the nearby Norfolk and Western Railway line. N&W was the last major (Class I) railroad to make the transition from steam to diesel motive power and had refined its use of steam locomotives, earning a reputation for "precision transportation." Link took his first night photograph of the road on January 21, 1955, in Waynesboro, Virginia. On May 29, 1955 the N&W announced its first conversion to diesel and Link's work became a documentation of the end of the steam era. He returned to Virginia for about twenty visits to continue photographing the N&W. His last night shot was taken in 1959 and the last of all in 1960, the year the road completed the transition to diesel, by which time he had accumulated 2400 negatives on the project. Although it was entirely self-financed, Link's work was encouraged and facilitated by N&W officials, from President Robert Hall Smith downwards. Besides the locomotives, he captured the people of the N&W performing their jobs on the railroad and in the trackside communities. Some of his images were of the massive Roanoke Shops, where the company had long built and maintained its own locomotives. O. Winston Link's images were always meticulously set up and posed, and he chose to take most of his railroad photographs at night. He said "I can't move the sun — and it's always in the wrong place — and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting." Although others, including Philip Hastings and Jim Shaughnessy, had photographed locomotives at night before, Link's vision required him to develop new techniques for flash photography of such large subjects. For instance, the movie theater image Hotshot Eastbound (Iaeger, West Virginia), photographed on August 2, 1956 [negative NW1103], used 42 #2 flashbulbs and one #0 fired simultaneously. Link, with an assistant such as George Thom, had to lug all his equipment into position and wire it up: this was done in series so any failure would prevent a picture being taken at all; and in taking night shots of moving trains the right position for the subject could only be guessed at. Link used a 4 x 5 Graphic View view camera with black and white film, from which he produced silver gelatin prints. From 1960 until he retired in 1983 Link devoted himself to advertising. Among notable pictures taken during this period are those recording construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and other views of New York Harbor including the great ocean liners. In retirement, Link moved to South Salem, Westchester County, New York. In 1996, Link's second wife, Conchita, was arrested for (and later convicted of) stealing a collection of Link's photographs and attempting to sell them, claiming that Link had Alzheimer's disease and that she had power of attorney. She served six years in prison. After being released, she again attempted to sell some of Link's works that she had stolen, this time using the Internet auction site eBay. She received a three-year sentence. Conchita was also accused of imprisoning her husband. However, this allegation is disputed by some, and it never led to any criminal charges against Conchita. The story of Winston and Conchita became the subject of the documentary "The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover" (2005) made by Paul Yule. Link made a cameo appearance as a steam locomotive engineer in the 1999 film October Sky. He was actively involved with the planning of a museum of his work when he suffered a heart attack near his home in South Salem. He was transported to Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, Westchester County, NY where he died on January 30, 2001. Mr. Link was interred adjacent to his parents in Elmwood Cemetery, Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, West Virginia.Source: Wikipedia Link's reasons for shooting at night were simple. For one, it was more romantic and dramatic. For Link the trains were comparable to Garbo and Dietrich at their most glamorous. Secondly, steam from the trains against a night sky photographed white. Against a day sky it came out a dirty grey. Whatever the circumstances, Link's pictures were an intense labor of love. Indeed, he discovered, shortly after starting the Norfolk and Western project, that no one was much interested in photographs of a fast disappearing mode of transport. This was, after all, the beginning of the era of the great American car. At first Link's photographs were appreciated for their combination of nostalgia, technical virtuosity, and – partly due to Link's famously cranky character and disposition - almost outsider artist's vision. But as photography has moved on, Link's work is increasingly seen and appreciated for the degree to which he controlled, planned, and constructed each image, prefiguring such well known contemporary artists as Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, both of whom willingly acknowledge their interest in and appreciation of Link's work. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe and in Japan and is present in numerous major museum collections around the world. His rail photography is exhibited at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia, refurbished by the famous industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, which opened in 2004.Source: Danziger Gallery
Alireza Sahebi
Alireza Sahebi
Iran
1994
Alireza Sahebi is an Iranian portrait photographer born in 1994. He became interested in photography as a teenager and when he started working in a photography studio. He then continued his studies in the field of visual communication at the University of Art and Architecture. He chose portrait photography because of his interest in exploring and recognizing the spirits and inner thoughts of human beings. He continues to photograph using different genres because it is a unique language with many dialects and it allows him to communicate with people around the world. Statement Have you heard a sound louder than the sound of your eyes? The eyes are alive٫ they understand٫ they talk٫ they fall in love٫ the eyes are all the existence and non-existence of people. The eyes have an identity card, and if they have the opportunity, they will ruthlessly expel all their presence and absence. I found photography as a way to discover and express the inner selves of human beings and I tried to find a non-verbal, universal and meaningful language and I did not find it except in my eyes
Joel Sternfeld
Joel Sternfeld
United States
1944
Joel Sternfeld (born June 30, 1944) is an American fine-art color photographer. He is noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and helping establish color photography as a respected artistic medium. Sternfeld's work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sternfeld earned a BA from Dartmouth College and teaches photography at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He began taking color photographs in 1970 after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Color is an important element of his photographs. American Prospects (1987) is Sternfeld's most known book and explores the irony of human-altered landscapes in the United States. To make the book, Sternfeld photographed ordinary things, including unsuccessful towns and barren-looking landscapes. On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (1997), is about violence in America. Sternfeld photographed sites of recent tragedies. Next to each photograph is text about the events that happened at that location. From 1991 to 1994 Sternfeld worked with Melinda Hunt to document New York City's public cemetery on Hart Island, resulting in the book Hart Island (1998). Sternfeld has also published books about social class and stereotypes in America: Stranger Passing (2001), an abandoned elevated railway in New York: Walking the High Line (2002), and Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006). When It Changed (2007) contains close-up portraits of delegates debating global warming at the 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal.Source: Wikipedia Joel Sternfeld is an artist-photographer whose work is concerned with utopic and dystopic possibilities of the American experience. Ever since the publication of his landmark study, American Prospects in 1987 his work has maintained conceptual and political aspects, while also being steeped in history, art history, landscape theory and attention to seasonal passage. It is a melancholic, spectacular, funny and profound portrait of America. The curator Kevin Moore has claimed that the work embodies the “synthetic culmination of so many photographic styles of the 1970s, incorporating the humor and social perspicacity of street photography with the detached restraint of New Topographics photographs and the pronounced formalism of works by so many late-decade colorists” (Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980). On This Site (1996) examines violence in America while simultaneously raising significant epistemological questions about photographs as objects of knowledge. Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006) “can be seen as a generous respite from the traumatic history in On This Site... It is a survey of American human socialization, alternative ways of living, of hopeful being” (Elin O’Hara Slavik, 2018). All his subsequent work has sought to expand the narrative possibilities of still photography primarily through an authored text. All of his books and bodies of work converse with each other and may be read as a collective whole. His work represents a melding of time and place that serves to elucidate, honor, and warn. The images hold a certain urgency, as their histories survive solely through their photographic representation— they are an archive for the future. Sternfeld is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and spent a year in Italy on a Rome Prize. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he holds the Noble Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History.Source: www.joelsternfeld.net Joel Sternfeld is well known for large-format color photographs that extend the tradition of chronicling roadside America initiated by Walker Evans in the 1930s. Sternfeld's projects have consistently explored the possibility of a collective American identity by documenting ordinary people and places throughout the country. Each project he embarks on is bound by a concept that imbues it with subtle irony, often through insightful visual juxtapositions or by pairing images with informational text. Another characteristic aspect of Sternfeld's work is that color is never arbitrary; it functions in highly sophisticated ways to connect elements and resonate emotion. Sternfeld earned a BA in Art from Dartmouth College in 1965. He began making color photographs in the 1970s after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. He initially made street photographs with small- and medium-format cameras, but by the time he produced what would become a seminal project, American Prospects (1987), he was working with an eight-by-ten-inch camera. This enabled him to achieve the crisp details his work is known for. Sternfeld's style-his careful attention to visual qualities combined with an insightful and often ironic view of his subjects was first articulated in American Prospects. One of his best-known images, for example, depicts a fireman shopping for a pumpkin as a house burns in the background. The pumpkins' vibrant oranges match the autumnal colors of the countryside, and ironically, the fire's flames.Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum
David Seymour (Chim)
David Seymour (Chim)
United States
1911 | † 1956
David Seymour, also known as Chim, was a Polish-born photographer who is best known for his work as a member of the photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. He was born in 1911 in Warsaw, Poland and spent his early years studying in Germany before moving to France in 1933. Seymour's interest in photography began at a young age, and he quickly became skilled in the art of photography. He began his professional career as a photographer in Paris, working for various newspapers and magazines. In 1936, he joined the photographic cooperative Magnum Photos, which was founded by photographers Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Chim told me not to follow too closely the advice of Capa, and Capa told me not to take any notice of Henri’s advice. So I was a bit mixed up and went to see George Rodger... and he said, “Don’t listen to any of them, only to me.” -- Marc Riboud, on joining the Magnum photo agency in 1953 As a member of Magnum Photos, David Seymour traveled extensively, capturing powerful images of people and events from around the world. He covered a wide range of subjects, including politics, war, and social issues. He was particularly known for his ability to capture the humanity of his subjects, and his images often conveyed a sense of empathy and compassion. Seymour's work as a war photographer began during World War II, when he covered the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. He was one of the first photographers to document the horrors of the Holocaust, and his images of concentration camps and Jewish ghettos are among his most powerful and moving works. In 1948, David Seymour traveled to Palestine to cover the Arab-Israeli conflict, and his images of the fighting and the suffering of the Palestinian people helped to raise awareness of the issue around the world. He also covered the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, and the Hungarian Revolution, and his images of these conflicts were widely published in newspapers and magazines. In addition to his work as a war photographer, Seymour also documented social issues and political events. He covered the civil rights movement in the United States, and his images of the struggles of African Americans helped to raise awareness of the issue. He also covered the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro, and his images of the revolution and its aftermath helped to shape the way that the world viewed Cuba and its leader. Seymour's work as a photographer was widely recognized and respected during his lifetime, and he received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to the field of photography. He was a member of the French Legion of Honor, and in 1957 he was awarded the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal for his contributions to photojournalism. Despite his success as a photographer, Seymour's life was cut short when he was killed in 1956 while covering the Suez Crisis in Egypt. He was only 45 years old at the time of his death, but his legacy as a photographer lives on through his powerful images and his influence on the field of photojournalism. Today, Seymour's work continues to be widely admired and studied, and his images are considered to be some of the most powerful and important photographs of the 20th century. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications, and his images continue to inspire and influence photographers around the world. David Seymour Chim was a remarkable photographer who was able to capture the essence of humanity and the complexities of human nature. His photographs are moving and powerful, and his ability to document the world's most significant events and moments in history is a testament to his skill and dedication to his craft. His legacy as a photographer lives on, and his work will continue to be appreciated for generations to come.
Antti Yrjönen
Antti Yrjönen
Finland
1992
Antti Yrjönen is a Finnish photojournalist and documentary photographer with over a decade of experience reporting internationally and at home. He works across media and humanitarian contexts, covering conflict, displacement and everyday life in places including Somalia, Syria, South Sudan and Ukraine, while also returning to stories closer to home. He is drawn to stories that can’t be understood in a single visit. Yrjönen revisits places, people and movements over time, building relationships without surrendering his position as a journalist. He works from a simple premise: you cannot photograph what you do not understand. That insistence on understanding shapes both his reporting and the way he edits, sequencing images to create clarity rather than noise. His photographs look for nuance and for the small details that hold a larger story in place, sometimes through quiet humour or a hint of the surreal. For Yrjönen, humour is not a distraction from difficult realities but part of them: a sign of life, especially in hard times. Alongside visual work, he writes on visual culture, journalism ethics, media critique and press freedom, and he occasionally lectures on responsible photojournalism and conflict reporting. His work has been published internationally by outlets including The New York Times, BBC, Le Temps, Bloomberg, Haaretz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Condé Nast Traveller, Helsingin Sanomat and Suomen Kuvalehti, and he has received multiple awards for his photography. He studied photojournalism at Tampere University and is currently developing a long-term book project on polycrisis at the intersection of conflict, climate change and food security. Statement "Photography is how I stay present. Being there matters, but so does being in the moment. I return to the same places and people because understanding takes time, and because you can’t photograph what you don’t understand. My work follows power up and down its chain, from policy rooms to street corners and back again, looking for the human consequences of politics, conflict and crisis. Sometimes a quiet humour slips in, not to soften reality, but to tell it honestly." Awarded Photographer of the Week - Week 05, 2026
David Bailey
David Bailey
United Kingdom
1938
David Royston Bailey CBE (born 2 January 1938) is an English fashion and portrait photographer. David Bailey was born at Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone, to Herbert Bailey, a tailor's cutter, and his wife, Gladys a machinist. From the age of three he lived in East Ham. Bailey developed a love of natural history, and this led him into photography. Suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he experienced problems at school. He attended a private school, Clark's College in Ilford, where he says they taught him less than the more basic council school. As well as dyslexia he also has the motor skill disorder dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder). In one school year, he claims he only attended 33 times. He left school on his fifteenth birthday, to become a copy boy at the Fleet Street offices of the Yorkshire Post. He raced through a series of dead-end jobs, before his call up for National Service in 1956, serving with the Royal Air Force in Singapore in 1957. The appropriation of his trumpet forced him to consider other creative outlets, and he bought a Rolleiflex camera. He was demobbed in August 1958, and determined to pursue a career in photography, he bought a Canon rangefinder camera. Unable to obtain a place at the London College of Printing because of his school record, he became a second assistant to David Ollins, in Charlotte Mews. He earned £3 10s (£3.50) a week, and acted as studio dogsbody. He was delighted to be called to an interview with photographer John French. In 1959, Bailey became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in May 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole's Studio Five, before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year. He also undertook a large amount of freelance work. Along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, Bailey captured and helped create the 'Swinging London' of the 1960s: a culture of fashion and celebrity chic. The three photographers socialized with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers, named by Norman Parkinson "the Black Trinity". The film Blowup (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, depicts the life of a London fashion photographer who is played by David Hemmings, whose character was inspired by Bailey. The "Swinging London" scene was aptly reflected in his Box of Pin-Ups (1964): a box of poster-prints of 1960s celebrities including Terence Stamp, The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Jean Shrimpton, PJ Proby, Cecil Beaton, Rudolf Nureyev and East End gangsters, the Kray twins. The Box was an unusual and unique commercial release. It reflected the changing status of the photographer that one could sell a collection of prints in this way. Strong objection to the presence of the Krays by fellow photographer, Lord Snowdon, was the major reason no American edition of the "Box" was released, and that a second British edition was not issued. The record sale for a copy of 'Box of Pin-Ups' is reported as "north of £20,000". At Vogue Bailey was shooting covers within months, and, at the height of his productivity, he shot 800 pages of Vogue editorial in one year. Penelope Tree, a former girlfriend, described him as "the king lion on the Savannah: incredibly attractive, with a dangerous vibe. He was the electricity, the brightest, most powerful, most talented, most energetic force at the magazine". American Vogue's creative director Grace Coddington, then a model herself, said "It was the Sixties, it was a raving time, and Bailey was unbelievably good-looking. He was everything that you wanted him to be – like the Beatles but accessible – and when he went on the market everyone went in. We were all killing ourselves to be his model, although he hooked up with Jean Shrimpton pretty quickly". Of model Jean Shrimpton, Bailey said: "She was magic and the camera loved her too. In a way she was the cheapest model in the world – you only needed to shoot half a roll of film and then you had it. She had the knack of having her hand in the right place, she knew where the light was, she was just a natural." Since 1966, Bailey has also directed several television commercials and documentaries. From 1968 to 1971 he directed and produced TV documentaries titled Beaton, Warhol and Visconti. As well as fashion photography, Bailey photographed album sleeve art for musicians including The Rolling Stones and Marianne Faithfull. One of Bailey's most famous works depicts the Rolling Stones including Brian Jones, who drowned in 1969 while under the influence of drink and drugs. He is seen standing slightly apart from the rest of the group. Bailey was hired in 1970 by Island Records' Chris Blackwell to shoot publicity photos of Cat Stevens for his upcoming album Tea for the Tillerman. Stevens, who is now known as Yusuf Islam maintains that he disliked having his photo on the cover of his albums, as had previously been the case, although he allowed Bailey's photographs to be placed on the inner sleeve of the album. In 1972, rock singer Alice Cooper was photographed by Bailey for Vogue magazine, almost naked apart from a snake. Cooper used Bailey the following year to shoot for the group's chart-topping 'Billion Dollar Babies' album. The shoot included a baby wearing shocking eye makeup and, supposedly, one billion dollars in cash requiring the shoot to be under armed guard. In 1976, Bailey published Ritz Newspaper together with David Litchfield. In 1985, Bailey was photographing stars at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. As he recalled later: "The atmosphere on the day was great. At one point I got a tap on my shoulder and spun round. Suddenly there was a big tongue down my throat! It was Freddie Mercury." In October 2020 Bailey's Memoir "Look Again" in co-operation with author James Fox was published by Macmillan Books a review on his life and work.Source: Wikipedia David Bailey is an English fashion photographer best known for his images of celebrities, models, and musicians. Though he is also known for his photography book NWI (1982), which documented the process of gentrification in the London neighborhoods of Primrose Hill and Camden. Born on January 2, 1938 in London, United Kingdom, Bailey dropped out of high school to serve in the Royal Air Force where he developed an interest in the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Returning to England, Bailey began working as the fashion photographer John French’s assistant. Over the course of the 1960s and 70s, the artist gained attention from the press after a string of high-profile marriages to Jean Shrimpton, Catherine Deneuve, and Marie Helvin. In 1965, he published his first photography book Box of Pin-Ups, a collection of black-and-white images portraying Mick Jagger, The Beatles, Twiggy, and Andy Warhol, along with several other celebrity figures. Bailey has gone on to receive the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2016 a Lifetime Achievement award from the International Center of Photography in New York. The artist’s photographs are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Bailey currently lives and works in London, United Kingdom.Source: Artnet
Shuwei Liu
Shuwei Liu
China
1985
Shuwei Liu (b.1985) was born in Tangshan and currently lives in Shanghai, China. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Guangdong University of Technology in 2009, then he decided to do what he really love such as photography, design and writing. He's a finalist of LensCulture Portrait Awards 2016. His works got exhibited internationally include Power Station of Art, the State Hermitage Museum, Artefiera Bologna, JIMEI × ARLES Photo Festival Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Vu Photo. He was an residency artist in Vermont Studio Center, Red Gate residency and granted by them, and was awarded Fine Art "First Place" by PDN, and he was a finalist of LensCulture Portrait Awards, Three Shadows Photography Awards, Barcelona International Photography Awards, British Journal of Photography, described as "Ones to Watch" talents and Photovogue Festival.All about Childhood Revisited"Childhood is a human water, a water which comes out of the shadows. This childhood in the mists and glimmers, this life in the slowness of limbo gives us a certain layer of birth... " Gaston Bachelard "Childhood is not a thing which dies within us and dries up as soon as it has completed its cycle. It is not a memory. It is the most living of treasures, and it continues to enrich us without our knowing it." Franz Hellens All about Visible Darkness "Visible darkness" is a part of my "Blue" trilogy. When I discovered 4 moon-like crescents at the base of my corneas, I thought I was going to lose sight. The anxiety reminded me of Derek Jarman's "Blue is darkness made visible." , blue was the only thing he could see before he went blind. Meanwhile I was hiding in my own corner, chasing the color blue, turned out to be adjusting the distance between the world and me. Blue itself is just like distance, not reachable.
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