Your 10 Most Influential Photographers

[pdmoylan]

I am out of step with most here, mostly into color, but here it is:

Porter
Hyde
O'Hara
Clifton
Dykinda
Salgado
McCurry
Sexton

[r.e.]

Seeing Edward Burtynsky's manufactured landscapes show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005(?) was a revelation for me, I saw what a huge beautiful color print could be and I was off on large format. Very few photographers really grab me in terms of constantly wanting to look at their work in reproduction form-- the few being O Winston Link, Winogrand, Friedlander, and maaaybe Joel Sternfeld. I really have to see Ansel Adams prints to enjoy his work.

Hey John,

We've talked about Burtynsky, and I would have included him in my own list if it was a list of important photographers rather than personal influences.

There's a very particular sense in which I might have included Robert Frank in my list. I saw the exhibit of The Americans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and purchased the catalogue; the so-called "extended" version of The Americans, including the contact sheets, etc. What Frank did in creating The Americans is a serious education in creating a coherent artistic vision. And it is all the more an education because he was vilified for it, and presumably knew, or at least suspected, that he was going to be vilified.

On my own list, Cartier-Bresson is a proxy for photographers like Frank, Capra, Davidson, Salgado, but neither Cartier-Bresson, nor any of the others in the foregoing, did anything as pointedly political as Frank.

Off topic, if you want to check out a great book about photography, get your hands on a second-hand copy (it's out of print) of Nestor Almendros's A Man with a Camera.

While people are in the mood, maybe Kirk would create a thread on 10 most influential books?

[dasBlute]

1. eugene atget
2. walker evans
3. ansel adams
4. andre kertesz
5. josef sudek
6. paul strand
7. edward weston
8. michael kenna
9. josef koudelka
10. dorothea lange

honorable mention: roman loranc, w. eugene smith, carleton watkins

stieglitz for his ideas
bullock and baer for their california work
cartier-bresson for his timing
caponigro, barnbaum, and sexton for their prints
fredrick h. evans for the churches

[jcoldslabs]

Adams (not my favorite now, but as far as influences go....)
Strand
Steichen
Avedon
Mark Klett
Gregory Crewdson
Keith Carter
Lucas Samaras
William Garnett
Len Jenshel

Wow, all guys. Not intentional, I assure you. As for the ladies:

Julia Margaret Cameron
Margaret Bourke-White
Imogen Cunningham
Berenice Abbott
Gertrude Kasebier
Mary Ellen Mark
Diane Arbus
Cindy Sherman
Sally Mann
Anne O'keefe

[John NYC]

In no particular order...

Andre Kertesz
Lee Friedlander
Walker Evans
Henri Cartier Bresson
Jeff Wall
Robert Adams
Ansel Adams
William Eggleston
Irving Penn
Stephen Shore

[jp]

OK, in no order:

0. Eliot Porter
1. Paul Caponigro
2. Clarence H White
3. Steichen
4. Edward Curtis
5. Steiglitz
6. Karsh
7. Hurrell
8. Walter Iooss
9. Margaret bourke white

[Michael Graves]

Following the thread on 100 Most Influential photographers, here's a chance to start your own list.

This personal list is more in terms of aesthetics than format or technique i.e. I learned allot from how they see.

1) Alfred Steiglitz
2) Paul Strand
3) Wynn Bullock
4) Clarence John Laughlin
5) Edward Weston
6) Ansel Adams
7) Manuel Alvarez Bravo
8) Robert Adams
9) Richard Mizracak
10) Alec Soth

For me,

1. Wright Morris
2. Wynn Bullock
3. Fred Picker
4. Walker Evans
5. W. Eugene Smith
6. Edward Weston
7. Paul Caponigro
8. Cornelius Keyes
9. Eugene Atget
10. Dorothea Lange

[Scott Walker]

Ansel Adams
Edward Weston
Man Ray
Annie Leibovits
Salvador Dali (for his film work)
Robert Mapplethorpe
Yousuf Karsh
Paul Strand
Walker Evans
Helmut Newton

That's a tough list to come up with. I think for myself it would have been easer to list the 10 artists most influential on how I photograph things.

[Emil Schildt]

Following the thread on 100 Most Influential photographers, here's a chance to start your own list.

This personal list is more in terms of aesthetics than format or technique i.e. I learned allot from how they see.

as I see this thread (I'm ignorant, I know..) I don't know whether all the names dropped, are supposed to be influential to photography or to the photographer mentioning them.

Reading Kirk's first comment, I think he mean the photographers that have influenced him - not photography as a whole...

I just went to Götheborg and saw the latest Hasselblad winner... and was left even more ignorant than before... Didn't understand anything. Just mentioning this as a comment on whether a photographer is a winner - is famous, then I don't often get why - I could be influenced of it anyway, but in a sub consious way.. don't know.

"our" local Kirsten Klein has definitively influenced me more than most of the photographers mentioned in this thread. But noone seems to know her...

A couple of photographers, well known slipped my mind in my first post:

G Hurrell
R Koppitz
and then I have a lot of people stating that I am influenced a lot by JP Witkin...

Don't know - I made my "witkin" pictures long before I knew of him...

[edtog]

1. Don McCullin
2. Martin Parr
3. John Davies
4. Paul Graham
5. Brian Griffin
6. Mark Power
7. Denis Thorpe
8. Bill Brandt
9. Anna Fox
10. Nick Waplington