Ethnic Portraiture

[Kimberly Anderson]

Hey gang,

I'm preparing a lecture for my documentary photography class about portraiture of specific people. I am asking them to narrow down their portraiture a bit and find a narrow group of individuals and try to give the portraits a bit of a theme and direction. Some examples of photographers I will be showing them are:

Lewis Hine
August Sander
Edward S. Curtis
Phil Borges
Don Dudenbostel
Walter Iooss

I'm looking for a broader selection, both historic and contemporary examples of photographers who have done significant bodies of work within a narrow segment of the populace.

This is kind of like you doing my homework for me, but kind of not. I enjoy learning about new photographers and the best way to do that is to ask what other people like.

Thanks for any suggestions!

[Kirk Gittings]

Miguel Gandert

[Kimberly Anderson]

Who shot the portraits of the Hispanic neighborhood around Dodger's Stadium in Los Angeles in the '50's? Medium format...B&W... Dang, can't remember.

EDIT: Don Normark

LINK (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chavezravine/album.html)

Kirk, thanks!

[jnantz]

would irving penn's (visions in a small room) fit the bill ?

[Jac@stafford.net]

Your list of photographers are mostly dead people. Culture changes.

Why seek to make distinctions where none exist, or where the lines are converging?
This is not the 19th century.

.

[Kimberly Anderson]

You teach your class, I'll teach mine.

[Walter Calahan]

Julia Margaret Cameron

Mark Ellen Mark

Lauren Greenfield

need more women on your list

[Kimberly Anderson]

I am not trying to create a list of great photographers, which all of those women certainly are. I'm looking for photographers that created bodies of work about specific groups of people. I'm not aware of any of these fine women (whom I all look up to BTW) that have made portraits in that vein. If you have any links Walter, I would LOVE to be able to share them. Especially considering that the class I am teaching is made up entirely of women. It would be nice to show more women, I agree completely.

We are doing a special unit on Dorothea Lange and will be visiting the BYU Museum of Art which has a collection of her work, and the curator of photoraphy, Diana Turnbow is an expert and an author on Lange. We will be looking at her 'Three Mormon Towns' work specifically, so her photography there certainly counts.

Thanks and keep 'em coming!

I'll do a little poking around and see what I can find.

[cowanw]

Harlem photographers
http://www2.si.umich.edu/chico/Harlem/text/photographs.html
Van Leo in Egypt
August Sander in Germany
Hashem El Madani in Lebanon

[NER]

P.H. Polk

N. Riley
http://normanrileyphotography.com

[Kimberly Anderson]

Awesome, thanks cowanw! Thanks NER!

[Kimberly Anderson]

Eudora Welty (http://eudorawelty.org/life-works/photography-art/)

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Mike Disfarmer

[Michael Clark]

Roy Decarava did a lot of work around NY. I'd say he qualifies.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Jason and Micheal, thank you! Jason...this Disfarmer guy...he's quite a character! I wish the site I found of his prints had a little larger image size...oh well, beggars can't be choosers. I like what I see from him. It fits perfectly.

[Frank_E]

hiroh kikai

Mike Johnson talked about his book on T.O.P. some time ago (I purchased it)
wonderful portraits
they would be medium format but still very good

http://www.google.ca/search?q=hiroh+kikai&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=H1iLUZiUEof5qAHUrICABw&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1408&bih=806

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroh_Kikai

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3865216013?ie=UTF8&tag=theonlinephot-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3865216013

[Doug Howk]

Josef Koudelka "Gypsies"
Tim Barnwell "The Face of Appalachia"
Paul Strand " Tir A'Mhuran"
John Francis Ficara "Black Farmers in America"
George Tice "Fields of Peace"
Shelby Lee Adams (I only have his DVD "The True Meaning of Pictures")

[Kimberly Anderson]

Yes! Keep them coming. This is an amazing collection of photographers.

[Ari]

Josef Koudelka Exiles

[Mark Sampson]

In fact, most of Strand's later work; 'Time in New England', 'Un Paese', 'La France de Profil', and several more as well.

[Scott Davis]

Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo
Martin Chambi
Sebastiao Salgado

[Thom Bennett]

Donna Pinckley: http://donnapinckley.com/

Contemporary female photographer who primarily photographs children. And, to stay within this being a large format forum, some of her more recent work is with 4x5 color. :)

[Thom Bennett]

Eudora Welty (http://eudorawelty.org/life-works/photography-art/)

There's a great Eudora Welty show at The Ogden Museum in New Orleans right now.

[Peter Lewin]

For two more still-living portraitists:
Dawoud Bey, photographs primarily people of color, and
Rineke Dijkstra, primarily adolescents

[CantikFotos]

Taiwanese photographer Ho Ching-Tai (何經泰) does very good work.

http://www.erenlai.com/index.php/en/editorials/5094-photographing-the-proletariat-an-interview-with-ho-ching-tai-and-chang-jung-lung-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hohotaitw/

As does Indonesian photographer Rio Helmi.

http://www.riohelmi.com/

And for something slightly different, Taiwan-based South African photographer Tobie Openshaw has for years specialized on Taiwanese "betel-nut beauties"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobie_openshaw/
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2007/03/01/2003350589
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut_beauty

[chacabuco]

Charles Freger has a treasure trove of fantastic work: http://www.charlesfreger.com/
Check out the pagan costumes in The Wilder Mann section

[Alan Curtis]

Michael
This might be off from what you are looking for but, Russell Lee photographed a lot of people whose common thread was poverty. He generally captured them making the best during difficult times.

[md99]

Sally Mann. Surprised she was not mentioned yet.
One of my all time favorites.
"At Twelve" certainly has a theme http://sallymann.com/selected-works/at-twelve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu0m2CY_Kb0

Nicholas Nixon
The Brown Sisters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tkyLHgnK7I) is utterly amazing. I have the book. Seeing it on youtube is a poor substitute. But again, a theme.
Various images (http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=nicholas+nixon&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ei=n0mMUemTKsa9yAG4y4GYBA&ved=0CBwQsAQ)

[Mark Sawyer]

Some edgier thoughts off the top of my head...

E. J. Bellocq's Storyville Portraits are spectacular and largely overlooked because of the subject matter.

Diane Arbus' portraits of people outsider the mainstream.

Robert Mapplethorpe's portraits of gays.

(If only portraits of pixies counted... :( )

[Scott Davis]

Philip Lorca DiCorcia, if you're going to head down that route - he did a large series on male street hustlers in LA.

[Simon Liddiard]

Joey L.

Young contemporary, uses medium format digital. http://www.joeyl.com/personal/

[Don Dudenbostel]

Hey gang,

I'm preparing a lecture for my documentary photography class about portraiture of specific people. I am asking them to narrow down their portraiture a bit and find a narrow group of individuals and try to give the portraits a bit of a theme and direction. Some examples of photographers I will be showing them are:

Lewis Hine
August Sander
Edward S. Curtis
Phil Borges
Don Dudenbostel
Walter Iooss

I'm looking for a broader selection, both historic and contemporary examples of photographers who have done significant bodies of work within a narrow segment of the populace.

This is kind of like you doing my homework for me, but kind of not. I enjoy learning about new photographers and the best way to do that is to ask what other people like.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Hine, Curtis and Sander are major heros of mine. I'm very honored to be in your list.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Don, we LOVED, LOVED, LOVED looking at your work! We just sat and stared for the longest time at the image of the KKK cross burning. It is such a beautifully-horrific image. I would have one hanging in my home if it didn't say very horrible things. It is an amazing series. I also ordered your book. Can't wait.

[Jody_S]

Hine, Curtis and Sander are major heros of mine. I'm very honored to be in your list.

The inclusion was well-earned. I'm a fan of your work, as well.

[Struan Gray]

There is a dark side to photographing ethnicity, which would be good to include, if you can handle it sensitively. Leni Riefenstahl and the Nuba is probably the canonical example from photographic histories. I have been reading about Louis Agassiz, who presents an even more interesting case. He was responsible for having many Daguerreotype portraits made of black slaves in order to collect data for a wholly racist view of human development. Ironically, the portraits are now one of the most important early collections of photographs of black people in America - there is very little other material from that era.

There are any number of photographers who have specialised in photographing foreign cultures and peoples, both as ethnographers/anthropologists, and as reporters/journalists. The autochrome collections of Nat. Geo. and the Albert Kahn are particularly extensive early examples, but there are many more. More recently, I would include Susan Meisalas' focus on Kurdistan as an exemplary high note. More art-oriented, but in a similar vein, would be Vanessa Winship's work in Turkey.

It's easy to get lost in "the other", and to forget that one of the more interesting post-modern projects was to use the tools and practices of enthnography to study the home front. Simon Roberts' "We English" is a fully up-to-date version, but Martin Parr is probably the canonical British example. A local Swedish hero is Lars Tunbjörk, whose 'Landet utom sig" is a wonderful wry look at what Swedes have made for themselves with all that peace and prosperity.

[Struan Gray]

PS: Inta Ruka is a photographer I suspect many here at LF.info would love. She photographs her home patch, and the people she knows personally, with a wonderful sense of style and empathy. Whether you would regard her work as 'ethnic' is another thing, but she's a nice example of finding art at home.

[Scott Davis]

Another "ethnographer" is Hans Silvester. I know there's been some controversy over the images he's made as to whether the decorations he has photographed people wearing are truly indigenous or if they're things he suggested to the tribesmen.

[Heroique]

Some examples of photographers I will be showing them are: …Edward S. Curtis…

Edward, where did the clock go in the second version you touched-up?

Apparently, American Indians are more authentic w/o clocks than American Indians with them.

Despite the vanishing clock, I’m still a big fan of his late 19th-C & early 20th-C vanishing Indians. One of his dry-plate Indian portraits, a very noble one, is on page 130 of Using the View Camera by Steve Simmons.

[Kimberly Anderson]

Struan, thank you for your well composed answer. You, and many others are bringing more to this thread than I had originally thought would happen. It has taken on a life of it's own. I am including this thread as a link on my class blog. I am suggesting that they start with what I have shown them in class and refer to this conversation. There are so many new photographers here to me as well that I will need time to digest it all and organize some thoughts regarding this type of photography.

Heroique, I am very aware of the controversies associated with the work that Curtis did. IMO he is still one of the greats and ought to be studied...warts and all. Thank you for attaching your examples.

Utah Valley University Summer Documentary Photography Blog (http://uvudocphotosummer2013.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-online-conversation-about-ethic.html)

[Don Dudenbostel]

Thanks again for the kind words. I really love doing that kind of work.

Of topic Michael, I broke down and bought a like new 8x10 Deardorff a week ago. Just can't live without 8x10. I'm doing some Collodion and want to shoot larger stuff than 4x5 and 5x7.

DD

[Kimberly Anderson]

Yay for 8x10!

I'm glad you're using the 'Dorff for Collodion. Personally I think the Canham is too nice to get goop all over it. I have my Century 7 8x10 for doing wet-plate at a future time perhaps.

[Wayne Lambert]

If one may be so bold as to suggest himself, I have been photographing the Purepecha in Michoacan for several years now.
Wayne

[Vincent Pidone]

Tina Barney

[bentleyR]

I'd add another vote for August Sander. His work gives a quite illuminating insight into ideas about the classification of humans in the first third of the twentieth century and also the threat such work poses for authoritarian states.

[paulr]

It's easy to get lost in "the other", and to forget that one of the more interesting post-modern projects was to use the tools and practices of enthnography to study the home front. Simon Roberts' "We English" is a fully up-to-date version, but Martin Parr is probably the canonical British example. A local Swedish hero is Lars Tunbjörk, whose 'Landet utom sig" is a wonderful wry look at what Swedes have made for themselves with all that peace and prosperity.

Yes, I think any number of photographers could be looked at through the ethnographic lens of "whiteness studies." Shelby Lee Adams, mentioned above, Susan Lipper, and Mike Smith (whose book You're Not From Around Here should probably get more attention).

[ross]

If one may be so bold as to suggest himself, I have been photographing the Purepecha in Michoacan for several years now.
Wayne

If you haven't looked at Wayne's website, you should. His photos are beautiful.

[Wayne Lambert]

Thank you very much, Jeff.

Wayne

[Kirk Gittings]

If you haven't looked at Wayne's website, you should. His photos are beautiful.

ditto

[Wayne Lambert]

Thanks, Kirk, I appreciate it.
Wayne

[Kimberly Anderson]

I keep popping in on this thread to see what new names have come up since I started it. Some AMAZING photographers doing some wonderful work. Don't let this thread die! Thanks for all who have contributed. :)