Your favorite photographers and genres?

[germansaram]

I recently discovered Jon Paul's photography for myself.

[Julian Flynn]

My first photographic loves were Eugene Atget, Sally Mann and Mary Ellen Mark.

I soon fell in love with Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Friedlander, Frank, Walker Evans, Bill Brandt, Josef Sudek. I've soft-spots for Witkin, the Bernd and Hilla Becher, Winogrand, Julia Margaret Cameron, Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, August Sander, Harry Callahan, Stephen Shore, William Klein...

I could go on and on. My real photographic love has always been looking at photographs - whilst producing photographs is fun and rewarding I get a more profound reward from looking at photographs - I like slightly arid, boring, photographs, that slowly reveal themselves. Atget does this - most of his photos are quite dull at first sight, but if you stay with them, if you take them seriously, all of a sudden they can blossom into a miraculous but subtle beauty.

I guess my tastes are 'formalist' - and, yes, I tend to go for black and white work - not that I dislike colour, but I think colour can very easily submerge the compositional element of photography, colour being such a dominant and visceral thing, it - compositions have to be bolder to make themselves felt. I think Stephen Shore is an exception to this.

[Paul Coy]

Arthur Fellig