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Max Dupain

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan, 1980
by Nicholas Callaway

b: 1912 Detroit / 1999 Atlanta

Wikipedia rearranged,

Harry Morey Callahan was born in Detroit, Michigan. He worked at Chrysler when he was a young man then left the company to study engineering at Michigan State University. He dropped out, returned to Chrysler and joined its camera club. Callahan met his future wife, Eleanor Knapp, on a blind date in 1933. At that time she was a secretary at Chrysler Motors in Detroit and he was a clerk. They married three years later. Their daughter Barbara was born in 1950.

Callahan began teaching himself photography in 1938. He formed a friendship with Todd Webb who was also to become a photographer. A talk given by Ansel Adams in 1941 inspired him to take his work seriously. In 1941, Callahan and Webb visited Rocky Mountain State Park but didn't return with any photographs. In 1946 he was invited to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy. He moved to Rhode Island in 1961 to establish a photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching there until his retirement in 1977.
Callahan left almost no written records—no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk through the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.
He photographed his wife and daughter and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. Even prior to birth, his daughter showed up in photographs of Eleanor's pregnancy. From 1948 to 1953 Eleanor, and sometimes Barbara, were shown out in the landscape as a tiny counterpoint to large expanses of park, skyline or water.
He also worked with multiple exposures. Callahan's work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He encouraged his students to turn their cameras on their own lives, leading by example. Callahan photographed his wife over a period of fifteen years, as his prime subject. Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere—at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close. He tried several technical experiments—double and triple exposure, blurs, large and small format film.
Callahan was one of the few innovators of modern American photography noted as much for his work in color as for his work in black and white. In 1955 Edward Steichen included his work in The Family of Man, MoMA's popular international touring exhibition.

Callahan died in Atlanta in 1999. He left behind 100,000 negatives and over 10,000 proof prints. The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which actively collects, preserves and makes available individual works by 20th-century North American photographers, maintains his photographic archives. His estate is represented in New York City by the Pace/MacGill Gallery. His wife Eleanor died on February 28, 2012 in a hospice in Atlanta at the age of 95. In 2013, the Vancouver Art Gallery received the extraordinary gift of almost 600 Callahan photographs from the Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation. Wikipedia

sources - Wikipedia

links - The Tate

Juno Calypso

Juno Calypso
by Luke Fullalove

b: 1989

Juno Calypso received the 2018 RPR Vic Odden award (given for "notable achievement in the art of photography for practitioners under 35 years old"). The RPS Journal sub-headline states, "[this] photographic artist goes incognito to examine female stereotypes and self-perception". The text continues, "Using an alterego, Joyce, created while Calypso was studying at the London College of Communication, the artist acts out solitary rituals of desire and disappointment in her grandmother's house, bedrooms rented online and lurid hotel rooms".

Wikipedia quotes Calypso as saying,

I used to take pictures of Joyce as a way of making a critique on the laboured construction of femininity, but now I’m starting to see that the problem isn’t the make-up and bizarre body improvement devices, but the way society treats women who invest so deeply in their appearance. Dazed (15 May 2018)

sources - Wikipedia [accessed 6 November 2018]

links - artist's web site

added 6Nov18

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron, 1870
by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron

b: 1815 Calcutta / d: Ceylon 1879

One of Peter Stepan's 50 Photographers You Should Know.

Cameron features in I&P Part 1.

Wikipedia's description is,

known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary or heroic themes.
Cameron's photographic career was short, spanning eleven years of her life (1864–1875). She took up photography at the relatively late age of 48, when she was given a camera as a present. Her style was not widely appreciated in her own day: her choice to use a soft focus and to treat photography as an art as well as a science, by manipulating the wet collodion process, caused her works to be viewed as "slovenly", marred by "mistakes" and bad photography. She found more acceptance among pre-Raphaelite artists than among photographers. Her work has influenced modern photographers, especially her closely cropped portraits. wikipedia

sources - Wikipedia, Stepan (2008)

links - V&A

added 1Dec18

Robert Capa

Robert Capa

b: 1933 Budapest / d: 1954 Thai Binh, Vietnam

One of Peter Stepan's 50 Photographers You Should Know.

Capa is introduced in Part 3 of the EyV course, Traces of Time, dealing with the shutter. The course shows his famous shot from the D-Day landings (fig. 2) and comments that although he took "sharper and clearer" [p. 61] images that day, this captured the public's imagination with the motion blur conveying the immediacy of the event.

Capa was born in Hungary to Jewish parents, moved to Berlin to work and study and then to Paris when the Nazis came to power. His most famous work was done covering various conflicts and he was killed by a landmine while documenting the French action in Vietnam.

Perhaps even more well known than the D-Day image is Death of a loyalist soldier (fig. 1) from the Spanish Civil War, although its authenticity is still debated. Capa associated with and photographed other celebrities such as Hemingway and Picasso (fig. 3). In 1947, he founded the first co-operative photo-agency, Magnum, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Vandivert, David Seymour, and George Rodger.

Capa is quoted as saying,

If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough Robert Capa

sources - Wikipedia, Stepan (2008)

links - Magnum

Francesco Capponi

Francesco Capponi, self portrait, PoGo print

b:

Capponi occupies an entertaining chapter in Experimental Photography, a Handbook of Techniques. It describes him as,

A self-defined 'non-photographer' committed to reviving the magic of taking pictures, … [his] whimsical, sculptural pinhole cameras transform photography from automatic gesture to entertaining performance. Exp pp. 46-51

The experiments listed are:

a pinhole camera in a top hat that photographs the magician's rabbit inside
Pinholo - the one-shot portrait pinhole camera made from a pine nut
Pinorigami - a stenopeic origami camera
Stenopeic Piano which has 37 pinholes with shutters triggered by the keyboard
Chair en Boîte - one-shot wet-plate collodion tintypes made from sweet tins
PoGo - digital "polaroids" using thermoactive till-rolls, see self-portrait above

Capponi's web site shows later projects including the Pinhegg.

sources - szic, designboom, lomography

links - artists's web site

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson's first Leica

b: 1908 Chanteloup-en-Brie, France / d: 2004 Céreste, France

The Decisive Moment is discussed here.

Cartier-Bresson is introduced in Part 3 of the EyV course, Traces of Time, dealing with the shutter. And in Context & Narrative, discussing reportage.
Although he is one of the most influential photographers of C20th, a fine early exponent of the 35mm Leica (image from Wikipedia), the man who coined the term "decisive moment", and who with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos.

He also took some great snaps, but the decisive moment as a concept has lost its shine in recent years. The course material calls it "something of a stylistic cliché" (p.69) and states "it somehow just misses the point of our contemporary situation" (ibid.). In my view, as stated in the blog, "Cartier-Bresson was an early master of Oskar Barnack's 35mm Leica (links to Wikipedia), first sold in 1930 … for the previous 100 years of photography, the sensitivity of films had gradually increased, as had the speed and versatility of lenses: equally important for this new style of photography, with the Leica, cameras were suddenly less cumbersome, allowing impulsive and impromptu street photography. This was the first time that photographs of "the moment", decisive or otherwise, had been possible. The innovation lies more with Barnack who enabled the concept, rather than Cartier-Bresson".

In his book on the Decisive Moment (1952), he states,

Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move. Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment

sources - Wikipedia

links

Joël Chassaing-Cuvillier

self portrait
© Joël Chassaing-Cuvillier

born: Paris

Regular readers will recall that urinals were one of the subjects I ran with for C&N Asg.2. Though I failed to find a quorum of interesting examples to populate an assignment, one from Wetherspoon, Bromley made it through to Forbidden Zones and it remains one of my favourite images from the course so far.

This morning's (10Apr21) L’Œil de la Photographie includes a portfolio on the subject from Joël Chassaing-Cuvillier.

J.C-C says,

WC of the world.
In these intimate places discovered and frequented by force on numerous trips around the world, it was not the object’s primary function that mattered to me. Beyond this, I retained the elaborate design of the sanitary furniture, the structured graphics of the floors and walls which often highlight the object itself.
Out of the hundred urinals that I have been able to photograph since the early 1980s, this short selection has been guided by the evolution of shapes over the ages. The architecture, the design of the washbasins, their arrangement were often the starting point of my approach. Oddly enough, whether it is places where luxury is omnipresent or toilets in soulless bistros, I have never seen the same urinal twice. Some will see in the keeping of places a link with the wealth of a country, in fact cleanliness or neglect has no borders. Only Japan stands out by offering completely immaculate toilets regardless of the category. This betrays the importance that this country places on this place of passage where you never fear to go there.
J.C-C Joël Chassaing-Cuvillier

links - site

added - 10Apr21

Alexia Clorinda

Alexia Clorinda,
Linkedin image

b: Italy

Clorinda is quoted in Part 5 of EyV,

I don’t pretend that I can describe the ‘other’. The camera for me is more a meter that measures the distance between myself and the other. It’s about the encounter between myself and the other; it’s not about the other. EyV p. 102

Clorinda is self-described on Linkedin as, "Art historian, Cultural Critic, Lecturer, Researcher, Photographer" (Linkedin).

Fig. 1 is the image used in the course material to illustrate the above quote. It is not named in the text. Fig. 2 is attributed to Clorinda on Visura.

links - artist's web site, Linkedin

added - 27Apr19

Thomas Joshua Cooper

Thomas Joshua Cooper, Bella Bathurst

b: 1946, San Francisco

Cooper features in Higgins' Why it does not have to be in focus (Higgins, 2013, pp. 176-7).

Higgins states that

Cooper made a monkish vow, which remains unbroken to 'make art only with my 1898 Agfa camera, to only make images outdoors, and to only ever make one image in any one place'. Why it doe not have to be in focus (Higgins, 2013, p. 175)

Cooper takes his Agfa-Ansco 5x7 field camera to remote and inaccessible places surrounding the Atlantic (identified from a copy of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World) and names his images with precision.

Copper's devotion to his restrictive task might be considered excessive.

sources - Wikipedia

links - Tate

added - 14Apr19

John Coplans

John Coplans

b: 1920 London / d: 2003 New York

Coplans, for most of his life better known as an "artist, art writer, curator, and museum director" (Wikipedia) only took up photography at the age of 60 when he began a series of naked self portraits, always excluding his face.

Wikipedia describes his inventive methodolgy thus,

His technique for making the photographs involved use of Polaroid positive/negative 4x5 film, so that he could quickly see the result of the poses and make immediate adjustments. He later used a video camera connected to a television monitor to see the back of the 4x5 camera for an even more immediate mirror effect. Wikipedia

Read Coplans' instructions for the treartment of his ashes here.

sources - Wikipedia

links - Carl Solway Gallery, The John Coplans Trust

added - 19Jan19

Gianluca Cosci

Gianluca Cosci

b: 1970 Sant'Elpidio a Mare, Italy

Born in Italy, Cosci lived, studied and worked in London from 1999-2011.
Cosci is cited in the course material [EyV p.50] as an exponent of shallow depth of field and his Panem Et Circenses series is referred to. The link is to that page on the artist's web site.
Cosci is not mentioned in any of the photography books to hand, nor, even, in Wikipedia. His web site includes a 2016 interview with Kevin Byrne in which he says of himself,

I don't really consider myself a "photographer" rather an artist without a defined, strict identity… Sure, photography has been and still is incredibly important for me but also like painting, or ready-mades … gianluca-cosci.com

and of Panem Et Circenses,

[it] was taken exclusively around the Millennium Dome which at that time was a depressing no man's land after being open for only 12 months in 2000. It was Blair's vanity project to boost his image as "presidential" prime minister. That white elephant with a price tag of nearly one billion pounds of tax payers' money was standing empty while he was declaring war against Iraq. I had the need to work on that specific place in that moment. gianluca-cosci.com

Regarding the images in Panem Et Circenses, it is useful to know that they were taken around the Millenium Dome in 2002-3 when it was deserted and unused. This helps make sense of the title which translates as "bread and circuses", a phrase coined by Juvenal at around 100 A.D. to mean distractions provided by the establishment (and rich) for the poor (and unempowered). Without that information it is a series of more or less abstract photographs, some using shallow focus, with no obvious connection except weeds and the canopy in #13 and #15.

There are further comments on Cosci here.

sources Linkedin, Wikipedia

links - artist's web site

Renato D'Agostin

self portrait

b: 1983 Italy

D'Agostin's 2009 book Tokyo Untitled featured in a recent email from the Photo-eye Bookstore. It contains striking, idiosyncratic, high contrast, B&W images that almost justify the $250 (signed) price tag.

sources - Wikipedia

links - artist's web site - Photo-eye

added - 9Sep19

Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre, 1848,
by Charles Meade

b: 1787 Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France / d: 1851 Bry-sur-Marne, France

Daguerre, a successful theatre designer, went into partnership in 1829 with Nicéphore Niépce, the probable inventor of photography. After Niépce's death in 1833, Daguerre continued to research the field and in 1839 announced his invention of the daguerreotype. Wikipedia describes the process as,
"expos[ing] a thin silver-plated copper sheet to the vapour given off by iodine crystals, producing a coating of light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface. The plate was then exposed in the camera. Initially, this process, too, required a very long exposure to produce a distinct image, but Daguerre made the crucial discovery that an invisibly faint latent image created by a much shorter exposure could be chemically developed into a visible image…
The latent image … was developed by subjecting it to the vapour given off by mercury heated to 75 °C. The resulting visible image was then fixed … by removing the unaffected silver iodide with concentrated and heated salt water. Later, a solution of the more effective "hypo" … was used instead."

The two main disadvantages of the daguerreotype when compared to Fox Talbot's were that it was difficult view and, crucially, could not be reproduced.

Wikipedia states of the 1838 image Boulevard du Temple, shown below, that it "includes the earliest known candid photograph of a person. The image shows a busy street, but because the exposure had to continue for several minutes the moving traffic is not visible. At the lower left, however, a man apparently having his boots polished, and the bootblack polishing them, were motionless enough for their images to be captured."

sources -

links - Wikipedia

John Davies

John Davies
before he stopped smoking in 2011

b: 1949 County Durham, England

Davies is mentioned in the EyV course material, Part 4, in the context of the assessment criterion, Creativity.

Wikipedia states that Davies is noted for large prints of photographs taken from an elevated viewpoint and that he used medium format in the 80s, large format in the 90s and digital since. It adds, “Davies' style was a major influence on the practice of noted art photographer Andreas Gursky.”
As regards subject matter, he began taking classic landscapes but his work has concentrated increasing on urban degeneration and regeneration, including the Fuji series referred to in EyV.

sources - Wikipedia

links - artist's web site

added - 4Mar19

Venetia Deardon

Venetia Deardon

b: 1975 Brecon, Wales

Deardon is mentioned in the course material (EyV p. 15) in the context of examples for the Square Mile assignment.

Lens Culture describes her as,

a committed photographer whose close observations of friends and family relations have garnered considerable exposure since the publication of Somerset Stories, Five Penny Dreams in 2008. Her photographs often oscillate between the intimacies of friendship and kinship ties on the one hand and the wider landscape on the other, serving to contextualise her subjects and asking the viewer to reflect on the way life in the places she moves through. Her published books, “Somerset Stories, Five Penny Dreams” 2004 - 2008, “Glastonbury Another Stage”, 2003 - 2009 and her subsequent “Eight Days” - 2010 project continue to be shown internationally. lensculture.com

sources - Wikipedia

links - artist's web site, lens culture

Esteban Pastorino Diaz

Esteban Pastorino Diaz

b: 1972 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Diaz features in Higgins' Why it does not have to be in focus (Higgins, 2013, pp. 68-9).

There is little biographical information online. Higgins states that Diaz "designs and constructs different cameras for each series" of photographs. For the set featured in the book this was a medium-format slit-scan camera mounted on a car. Unlike Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip, this resulted in a single negative. The largest negative he has produced (according to Higgins, p. 68) is one 300 meters long for a photograph at the New York Marathon in 2011.

Two of the Diaz images below are from Higgins, one found online. The titles are not known.

sources - no Wikipedia record found

links - artist's web site

added - 14Apr19

Jean Dieuzaide

Jean Dieuzaide

b: 1921 Grenada-sur-Garonne / d: 2003 Toulouse

The Independent's obituary describes Dieuzaide as, "a photographer in the classic French style. He saw photography as a mystical practice, surrounded by rhetoric, and represented a European tradition which by turns was exclusive, disapproving, energetic and innovative"

As noted in the blog, he "one of the founders in 1963 of the Libre Expression group who favoured "subjective photography" and were followers of Otto Steinert. 

sources - MLC, Independent

links -

Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau

b: 1912 France / d: 1994 France

One of Peter Stepan's 50 Photographers You Should Know.

Doisneau trained in engraving and lithography. before becoming a photographer in he 1930s. He admired Kertész, Atget, and Cartier-Bresson. During WW2 he forged documents for the French Resistance. After the war, although he was contracted by Vogue, preferred street photography.

His most famous photograph is The Kiss (Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville), 1950, published in Life magazine. It was posed with actors, although a couple who thought they were the subjects sued for copyright and while Doisneau won the court case, the experience left him disillusioned.

I had not seen Les Hélicoptères before researching this entry. It is surely one of the greatest images in the history of the craft with masterly timing, perfect composition and infinite wit.

sources - Wikipedia, Stepan (2008)

links - MoMA

added - 18Dec18

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