Great Photographers - A Serious Take....Your Favourites

[Paul Winstone]

Again initially by email, John D replied to the Humorous Take item that he would like to add a few other ‘Greats’:

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John D wrote:

That he would like to…

Add someone who isn't shown but should be:

Fay Godwin, Don McCullin, Nick Danziger...?
J

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I wrote:

For what it's worth my 'shortlist' of favourite Greats would include Brandt & Cartier-Bresson, as you say, plus...

Brett Weston
Josef Koudelka
Andre Kertesz
Robert Frank
Paul Caponigro
Minor White
Paul Strand
Lee Friedlander
Irving Penn
Aaron Siskind
Imogen Cunningham
Walker Evans
Wynn Bullock
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Arnold Newman
Eugene Smith
Brassai
Atget
Robert Capa
Ansel Adams
Sebastiao Salgado

Fay Godwin is good - but is she Great????
Don McCullin - yep
Nick Danziger - don't know ...will have to look up!
Of course there are many others.

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John D wrote:

Gosh, you've give that a lot of thought. I'll have to go away and do the same.

For my money Godwin does for the English landscape what Ansel Adams did for the US national parks, but does it with a lot less fuss.
Danziger is a photojournalist, a bit of a dilettante but has his moments.

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I replied to John:


Not a lot of work really. It was largely a list I prepared a few months ago for a friend's daughter studying A level photography. She asked for some help and I suggested, amongst other things, that she might take a look at some images from the acknowledged greats on the web and in some books I had. So it was largely a cut & paste job...but they are the Greats I like most.


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Gordon wrote:

Such knowledge! I'm impressed. Where's my encyclopaedia of Photography , so I can look up all of these NEW photographers.


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I replied to Gordon:

Hi Gordon,

By way of explanation, I went to an evening class for several years in London in my late 20's run by Gerry Badger, who at the time wrote reviews for the BJP. He exposed us to all that stuff and more, as well as new portfolios arriving to the BJ for review. It was full of high powered art photographers, half using large format, or putting on shows at the Photographers Gallery, etc.. . It was a brilliant class that ran for about three years before the City Lit realised that the same people attended every year, effectively as a social group.

Now Gerry writes expensive glossy books on the history of photography. The boy done good!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genius-Photography-Gerry-Badger/dp/1844003639
http://www.foto8.com/item--Collecting-Photography-By-Gerry-Badger--...


The real surprise is that, with all that exposure to quality, I still take a load of rubbish;-)


Cheers,


Paul

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If interested many of these photographers can be found at http://www.masters-of-photography.com/ as well as all over the web if you Google them.

What would be interesting on this thread would be to hear everyone else’s favourites and at the same time hopefully discover some new photographers we are unaware of.

Cheers,

Paul


PS Obviously this wouldn’t be the usual way to start a thread, but to get things going I have summarised a couple of items that started as email correspondence.

[Matt ::]

There's no way my brain can work well enough to come up with a list :-(

Though quite often see I collections of work in magazines I have never heard of who are quire fabulous, and would often rather emulate than the 'greats'; like Ira Bordo (I had to go and look her up!).

When I scour boot fairs and charity shops, the next book I want to get it something of Man Ray. He would be definitely in my top very few.