Unit 4: Blog Entry

Research and write a paragraph summary about four 20th century photographers of your choice. Each photographer needs to have a paragraph written about them each. You are to include two images of work from each of the four photographers (research online) with each summary. 
Here are some photographers from which you can choose.  

• Henri Cartier Bresson
• Ansel Adams
• Edward Weston
• Jerry Uelsman
• Minor White
• Alfred Stieglitz
• Eugene Atget
• Man Ray
• Walker Evans
• Cindy Sherman

Man Ray

Man Ray

Born on August 27, 1890, Man Ray (Emmanel Radnitzky) was an American Visual artist. During his career he allowed few details of his early life or family background to be known to the public. He even refused to acknowledged that he ever had a name other than Man Ray. He wished to disassociate himself from his family background, but their tailoring left an enduring mark on his art. Later in 1918, he produced his first significant photographs. Man Ray started making objects and developed unique machanical and photographic methods of making images. In Montparnasse, he became a distinguished photographer. Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a type of photogram he called "rayographs", which he described as "pure dadaism". He later died in Paris o November 18, 1976 from a lung infection. 

Man Ray

Edward Weston

Edward Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers.." He was born in Highland Park, Illinois. As a present for his 16th birthday, Weston's father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Bull's-Eye #2.  And in the April of 1906, the magazine Camera and Darkroom published a full page reproduction of his picture. He later enrolled in the Illinois School of Photography to follow his passion. Years later Weston agreed to allow Mather, a new friend he had met, to become an equal partner in his studio. For several months they took portraits that they signed with both of their names. This was the only time in his long career that Weston shared credit with another photographer. By 1948 Weston was no longer physically able to use his large view camera due to Parkinson's disease. That year he took his last photographs. His final negative was an image he called, "Rocks and Pebbles, 1948". Weston died at his home on Wildcat Hill on New Year's Day, 1958.

Edward Weston

Minor White

Minor White was an American photographer, theoretician, critic and educator. He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intelletual philosophies. White was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1908. His grandfather, George Martin, was an amateur photographer and gave White his first camera in 1915. In late 1937 White decided to move to Seattle. He purchased a 35mm Argus camera and took a bus trip across country toward his destination. And later in 1941 three of his photographs were accepted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for inclusion in their "Image of Freedom" exhibition. In April 1942 White was drafted into the United States Army. White spent the fist two years of World War II in Hawaii and in Australia, and later he became Chief of the Divisional Intelligence Branch in the southern Philippines. After the war, White moved to San Francisco in July and lived with Ansel Adams for several years. While there Adams taught White about his Zone System method of exposing and developing photographs, which White used extensively in his own work and later insisted that his students learn it as well. Later in his career he continued to explore how people understand and interpret photography and began to incorporate techniques of Gestalt psychology into his teachings. On June 24, 1976, White died of a second heart attack while working at his home.

Minor White

Walker Evans

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer best know for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Evans was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903. He took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining, New York. In 1941, Evan's photographs and Agee's text detailing the duo's stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In 1945, Evans became a staff writer at Time magazine. Evans died at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1975.

Walker Evans