United States

Biography: Pictorial Portrait photographer William Mortensen

Biography: Pictorial Portrait photographer William Mortensen

William Mortensen (1897-1965) was an American art photographer, primarily known for his Hollywood portraits in the 1920s-1940s in the pictorialist style. Mortensen began his photographic career taking portraits of Hollywood actors and film stills. In 1931 he moved to the artist community of Laguna Beach, California, where he opened a studio and the William Mortensen School of Photography. He preferred…
Historic B&W photos of Chicago (19th century)

Historic B&W photos of Chicago (19th century)

In the 19th century, Chicago became the nation’s railroad center, by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of 6 different downtown terminals. In 1883, the standardized system of North American time zones was adopted by the general time convention of railway managers in Chicago. This gave the continent its uniform system for telling time.
Doug and Mike Starn: Absorption of Light

Doug and Mike Starn: Absorption of Light

Starn Brothers: Absorption of Light, presented by 516 ARTS, is a series of large elemental photographs from the series Absorption of Light by twin brothers Doug and Mike Starn, who for more than 20 years have been known for working conceptually with photography, and are concerned largely with chaos, interconnection and interdependence. The ill-fated moths of the Attracted to Light…
Biography: Photojournalist Morris Engel

Biography: Photojournalist Morris Engel

Morris Engel (April 8, 1918 – 5 March, 2005) was an American photographer. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School and joined the Photo League in 1936 where he met Aaron Siskind and Paul Strand who became major influences in his life. He worked on the paper PM, and then enlisted in the Navy, where he was a combat photographer. He…
Biography: Portrait photographer Philippe Halsman

Biography: Portrait photographer Philippe Halsman

Halsman (1906 – 1979) grew up in Riga, Latvia, in a family of assimilated Jews and studied engineering at a university in Dresden. Two years after his graduation, he moved to Paris, turned his photographic hobby into a profession, and opened his own portrait studio, specializing in fashion and theater portraits. A few years later, with the threat of World War…
Biography: City Life photographer Ruth Orkin

Biography: City Life photographer Ruth Orkin

Ruth Orkin (3 September 1921 – 16 January 1985) was an American photographer. Orkin moved to New York in 1943, where she worked as a nightclub photographer and shot baby pictures by day to buy her first professional camera. She worked for all the major magazines in 1940s, and also went to Tanglewood during the summers to shoot rehearsals. She…
Biography: Pictorial Portrait photographer Rudolph Eickemeyer Jr

Biography: Pictorial Portrait photographer Rudolph Eickemeyer Jr

Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. (August 7, 1862 – April 25, 1932) was an American pictorialist photographer, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rudolf Eickemeyer’s photography combined the technological calculation of his engineer father and the aestheticism of the amateur photography clubs that nurtured his art in the 1880s. Purchasing his first camera in 1884, Eickemeyer devoured the ample…
Vintage: Photos of American women in World War II

Vintage: Photos of American women in World War II

During World War II, approximately 400,000 U.S. women served with the armed forces and more than 460 – some sources say the figure is closer to 543 – lost their lives as a result of the war, including 16 from enemy fire. However, the U.S. decided not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it. Women…
Biography: XIX Century Portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony

Biography: XIX Century Portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony

Napoleon Sarony (1821 – 1896) was an American lithographer and photographer. Sarony was one of the first photographers to start paying well known individuals to pose for him and then having the rights to sell their photos for profit. Sarony usually wrote personal letters to the celebrities inviting them to his studio for a photo session. In 1871, Samuel Clemens,…
Biography: Abstract photographer Francis Bruguiere

Biography: Abstract photographer Francis Bruguiere

Francis Bruguière (1879-1945) was an American photographer. He was born in San Francisco to a wealthy banking family and was privately educated. In 1905 he travelled to New York where he met and became friends with Frank Eugene and Alfred Stieglitz. Eugene encouraged Bruguière to investigate the aesthetic possibilities of photography, and Stieglitz accepted him as a member of the…
Pictorial Landscape / Nude photographer Anne Brigman

Pictorial Landscape / Nude photographer Anne Brigman

Anne Brigman (1869–1950) was an American photographer. Brigman was one of two original California members of the art photography group the Photo-Secession, founded by Alfred Steiglitz, and she was the only Western photographer to be made a Fellow of the group. Three issues of Camera Work featured her photographs, and the British Linked Ring society of photographers elected her a…
Biography: Portrait photographer James Abbe

Biography: Portrait photographer James Abbe

James Abbe (1883 – 1973) was an American photographer. Abbe had a remarkable talent for inspiring trust in stars and Lillian Gish convinced him to come to Italy in 1923 to work as a lighting consultant and still photographer for “The White Sister.” He closed his Broadway studio, abandoned his wife and children, and moved to Italy. He spent the…
Interview with Street photographer Keith Dannemiller

Interview with Street photographer Keith Dannemiller

Keith Dannemiller was born in Akron, Ohio on May 27, 1949, and educated there in Catholic elementary and high schools. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee with a B.A. in Organic Chemistry. In 1976, after four years in San Francisco, he moved to Austin, Texas where he worked for The Texas Observer, Third Coast and Texas Monthly. While…
Interview with Portrait photographer Norma I. Quintana

Interview with Portrait photographer Norma I. Quintana

Norma I. Quintana (born in Cleveland, Ohio, 1954) is an American photographer and educator working in the tradition of social documentary. She photographs with film, primarily in black and white using available light. Quintana has studied under Mary Ellen Mark, Graciela Iturbide and Shelby Lee Adams. She has lectured nationally at major universities, including art residencies at Penn State and…
Biography: Nude photographer Ruth Bernhard

Biography: Nude photographer Ruth Bernhard

Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer. In 1927, after two years at the Berlin Academy of Art, Ruth moved to New York where she began to seriously pursue a career in photography. Eight years later she met Edward Weston in California and was deeply moved by his work. He revealed to her…
Interview with Fine Art photographer David Johndrow

Interview with Fine Art photographer David Johndrow

David Johndrow is a fine art photographer living in Austin, Texas. After studying photography the University of Texas, he began shooting commercial work as well as pursuing his more personal fine art photography. David’s continuing series, Terrestrials, combines his passion for gardening and photography and features macro nature photographs of animals and plants that inhabit his Hill Country, Texas garden.…
Biography: Street photographer Louis Stettner

Biography: Street photographer Louis Stettner

Louis Stettner (born November 7, 1922) is an American photographer of the 20th century whose work includes streetscapes, portraits and architectural images of New York and Paris. His work has been highly regarded because of its humanity and capturing the life and reality of the people and streets of both cities. Since 1947, Stettner has photographed the changes in the…
Interview with Nude photographer Arthur Meehan

Interview with Nude photographer Arthur Meehan

Arthur Meehan was born in New Jersey in 1968 and studied at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan, New York City – widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. His artistic heroes are the sculptor Rodin and photographer Edward Weston. Arthur is inspired by natural beauty – pure and unadorned as…
Interview with Fine Art Landscape photographer David Fokos

Interview with Fine Art Landscape photographer David Fokos

David Fokos was born in 1960 in Baltimore, MD and currently lives in San Diego, CA. Using an 85-year old 8×10 view camera, world-renowned artist David Fokos has been photographing the landscape for over 30 years. Often working 100 hours or more to craft a single image, his elegant black and white images have been lauded as masterpieces of minimalism.…