Looking for some inspiration for my fine art photography work, I bought a couple of books from Barnes & Nobel recently, one by Nan Goldin & another by Walker Evans. While artists like Nan Goldin, Irina Ionesco or Jock Sturges may not be for everyone or for every time, there are some evergreen photographers who continue to inspire millions today.
It’s the simplicity of their art, the boldness to pursue their art they believed in and the sheer perseverance & commitment to their creativity that makes them my favorite. There are numerous YouTube videos available on each of them. I have picked the ones that are most relevant to this post.
1. Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange is an iconic photographer. Before she even owned a camera Dorothea Lange started her visual odyssey in New York’s Lower East Side with a passion for mingling with the common people on the street. Following a move to the West she became one of the great portrait photographers of San Francisco’s upper crust. But when the Great Depression hit, Lange reacted to the changes around her by moving back to the city streets and by photographing the destitute people who lived there.
She had become bored with studio work and loved the bustle and exhilaration of street photography. She would not return to photographing the rich, but would cement her reputation photographing the impoverished Americans of the 1930s. Two of her photos, migrant mother and white angel breadline became icons of the Great Depression.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrODn0f1z0g
MoMA Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21nPEFybmtQ
2. Francesca Woodman
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSKsA8gwSaM
3. Sally Mann
A biopic of Sally Mann, where she reflects on her own personal feelings toward death as she continues to examine the boundaries of contemporary photography. Shown at home on her family farm in Virginia, she is surrounded by her husband and now-grown children, and her willingness to reveal her artistic process as it unfolds allows the viewer to gain exclusive entrance to her world.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8s7BKLbWq4
4. Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier was a mysterious nanny who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that went unseen during her lifetime. Since buying her work by chance at auction, amateur historian John Maloof has crusaded to put this prolific photographer in the history books. Maier’s strange and riveting life and art are revealed through never-before-seen photographs, films, and interviews with dozens who thought they knew her.
Born in New York in 1926, Vivian Maier spent her early years in the Bronx. Throughout her time in New York City, Maier began to photograph the world around her and develop a visual language through the use of her camera, all while working as a nanny. Nearly a century later, Maier figures in the history of photography alongside the greatest masters of the twentieth century.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPSzGgtOxBc
5. Saul Leiter
Probably the photographer who have inspired me more lately is Saul Leiter. I did not know much about him or his passion for art till about a decade back. Saul Leiter, as Margit Erb put it elegantly, cared neither for the money nor for the fame. He evolved his own style, always found something to photograph, kept true to his style and art and always had the humor, which could be rather odd at times, to put this thoughts bluntly even to the press.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLUwFf4iv9E
Retrospective YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsTh0dujQIE
For more artists I have come to admire and be inspired by, read posts in Opium of Art.