biography

Visitors to Google today will see a striking Google Doodle celebrating the life and work of photographer Corky Lee.

The National Portrait Gallery, London, reopens in June following a three-year closure for the “largest redevelopment” in its 127-year history. Its opening exhibition, Yevonde: Life and Colour, will be the most comprehensive to date on British photographer, Yevonde Middleton (1893-1975).

In the inevitable tide of recognition of so many women artists of the past 20th century who passed simply as muses, lovers, wives or companions, when their work was truly as strong, beautiful and original as that of their partner, Dora Maar, for many reasons, occupies a special place.

Before John Logie Baird first demonstrated his television in 1927, before Thomas Edison showed his movie projector in 1888, photographer Eadweard Muybridge was making moving pictures.

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer who is best known for Migrant Mother, an iconic photo of the Great Depression. Her work helped Americans see the devastating effects of the depression on rural America, and Lange is now celebrated as a pioneer in the field of documentary photography.

The Eastman Kodak Company displayed Coloramas – giant backlit photos 18 feet high and 60 feet long – at Grand Central Terminal in New York City for 40 years starting in the 1950s. The photographer who made 55 of them was Neil Montanus.

William Henry Fox Talbot was on his honeymoon at Lake Como in northern Italy in 1833. He was trying to sketch the beautiful lake and the surrounding scenery but was becoming increasingly frustrated with his lack of drawing skills. He used a camera lucida and a camera obscura, two devices that use lenses to project an image onto a piece of paper to aid in drawing, but he didn’t find either one very satisfactory.

Philippe Halsman was born in Riga, Latvia, on May 2, 1906. He discovered an old view camera in the family attic when he was fifteen, bought some glass plates, and started making photographs. Like many other photographers, when he first saw that image appearing in the darkroom tray, it was a life-changing moment, and he knew what he was going to be doing with his life.

The story of the American West is filled with many characters and large personalities. How the West was won or lost, depending on which side you were on, can be told through the lives of many people. Not all were cowboys, outlaws, gamblers, or lawmen like are often portrayed in the movies and novels; some were photographers. One of the photographers whose story looms large is William Henry Jackson.

Vivian Maier is well known for her work, but not a lot is known about the personal life of the world-famous street photographer. In "Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny," author Ann Marks delves into the personal life of the mysterious and enigmatic Maier.

Last week, I talked about the photo essay “Country Doctor” by W. Eugene Smith, and today I would like to focus more on his life and photography in general.

Weegee, the pseudonym of Arthur (Usher) Fellig, was a press photographer in New York City who's best known for his gritty photos of urban life, death, accidents, and crime in the 1930s and 1940s. His life and work is now being shared in the form of a graphic novel titled Weegee: Serial Photographer.

Gerta Pohorylle was born in 1910 in the German state of Stuttgart to a middle-class Jewish Galician family. She attended a Swiss boarding school, where she learned English and French and grew up receiving a secular education. In spite of her bourgeois origins, she became part of socialist and labor movements while still very young.

Animator Drew Christie of Whidbey Island, Washington, was recently commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to create a set of animated short films that tell the story of famous photography pioneers.

Enjoy documentary films about photographers? Here's one to add to your list: Don't Blink - Robert Frank. It's a new look at the life and work of one of the most famous American photographers. (Note: There's some strong language in the video).

Giles Penfound is a photographer with an engrossing past and a story to tell. Penfound began his journey as a professional photographer over 25 years ago and spent most of his time documenting military operations from within the British Army. Documentary photographer Neale James approached Penfound to produce a short film about his life and work, and the result is the inspirational 30-minute video above. (Note: the video contains some strong language.)

While there are ample resources available on portfolios, websites, leave behinds and promotional materials, there’s one important subject that I’ve found little helpful information on: the photographer’s bio.

Almost always found on a professional photographer’s site, the bio can make or break you. In a world where creatives often only have a couple of minutes to view your site, the bio can play a significant role. A biography is a glimpse into your personality and gives the reader a sense of what you might be like to work with. Creatives will often seek out the bio to help them make quick judgements. Therefore, just having great pictures isn’t enough. Many people will quickly abandon a website to jump to the next, so you have to make sure your entire site is not only engaging, but successfully portrays your personality. With bios being one way to express who YOU are, I’m always surprised at just how many dreadful ones I find. So, after reading one too many boring, exaggerated, absurd, grammatically incorrect and simply over the top biographies, I decided to come up with a few Dos and Don’ts.

If you’ve never really understood conceptual art, the video above will only serve …

Did you know that in addition to making his famous landscape images, Ansel Adams made ends meet by shooting …