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Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. In 1936, he helped found the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Helen Levitt was an American photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as "the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."
Candid photography is photography captured without creating a posed appearance. This style is also called street photography, spontaneous photography or snap shooting. Professional photographers sometimes shoot candid photos of strangers on the street or in other public places such as parks and beaches. Candid photography captures natural expressions and moments that might not be possible to reproduce in a studio or posed photo shoot. This style of photography is most often used to capture people in their natural state without them noticing the camera. The main focus is on capturing the candid expressions and moments of life. Candid photography can be used in a variety of settings such as family gatherings, special events, and everyday street scenes. It is also a popular choice for wedding photos and professional portraits. Candid photography is often seen as a more honest representation of the subject than posed photography. To capture candid photos, the photographer may need to observe the subject from a distance or use a long lens or telephoto zoom lens. This allows for capturing the subject in their natural environment without them being aware of the camera. The photographer may need to be quick and have an eye for interesting compositions and backgrounds.
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject. He was closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement, and was close friends with painters Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
Ralph Steiner was an American photographer, pioneer documentarian and a key figure among avant-garde filmmakers in the 1930s.
Jerome Liebling was an American photographer, filmmaker, and teacher. The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who studied with him at Hampshire College, called Liebling his mentor, and used one of Liebling's photographs on the cover of his 2022 book Our America: A Photographic History.
Louis Stettner was an American photographer of the 20th century whose work included 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. Starting in 1947, Stettner photographed the changes in the people, culture, and architecture of both cities. He continued to photograph New York and Paris up until his death.
Larry Silver is an American photographer. He was born in the Bronx. While a student at the High School of Industrial Art in Manhattan he met members of the Photo League, among them Lou Bernstein, W. Eugene Smith and Weegee. He won a first prize in the Scholastic-Ansco Photography Awards, and a scholarship to the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Silver takes black-and-white photographs, mainly documenting the places he has lived: Santa Monica Beach, California; New York City; and Westport, Connecticut.
Seymour Kattelson, better known as Sy Kattelson, was an American photographer whose earliest work documents working class New Yorkers during the years immediately following World War II. He was an early practitioner of street photography and was associated with the Photo League from 1947 until its closing in 1951. His portraits, frequently taken without his subjects' awareness while traveling through the streets or riding the city's subways, convey the dignity of their lives as lived in public places. The depth of his photographs often comes from the tension between the grittiness of their urban settings and the contemplative sense of his subjects' as being lost within themselves. He died in Rhinebeck, New York in November 2018 at the age of 95.
Arthur Leipzig was an American photographer who specialized in street photography and was known for his photographs of New York City.
Sid Grossman was an American photographer, teacher, and social activist.
Sol Libsohn was a self-taught, documentary photographer.
Eliot Elisofon was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist.
Naomi Rosenblum, PhD, was the author "of two landmark histories of photography, A World History of Photography (1984) and A History of Women Photographers (1994), and dozens of seminal articles and essays".
Arnold Eagle was a Hungarian-American photographer and cinematographer, known for his socially concerned documentary photographs of the 1930s and 1940s.
Rosalie Gwathmey was an American painter and photographer known for her photos of black southern communities around her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Martin Edward Elkort was an American photographer, illustrator and writer known primarily for his street photography. Prints of his work are held and displayed by several prominent art museums in the United States. His photographs have regularly appeared in galleries and major publications. Early black and white photographs by Elkort feature the fabled Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, showing its ethnic diversity, myriad streets and cluttered alleys. The Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn was another favorite site during that period. His later work depicts street scenes from downtown Los Angeles and Tijuana, Mexico. Throughout Martin Elkort's long career as a photographer, he always showed the positive, joyful side of life in his candid images.
Sonia Handelman Meyer was an American photographer, best known for her street photography as a member of the New York Photo League.
Vivian Cherry was an American photographer best known for her street photography. She was a member of the New York Photo League.
Sandra Weiner was a Polish-American street photographer and children's book author.
References
- Klein, Mason and Evans, Catherine: "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951". The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press, 2011
- Maddow, Ben: "Faces: A Narrative History of the Portrait in Photography". New York Graphic Society, Little Brown, 1977
- Newhall, Nancy Wynne: This Is the Photo League, The Photo League, 1948.
- Robinson, Gerald H.: Photography, History & Science. Carl Mautz, 2006, chapter V, pages 31–70.
- Tucker, Anne Wilkes. This Was the Photo League. Chicago: Stephen Daiter Gallery, 2001
- History of Photography, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer 1994). Special issue devoted to the Photo League.
- Documentary Photography. Life Library of Photography, Time-Life Books, 1972
