E. Lit - Martin Arnold

Martin Arnold

Martin Arnold is a filmmaker that uses found film clips and deconstructs them to recreate an image of intense cuts and sound to match the aggressive nature of the edit. he uses this basic technique to create visually demanding works because each clip is a couple seconds and edited and stretch to be 5-10min pieces.

E.Lit - David Lynch

David Lynch

David Lynch, much like Stanley Kubrick is a director that uses elements of photography to convey story and suspense through his work as a film director. His film challenges the ideals within our society and presents them in a surrealist manner as part of a critique on them.

Alex Gurian reviews Toni Frissell

Toni Frissell (born Antoinette Frissell Bacon, March 10, 1907 – April 17, 1988) was and American photographer known for her fashion photographs as well as for photographing famous figures and for prominently featuring women in her work. While working at Vogue she wrote captions, and was eventually fired for poor spelling, but encouraged by her editor to take up photography, which she did to help her cope amidst much personal strife with deaths in the family and the breaking off of her engagement. As a photographer, she was rehired by Vogue and was one of the first fashion photographers to shoot outdoors, claiming she didn’t know how to shoot in a studio. She was known for this kind of experimentation in her work.

Alex Gurian reviews Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Manuel Alvarez Bravo (February 4, 1902 – October 19, 2002) was a Mexican photographer. He was Mexico’s first large fine art photographer, and considered to be one of if not the most influential figure in Latin-American photography. A self-taught photographer, he was known for capturing images of ordinary objects in unique and unexpected ways. He often tried to avoid stereotyping in his work, a feat which he considered difficult for the medium. His work encompassed a wide variety of subjects, and even included an extensive collection of polaroids.

 

Alex Gurian reviews Christer Stromholm

Christer Stromholm (July 22, 1918 – January 11, 2002) was a Swedish photographer. He is known for his series of intimate street photos as well as his series on the transsexual community in Paris in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. He lived in Paris at this time, and developed his style of street photography there. He was also the first post-war Swedish photographer to achieve international recognition for his work.

Alex Gurian reviews Irving Penn

Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009) was an American photographer widely known for his portraiture work. He is best known for his fashion photography, and worked at Vogue magazine. He studied drawing, painting, and graphics in college, and didn’t try photography until working as the art director at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1940. Penn was one of the first to use a simple grey or white background for posing models.
 

Alex Gurian reviews Walid Raad

Walid Raad, born 1967, is a Lebanese photographer and contemporary media artist. As a child, he dreamt of being a photojournalist, and his father gave him his first camera and helped him create a home darkroom. In 1983, Raad had to leave Beirut and leave to the United States, where he studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In the 1990’s, Raad created the fictional Altas Group to document the Lebanese Civil Wars. In The Atlas Group, Raad creates work and then credits them to fictional people who “donated” them to the foundation. 

Alex Gurian reviews David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt, born November 29, 1930, is a South African photographer who is famous for his portrayal of South Africa under apartheid. Goldblatt began photographing at age 18, and the images of South Africa under apartheid were done in black and white, as he believed that color “was too sweet a medium” to convey the horrors of the apartheid and the anger and fear it instilled. Goldblatt didn’t begin photographing in color until the late 1990’s while working on a project involving blue asbestos.

Alex Gurian reviews Miyako Ishiuchi

Miyako Ishiuchi, born March 27, 1947, is a Japanese photographer. She took up photography at the age of 28, and a lot of her work revolves around the effects of the Second World War on Japan and Japanese culture. Her first major work explored the town she grew up in that had been the site of a United States Naval base and how American culture had permeated through the the town.

Alex Gurian reviews Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt (May 2, 1904 – December 20, 1983) was a British photographer. He is known for images of British culture, though his work encompasses a variety of subjects. After World War I, he contracted tuberculosis and spent many of his early days in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Brandt began his photographic career as Man Ray’s assistant in Paris, and when he moved to London three years later, began documenting British culture through photo, which was not widespread at the time. One of his most widely known works is a series of nudes done in the 1940’s and onwards.

Alex Gurian reviews Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra, born June 2, 1959, is a Dutch photographer known for her series of portraits. She is famous for her portrait series of adolescents on beaches. Dijkstra says her “artistic awakening” began in 1991, though she had been studying photography and taking photos through the 1980’s. She had been in a bicycle accident, and while emerging from a pool as part of her therapy, she took a photo of herself with a 4x5 camera. In the photo she appeared exhausted and vulnerable. This vulnerability is present in her work after, with many of her subjects appearing in a moment of letting their guard down.
 

Alex Gurian reviews Duane Michals

Duane Michals, born February 18, 1932, is an American photographer known for his work using photo sequences and often including hand-written text in the images. He became interested in art at age 14 while attending watercolor classes. After getting a B.A. from University of Denver, he spent two years in the Army before studying at the Parsons School of Design for graphic design, though he did not finish. He has said his photographic skills are self-taught, and he found his interest in photography while on a trip to the USSR in 1958. Text plays an important part in his works. He uses text to convey what the images alone cannot. The text also frequently gives the viewer context they would not have otherwise had.

 

E. Lit - Leighton Pierce

Leighton Pierce

Leighton pierce has an aesthetic that really only presents itself to a time based medium that is video. his use of sound and motion blur work together to create an atmosphere that is vague, but in that same instance recognizable. his work is a representation of dreams, and memories and he creates that through the reverberated sound meshed in with seamless transitions of blurred video clips, thus creating works that question whether the event is taking place at all, or if it is a representation of past moments.

E. Lit - Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick


His work in his early days was mostly street and journalist work but from an early age Stanley had an eye for scenery and composition. This being one of the driving points from his photography career into his film career, composition and setting the scene is one of the most important things to me as an artist and as relatively beginning photographer. Kubrick evolved through incorporating an abundance of symbolism within the movies he creates and leaves enough information for the viewer to revisit and find different nuances about what he is communicating.

E. Lit - David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney is a painter and photographer that has a keen sense of cool and composition and that is clear in both choices of mediums. His use of space and color create a tension between subjects displayed and his use of framing and color palette to make those figures pop is what sets him apart from many other artist that do either of the mediums.

E. Lit - Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin was a photographer that, though he created primarily commercial work, he always gave his images the utmost consideration to juxtapose artistry and fashion as he utilizes exaggerated poses and very punchy and saturated color palette that reflects almost perfectly the provocateur appearance the models he uses convey. Many of his poses remind me of artist such as Egon Schiele, which are fairly demanding poses.

E. Lit - Peter Hujar

Peter Hujar


Peter Hujar is another artist like Elinor that can extract certain subtle expressions our of their subject and create works that have depth, and meaning to it. The humanistic qualities of a person tend to be the things that we general lock away and keep to ourselves. When the subject gives into vulnerability, that is when the true nature the subject comes to the surface.

E. Lit - Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson is an African American artist that works with stereotypes placed on the black community with regarding the women, typical food, and also names given to black people over the past couple hundred years. Her image and text work is some of the most appealing images that use that technique because of the blatant content behind it. 

E. Lit - Elinor Carucci

Elinor Carucci

-       Elinor’s work is strikingly sensual and intimate in nature because of the subject in what she is portraying. Her technique is relatively snapshots, but executed in a way where she is aware and anticipates expression. Her whole body of work is based on connection and family and simple gestures of emotion or expression. The lighting, the poses, the almost touching hands all creates a natural emotion that is honest to the subject, and to the artist creating the image.

Jess K reviews Jeff Wall

Though these photos depict very normal subject matter, they are largely staged photos that are presented in extremely large format and in shadow boxes, to enhance their artificial nature. Wall is interested in post-war filmmaking, and unconventional narratives.

Jess K reviews Lori Nix/ Kathleen Gerber

Over four years, Nix and Gerber collaborated to create "Empire," a series of nine large scale photos depicting strangely beautiful apocalyptic images of different landscapes. The process took such an extensive amount of time because these are actually dioramas, set up and lit with extreme precision. Beautiful yet disturbing, these photos are extremely impressive in detail.

REB reviews Haley Morris-Cafiero

Haley Morris Cafiero series Wait Watchers was created on accident, while she was photographing herself in public places to get her out of her comfort zone, she soon realized her in stills that people reacted to her presence, some would sneer and stare. She then started to capture stranger’s reactions to her body and she did it purposefully. Cafiero takes her photos in high volume locations and the rate with which Cafiero succeeds at documenting onlooker's obvious disdain of her body seems disheartening but in truth she finds it inspiring to turn the camera back onto the spectators. Her process is setting up a camera and record people as they pass by her while either she is sitting in Time Square or she is putting sun block at a beach, she is engaging the discussion of body acceptance and ideal beauty standards that are unrealistic and unwanted by many people.