March 9, 2026 - British / Fashion / Photographer / Portrait / War - Conflict

Cecil Beaton

The photographer who transformed portraiture into theatre, capturing royalty, Hollywood legends, and the devastation of war with an unmatched eye for elegance and drama.

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March 4, 2026 - British / Fashion / Photographer / Portrait / Terrible Three

Terence Donovan

One of the legendary “Terrible Three” who revolutionised British fashion photography, Donovan brought cinematic drama, muscular energy, and a raw East End swagger to the studio.

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March 4, 2026 - British / Fashion / Photographer / Portrait / Terrible Three

Duffy

The most rebellious of the “Terrible Three”, Duffy created the defining image of David Bowie’s career with the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt, then walked away from photography entirely.

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February 23, 2026 - Great Text Book / Writer

Recommended Reading List for MFA

The list below is mostly from the MFA course and I cant say I read all of them – many were available in the library at Ulster University and I ddi try to dig in to as many as I could – I sometimes struggled to find the balance between research and work on the […]

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February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

On Photography – Susan Sontag

  From Waterstones: Susan Sontag’s groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the ‘insatiability of the photographing eye’ has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia […]

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February 23, 2026 - British / Great Text Book / Writer

Photography: A Critical Introduction – Liz Wells

 From Amazon: Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides […]

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February 23, 2026 - British / Great Text Book / Writer

Ways of Seeing – John Berger

From Amazon: Based on the BBC television series, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics. ‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.’ ‘But there is also another sense […]

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February 23, 2026 - British / Great Text Book / Writer

The Photograph as Contemporary Art – Charlotte Cotton

  From Amazon:  This book, now updated and expanded, is a profusely illustrated survey of the use of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s. It features the work of more than 170 of internationally renowned and up-and-coming artist-photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Richard Billingham, Jürgen Teller, Thomas Demand, Christopher Williams, Sherrie […]

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RESOURCES

This is where I keep the research — over 200 studies of the photographers, writers, curators and exhibitions I’ve found most compelling. Each entry offers a summary of their practice together with a few examples of their work, where copyright permits.

FOCUS


Browse by genre (use the hamburger menu above on mobile) — Street, Fashion, Landscape, Documentary and others. Most of these categories took shape during my MFA studies and many of the people here appear in multiple categories.

NATIONALITIES

View landmark exhibitions like New Topographics and The Family of Man alongside individual studies of Magnum photographers and many others, like the "Terrible Three", who have shaped the way we see.