Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was born in the Bronx on 14 June 1904, the daughter of an engineer-inventor father and a progressive, intellectually ambitious mother who encouraged her daughter’s curiosity about the natural and mechanical world. Her father, Joseph White, worked in the printing industry and took young Margaret to factories and foundries, instilling in her a […]
Read MoreMarcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was born on 28 July 1887 in Blainville-Crevon, a small town in Normandy, into a family of remarkable artistic accomplishment. His elder brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, were both established artists; his sister Suzanne Duchamp would become a painter of note. The young Marcel studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from […]
Read MoreMan Ray
Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, the eldest child of Russian-Jewish immigrants who had recently arrived in the United States. The family moved to Brooklyn when he was seven, and it was in New York that the young Emmanuel — who would adopt the name Man Ray around 1912 — first […]
Read MoreLua Ribeira
Lua Ribeira was born in Barcelona in 1986 and grew up in a city whose own traditions of street festival and communal spectacle would later find deep resonance in her photographic work. She studied fine art at the University of Barcelona before moving to the United Kingdom, where she completed a master’s degree in documentary […]
Read MoreLouise Dahl-Wolfe
Louise Dahl-Wolfe was born in 1895 in Alameda, California, across the bay from San Francisco, into a family of Norwegian descent. She grew up in a household that valued the arts, and after graduating from high school she enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute), where she studied […]
Read MoreLouis Pierson
Louis Pierson was born in 1822 in Hinckange, in the Moselle region of northeastern France. He came to photography through the commercial portrait trade, establishing himself in Paris during the 1840s and 1850s as the medium was transforming from scientific novelty to cultural phenomenon. By the mid-1850s, he was a partner in the prestigious studio […]
Read MoreLewis Baltz
Lewis Baltz was born in 1945 in Newport Beach, California, at a moment when Southern California was beginning the explosive postwar development that would transform its landscape from agricultural land and open desert into an endless expanse of tract housing, shopping centres, freeways, and industrial parks. He grew up watching this transformation firsthand, and the […]
Read MoreLeoni Hampton
Leoni Hampton is a contemporary documentary photographer whose work sits at the intersection of personal history and social observation. Born in Australia and now based in the United Kingdom, she brings to her practice a sensibility shaped by the experience of migration, cultural dislocation, and the search for belonging that characterises so many lives in […]
Read MoreLeonard Freed
Leonard Freed was born in 1929 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who worked in the garment industry. He grew up in a working-class neighbourhood where questions of identity, belonging, and social justice were not abstract concepts but the texture of daily life. After graduating from high school, he initially […]
Read MoreLee Miller
Lee Miller was born Elizabeth Miller in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, the daughter of Theodore Miller, an amateur photographer who introduced her to the camera at an early age. Her childhood was marked by a traumatic assault at the age of seven, an event whose long shadow would be felt throughout her life. She […]
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