February 17, 2026 - American / Conceptual / Photographer

Aaron Siskind

Aaron Siskind was born on December 4, 1903, in New York City, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side. He grew up in a household where education was prized but resources were modest, and his early intellectual formation owed more to the public library system than to any formal artistic […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Magnum / Photographer / Social - Street

Alec Soth

Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has remained rooted in the Upper Midwest throughout his career — a fact that distinguishes him from many of his contemporaries in contemporary art photography and that deeply informs the character of his work. He studied painting at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Magnum / Photographer / Social - Street

Alex Webb

Alex Webb was born in 1952 in San Francisco and raised in New England, the son of a diplomat. His early exposure to different cultures through his father’s career planted the seeds of a lifelong fascination with the borderlands between worlds — geographical, cultural, and psychological. He first picked up a camera as a teenager […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Curator / Photographer / Social - Street

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was born on January 1, 1864, in Hoboken, New Jersey, the eldest son of German-Jewish immigrants who had prospered in the wool trade. His father, Edward Stieglitz, was a cultured man who valued the arts and provided his children with a privileged upbringing that included private education and, crucially, an extended period of […]

Read More
February 16, 2026 - American / Photographer / Social - Street

Andre Kertesz (1894 – 1985)

André Kertész was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1894, the second of three sons in a middle-class Jewish family. His father died when he was fourteen, and the young Kertész was raised largely by his mother and an uncle who encouraged his education but expected him to pursue a practical career. He took a position […]

Read More
February 16, 2026 - American / Fashion / Photographer / Portrait / Reflexivity, Home & Family / Social - Street

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut, the third of six children in a military family. Her father, Samuel Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, and the family moved frequently throughout her childhood — from Connecticut to various bases across the country and overseas. This itinerant […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Family of Man / Photographer / Social - Street

Ansel Adams

Ansel Easton Adams was born on 20 February 1902 in San Francisco, California, the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman whose family fortune had been built in the timber industry, and Olive Bray Adams. The great earthquake of 1906 threw the young Adams against a garden wall, breaking his nose and leaving him […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Photographer / Social - Street

Anthony Hernandez

Anthony Hernandez was born in 1947 in Los Angeles, the city that would become the singular subject of his life’s work. Raised in a working-class Mexican-American family, he grew up in the neighbourhoods of East Los Angeles and witnessed firsthand the social stratification, racial tension, and relentless urban transformation that would define his photographic vision. […]

Read More
February 17, 2026 - American / Photographer / Social - Street

Arnold Newman

Arnold Newman was born on 3 March 1918 in New York City, though he grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and later in Miami Beach, Florida. His family’s circumstances were modest; his father managed a series of small businesses, and the young Newman showed an early aptitude for drawing and painting. He won a […]

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

Art Photography Now – Susan Bright

  From Amazon: This revised and expanded edition of Art Photography Now builds on the hugely successful first edition (2005), which traced the developments in art photography since the mid-nineteenth century and profiled world-famous artists such as Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin and Martin Parr. The book retains its seven themed sections – Portrait, Landscape, Narrative, […]

Read More

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.