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

Barbara Norfleet

Barbara Paine Norfleet was born in 1926 in Lakewood, New Jersey, into the very world of American privilege that would later become the central subject of her photographic work. She grew up in comfortable, educated surroundings and attended Bryn Mawr College, one of the elite women’s institutions of the American Northeast, where she studied the […]

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February 17, 2026 - American / Landscape - Cityscape / Photographer / Portrait / Social - Street

Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott was born on 17 July 1898 in Springfield, Ohio, and grew up in circumstances that were anything but auspicious for a future artist. Her parents separated when she was young, and she was raised in difficult conditions. Fiercely independent from an early age, she left Ohio as soon as she was able, moving […]

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

Between the Eyes – David Levi Strauss

 From Amazon: David Levi Strauss is a writer whose visual and intellectual sensibilities are both acute and expansive. His trenchant writings on photography and photographers have been collected for this volume from a broad range of magazines, including Aperture, Artforum and The Nation. In Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, Strauss tackles subjects as diverse […]

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

Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson was born in 1933 in Oak Park, Illinois, a leafy suburb west of Chicago. He discovered photography at the age of ten, setting up a darkroom in his mother’s basement and teaching himself to develop prints. By his mid-teens he was already winning local photography competitions, and his precocious talent earned him a […]

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

Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden was born in 1946 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a father who worked in the garment district and a mother he would later describe as difficult and domineering. He grew up in the working-class streets of Brooklyn, absorbing the visual cacophony, the confrontational energy, and the unapologetic theatricality of New York […]

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

Chris Verene

Chris Verene was born in 1969 in Galesburg, Illinois, a small railroad town in the western part of the state whose gradual economic decline and resilient community life would become the central subject of his photographic career. Galesburg, with its fading Main Street storefronts, its working-class neighbourhoods, and its population of ordinary Americans living lives […]

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February 17, 2026 - American / Conceptual / Photographer / Social - Street

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and grew up in Huntington, Long Island, the youngest of five children in a middle-class suburban family. From an early age, she was fascinated by disguise and transformation: she would raid her mother’s wardrobe, experiment with make-up, and spend hours in front of the […]

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

Constantine Manos

Constantine Manos was born in 1934 in Columbia, South Carolina, to Greek immigrant parents who ran a small business in the heart of the American South. His connection to two cultures — the warmth and ritual of his Greek heritage and the sprawling, unpredictable energy of American life — would define his photographic vision. He […]

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

Dan Winters

Dan Winters was born in 1962 in Ventura County, California, and grew up in a world far removed from the celebrity culture he would one day document with such extraordinary precision. His father was an aerospace engineer, and the family’s proximity to the space industry instilled in the young Winters a fascination with technology, engineering, […]

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

Dave Heath

Dave Heath was born in Philadelphia in 1931 and abandoned by his parents as an infant. He spent his childhood in a series of foster homes and orphanages, an experience of rejection and impermanence that would shape every aspect of his life and art. The loneliness of those early years became not merely the subject […]

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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.