Lewis 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 MoreHenry Wessel
Henry Wessel was born in 1942 in Teaneck, New Jersey, and grew up on the suburban East Coast before the landscape of the American West would claim him entirely. He studied psychology at Pennsylvania State University before turning to photography, earning his MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1972 under […]
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 MoreIrving Penn
Irving Penn was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1917, the elder of two sons in a family of modest means. His younger brother, Arthur Penn, would go on to become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors, but it was Irving who first found his way into the visual arts. As a teenager he discovered […]
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 MoreAnthony 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 MoreEd Ruscha
Edward Joseph Ruscha was born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in Oklahoma City, where he developed an early fascination with commercial lettering, signage, and the visual culture of the American roadside. In 1956, he drove west to Los Angeles to attend the Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), and the journey along Route […]
Read MoreArnold 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 MoreEdward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen was born in 1879 in the village of Bivange, Luxembourg, and emigrated with his family to the United States as an infant, settling in Hancock, Michigan, before the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His mother encouraged his artistic inclinations, and by the age of fifteen he had begun a four-year apprenticeship at […]
Read MoreBarbara 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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