Eugène Atget
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget was born in 1857 in Libourne, a small town near Bordeaux in south-western France. Orphaned at an early age — both parents died before he was seven — he was raised by an uncle in the suburbs of Paris. His early life was marked by restlessness and a search for vocation that would […]
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 MoreConstantine 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 […]
Read MoreAnton Bruehl
Anton Bruehl was born in 1900 in the small outback town of Hawker, South Australia, the son of German immigrants who had settled in the arid farmlands of the Flinders Ranges. His early life in the Australian bush gave little indication of the glamorous career that lay ahead. As a young man he trained as […]
Read MoreCorinne Day
Corinne Day was born in 1962 in Ealing, west London, and grew up in a modest working-class household far removed from the world of high fashion that she would one day transform. She left school with few qualifications and spent her early twenties drifting through a series of jobs, including a stint as a courier […]
Read MoreFazal Sheikh
Fazal Sheikh was born in New York City in 1965 to a Kenyan father of South Asian descent and a Swiss-American mother. This multicultural heritage instilled in him from the beginning an awareness of the complexity of belonging and displacement, themes that would come to define his life’s work. He studied at Princeton University, where […]
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 MoreDaido Moriyama
Daidō Moriyama was born in 1938 in the industrial city of Ikeda, in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. His childhood was shaped by the upheavals of wartime and postwar reconstruction, and the restless energy of a nation remaking itself would become one of the defining currents of his art. As a young man, Moriyama had no particular […]
Read MoreFrancesca Woodman
Francesca Stern Woodman was born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado, into a family of artists. Her father, George Woodman, was a painter and ceramicist; her mother, Betty Woodman, was a celebrated ceramic artist whose work would be exhibited internationally. The household was steeped in art and aesthetics, and Francesca grew up surrounded by creativity, spending […]
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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