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 […]
Read MoreBruce 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 […]
Read MoreChris Killip
Chris Killip was born in 1946 on the Isle of Man, a small island in the Irish Sea whose isolation and self-contained culture shaped his early understanding of community and place. His father ran a pub, and the young Killip left school at sixteen with no particular direction. In 1964, at the age of eighteen, […]
Read MoreChris 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 […]
Read MoreChrister Strömholm
Christer Strömholm was born in 1918 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family marked by disruption and restlessness. His parents separated when he was young, and he was raised by relatives, an early experience of displacement that would colour his entire life and art. As a young man, he studied painting at the art academies of […]
Read MoreCindy 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 […]
Read MoreClaude Cahun
Claude Cahun was born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob in 1894 in Nantes, France, into a prominent Jewish intellectual family. Her uncle was the Symbolist writer Marcel Schwob, and her father was the publisher of a regional newspaper. The milieu in which she grew up was one of letters, ideas, and cultural ambition, and from an […]
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 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 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 […]
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