Josef Sudek
Josef Sudek was born in 1896 in Kolín, a small town in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a bookbinder before being drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War. In 1917, he was wounded on the Italian front and lost his right arm — a devastating injury for […]
Read MoreMarcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was born on 28 July 1887 in Blainville-Crevon, a small town in Normandy, into a family of remarkable artistic accomplishment. His elder brothers, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon, were both established artists; his sister Suzanne Duchamp would become a painter of note. The young Marcel studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from […]
Read MoreJacob Aue Sobol
Jacob Aue Sobol was born in Copenhagen in 1976 and grew up in Denmark with an early awareness that he wanted to engage the world through direct, physical experience rather than from a comfortable distance. He studied at the European Film College in the mid-1990s, where he first picked up a camera, and subsequently enrolled […]
Read MoreJudith Joy Ross
Judith Joy Ross was born in 1946 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining city in the northeastern part of the state. She has lived and worked in the same region for most of her life, and this rootedness — this commitment to a particular place and its people — is central to understanding her photographic […]
Read MoreMargaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was born in the Bronx on 14 June 1904, the daughter of an engineer-inventor father and a progressive, intellectually ambitious mother who encouraged her daughter’s curiosity about the natural and mechanical world. Her father, Joseph White, worked in the printing industry and took young Margaret to factories and foundries, instilling in her a […]
Read MoreGillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing was born in 1963 in Birmingham, England, and grew up in the city’s suburbs during a period of post-industrial decline and social upheaval. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art and then at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 1990 as part of a generation of British artists — including Damien Hirst, […]
Read MoreJacques Henri Lartigue
Jacques Henri Lartigue was born on 13 June 1894 in Courbevoie, a suburb of Paris, into a wealthy and indulgent family that provided him with both the leisure and the equipment to begin photographing at an astonishingly early age. His father, Henri Lartigue, was a prosperous businessman and an enthusiastic amateur photographer who gave Jacques […]
Read MoreJulian Germain
Julian Germain was born in 1962 in England and studied photography at the Royal College of Art in London. From the outset of his career, he distinguished himself from the prevailing currents of British art photography by his commitment to collaborative, long-term projects that prioritised human relationships over aesthetic display. While many of his contemporaries […]
Read MoreMark Cohen
Mark Cohen was born in 1943 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city in the coal-mining region of the northeastern part of the state. He has lived and worked there for virtually his entire life, a fact that distinguishes him from nearly every other photographer of comparable stature. While his contemporaries roamed the world in […]
Read MoreGordon Parks
Gordon Parks was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of fifteen children in a poor Black family living under the harsh realities of segregation. His father, Andrew Jackson Parks, was a tenant farmer, and the family scraped by with little money and fewer opportunities. Yet even as a boy, Parks […]
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