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

Photography: A Critical Introduction – Liz Wells

 From Amazon: Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides […]

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

Photoshow- Landmark Exhibitions –  Alessandra Mauro

  From Amazon: From photography’s earliest days, the thrill and immediacy of the new medium were defined at the first public exhibitions. Half art, half science, photography captured the attention of everyone from eager technophiles to curious painters: the art of representation was about to change. This is the first book to study the history of photography […]

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

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard was born in 1925 in Normal, Illinois, a small college town whose name would prove ironically apt for an artist whose life’s work was devoted to exploring the uncanny spaces between the normal and the strange. He showed no particular artistic inclination as a young man, serving in the United States Navy […]

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

Raphaël Dallaporta

Raphaël Dallaporta was born in Paris in 1980 and grew up in a cultural environment that encouraged both scientific curiosity and artistic ambition. He studied at the École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière, one of France’s most rigorous institutions for photographic education, where he developed the technical mastery that would become a hallmark of his practice. From […]

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February 23, 2026 - Great Text Book / Writer /

Recommended Reading List for MFA

The list below is mostly from the MFA course and I cant say I read all of them – many were available in the library at Ulster University and I ddi try to dig in to as many as I could – I sometimes struggled to find the balance between research and work on the […]

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

Red Saunders

Red Saunders was born in London in 1945, into the post-war atmosphere of reconstruction and political hope that would shape his lifelong commitment to radical politics and popular culture. He came of age in the 1960s, absorbing the energies of the counterculture, and established himself as a photographer working across music, theatre, and editorial commissions. […]

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

René Burri

René Burri was born in Zurich in 1933 and grew up in a Switzerland that, for all its neutrality, was surrounded by the convulsions of the Second World War. He studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts under Hans Finsler, a pioneer of the New Photography whose emphasis on formal rigour and clean, […]

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February 17, 2026 - American / Family of Man / Photographer / Social - Street /

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was born on 15 May 1923 in New York City to a Jewish family with roots in the garment trade. His father, Jacob Israel Avedon, owned a clothing store on Fifth Avenue, and the young Richard grew up surrounded by fashion, fabric, and the rhythms of commerce. His mother, Anna, kept elegant photo […]

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

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham was born in 1970 in Birmingham and grew up in a council tower block in the Cradley Heath area of the Black Country, in the industrial West Midlands. His father, Ray, was an alcoholic who brewed his own drink and spent most of his time confined to the flat. His mother, Liz, was […]

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

Richard Kalvar

Richard Kalvar was born in New York City in 1944 and grew up with an instinctive sense of the comedy embedded in human behaviour. He studied English literature at Cornell University, where he developed the literary sensibility — the ear for irony, the eye for the telling detail — that would come to distinguish his […]

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RESOURCES

This is where I keep the research — over 190 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
You’ll find landmark exhibitions like New Topographics and The Family of Man alongside individual studies of Magnum photographers and many others who have shaped the way we see. From Atget to Eggleston, Arbus to Shore — the entries span the full history of the medium.
                                                      
You can also browse by genre — Street, Fashion, Landscape, Documentary and others. Most of these categories took shape during my MFA studies at the Belfast School of Art, and plenty of the people here appear in multiple categories.

NATIONALITIES