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

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1923, the eldest son of a distinguished Talmudic scholar who fully expected his boy to follow him into the rabbinate. Leiter was a gifted student of religious texts, but from an early age he found himself drawn not to scripture but to painting. His mother gave him […]

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February 16, 2026 - Brazilian / Landscape - Cityscape / Photographer /

Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado was born on 8 February 1944 in Aimorés, a small town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, surrounded by the lush Atlantic Forest that would, decades later, become central to his life’s mission. The son of a cattle rancher, he grew up on a farm in the Rio Doce valley, one […]

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

Shirley Baker

Shirley Baker was born in Salford in 1932, the daughter of a factory worker in one of the great industrial cities of northern England. She grew up in the terraced streets and back-to-back houses that would later become the central subjects of her photographic work, and she never lost the intimate knowledge of working-class life […]

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

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle was born in Paris in 1953, the daughter of a prominent art collector and oncologist. She spent her early adulthood travelling — seven years wandering through the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere — before returning to Paris in the late 1970s with no particular plan and no formal artistic training. What she did […]

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

Stephen Gill

Stephen Gill was born in Bristol in 1971 and grew up in the west of England before moving to London, where he would spend nearly two decades engaged in one of the most sustained and inventive photographic explorations of a single place that contemporary photography has produced. Gill’s early interest in photography was shaped by […]

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February 12, 2026 - American / New Topographical / Photographer /

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore arrived at photography with the certainty of a prodigy and the curiosity of a born observer. Born in New York City in 1947, he received his first darkroom kit at the age of six and began teaching himself the craft that would define his life’s work. By the time he was ten, a […]

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February 17, 2026 - American / Magnum / Photographer / War - Conflict /

Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry was born in 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the suburbs of the city. He studied film and history at Pennsylvania State University, where he also began working for the student newspaper and discovered a passion for visual storytelling. After graduating, he worked briefly at a newspaper before deciding to pursue […]

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

Street Photography Now – Sophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren

  From Amazon The definitive anthology of contemporary street photography across the globe Get up close and personal with the world’s best street photographers as they capture the drama of everyday life at 1/125 of a second. Rub shoulders with high-rollers, street vendors and dog walkers. Prowl sidewalks and back alleys, encountering comic absurdities, small […]

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

Susan Lipper

Susan Lipper was born in New York in 1953 and came to photography after studying at Yale University, where she completed an MFA under the guidance of Tod Papageorge. Her education at Yale placed her within one of the most rigorous programmes in American photography, but her work would develop in directions that departed significantly […]

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

Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, Kent, in 1965, and grew up in a family that valued the arts without being part of the art world. She studied at the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall and later at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she began to develop the practice that […]

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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