What makes a photo interesting? The Subject Matter (the things in a picture) The Mood (the feeling a picture creates in the viewer) The Ideas/Theme (what the artist wants to convey) and The Use of Photographic Concepts (techniques) can all play a part! There’s more to photography than pushing a button.

Henri Cartier Bresson Regarded as one of the greatest photographers of his time, this shy Frenchman elevated "snap shooting" to the level of a refined and disciplined art. ( ) His sharp- shooter’s ability to catch "the decisive moment," his precise eye for design, and his literate comments about the theory and practice of photography made him a legendary figure among contemporary photojournalists. seminars.com/Fame/bre sson.htm

(1890 –1976) Born Emmanuel Radnitzky, this Modernist American artist spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements. Best known for avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced works in a variety of media. Man Ray

Paul Strand ( ) Strand, an American artist, began photography during the first stirrings of modernism in America. Coolly seductive machine photographs of the 1920s gained power from their integration of reality and abstraction. Strand’s social consciousness led him to explore the relationship between art and politics and to devote his career to progressive causes. He helped found a documentary film company dedicated to pro-labor causes. And after 1950, when he relocated to France, landscapes, architecture, and portraiture (all traditional humanist genres) continued to inspire him. 10/11/paul-strand htmlhttp:// /hd/pstd/hd_pstd.htmhttp:// /hd/pstd/hd_pstd.htm the-paul-strand-portfolio-rebecca-new-york “Treating the human condition in the modern urban context, Strand's photographs are a subversive alternative to the studio portrait of glamour and power.” Blind Woman, 1917 Porch Shadows, 1916 [Geometric Backyards, New York], 1917

Diane Arbus ( ) Diane (Dee-Ann ) was born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1923, and raised in large apartments by Central Park in NY City. Arbus grew up feeling immune and exempt from circumstance. “One of the things I suffered from was that I never felt adversity. I was confirmed in a sense of unreality.” "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. … They made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.”

Lewis Hine ( ) Hine was famous for being Paul Strand's mentor towards a straight photography style. As a teacher at Strand's school in 1906, Hine started a photo club and taught photography to students, including the 16 year old Strand. Hine took them to see a photographic exhibition at Stieglitz’s Photo Secession Gallery, opening Strand's eyes to the possibilities of photography and setting his career path. Strand did not originally see any of Hine's great work, because Hine did not start making the images of working people that became his magnus opus until a couple of years later. However, at the end of his own career, and looking back with hindsight at Hine's, Strand said of him,“He was a modest man and he did not take himself seriously. He did not think of himself as an artist. He was not the “artist type”, but he was “the artist”. He had an amazing eye.” strand-on-lewis-hine

Edward Weston ( ) Weston has been the star of recent auctions (a 2008 post). His “Nude,” dated 1925, sold for $1,609,000, a new record for the photographer. Another highlight of the auction was Paul Strand’s 1923 image titled “Rebecca,” which sold for $645, Inovative and influential, Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois, Weston was a major American photographer and co-founder of Group f/64; 7 San Francisco modernists reacting to Pictorialist Style. Weston began taking pictures at the age of sixteen. His first photos were of the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. His first photograph was published in That same year, Weston moved to California and sold photographic services door to door, taking pictures of children, pets, and funerals.

Richard Avedon A more modern piece, Richard Avedon’s “Marilyn Monroe, May 6, 1957, New York City” was estimated at $70,000 to $100,000 but fetched a notable $457,000 in a 2008 auction. ( ) Avedon was an American photographer. High glamour, some neutral backgrounds, emphasizes forms, values, and textures. Avedon attended a prestigious High School in the Bronx, where he worked with James Baldwin, a writer who later addressed racial and sexual questions, mining complex social and psychological pressures. After becoming the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar, Avedon did not conform to standard techniques, but tried to engage a certain mood and personal quality from the models; full of emotion and often in action. m/blog/2008/04/auctions- begin.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Richard_Avedon m/blog/2008/04/auctions- begin.html “His fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty, and culture for the last half-century”

Dorothea Lange Lang ( ) has been called the greatest American documentary photographer. She is best known for her chronicles of the Great Depression and for her photographs of migratory farm workers. She took pre-World War II photographs for the U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA), investigating living conditions of families hired to work in cotton fields and farms in Arizona and California. Many of the families had fled the Dust Bowl, the lengthy drought which devastated millions of acres of farmland in Midwestern states such as Oklahoma. ates/lange/index.html

Doug Beasley Explores the sacred in the everyday. His first book: Japan; A Nisei’s First Encounter, published in 1999, offers insight into his journey to his mother’s homeland. Recent projects include ‘Silent Witness: Genocide and the Landscape’ which was commissioned by Minnesota Center for Photography and ‘Disappearing Green Space,’ funded by a McKnight Fellowship in Beasley lives in a small wooden home in Saint Paul where, when not out traveling the world, he can be found tending his Japanese Gardens or enjoying a strong cup of coffee.