Berenice Abbott

 Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of the streetlife and architecture of New York City during the 1930s.

 Abbott worked for the FAP (Federal Art Project) who provided art for schools and hospitals between 1935-43. In some of her work she used shadows created by skyscrapers to show contrasts between the old and the new. Abbott put thought into her shots and subjects, which says that her photographs in some ways can be void of the ‘decisive moment’ theory, but then again can have an element of it as she could wait for the right moment to take the photo.

Eugene Smith

“Photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes - just sometimes - one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought." – Eugene Smith

Eugene Smith was a war correspondent and he followed the American offensive in the south pacific against Japan, where he received serious injuries, but he captured images of the war to reflect the moral compass of humanity, good vs. evil and compassion people have in times of hardship. Focused heavily on ‘humanistic photography’, which is why the Eugene Smith Memorial Fund was founded. It is a grant given to photographers who are willing to explore the world and give a unique view of it, sponsored by the likes of ‘Canon’ and ‘mediastorm’ to help the new photographers achieve their goals, and pushing photography forward.

Don McCullin

Don McCullin is known as one of the great war photographers, as he covered the Vietnam war in a graphically realistic way that people hadn’t really had the chance to witness before. He got his big break originally when the Observer bought his pictures of a street gang in Islington who were linked to the killing of a policeman. He gained international recognition from documenting the construction of the Berlin Wall. ‘McCullin adopted quite early the methods he would stick to throughout his career, always bringing his own film home with him and processing it himself. "I never air freighted my work out which suited me in other ways in that I could come and go a bit. I always knew that if you hung around those war zones for long enough you would die. And many of my friends and colleagues did.”^[1] It wasn't until he was covering the Biafran war in 1969 that it occurred to him he "should have been making people think the images I was making were of things that should be unacceptable in our world. It came to me in a schoolroom being used as a hospital, and I saw 800 children literally dropping down dead in front of me. I had three young children of my own. That turned me away from the Hollywood gung-ho image of the war photographer. It converted me into another person."[2]

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/22/don-mccullin-southern-frontiers-interview

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/22/don-mccullin-southern-frontiers-interview 

 Stephen Shore

‘Shore has achieved recognition as a key figure in new color photography, a loosely defined movement whose practitioners have brought serious aesthetic considerations to color photography as an art form. Shore's body of work includes banal images of everyday subject matter - the back wall of a parking lot, yellow traffic stripes, a tabletop place setting in a restaurant - in sparsely populated areas that convey his formalistic vision of balance and serenity.’[1]

 I looked at Stephen Shore because he focused heavily on framing, which is what I planned to do with my photographs for the photo essay. Similarly to Berenice Abbott, Shore took pictures of architecture and street scenes, but he used the colour in his photographs to express/create the overall feel of his stills. Abbott often used the shadows of surrounding buildings to juxtapose the old/new age of society, where as Shore used shadow to emphasise the naturalness of the lighting. ‘Natural light stimulates the whole of the space in his pictures, and does not appear to be a special phenomenon in itself that is being used in an attempt to dramatize the formal structure.’[2] Looking at this photographer helped me appreciate how natural light can affect the look and feel of an image and how artificial light removes the quality given compared to natural light.

[1]  http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/shore/shore_articles4.html

[2] http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/shore/shore_articles2.html