Robert Frank 

(1924-2019)

Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frank

 

Trolley, New Orleans, 1955, from The Americans

 Richard Avedon 

 (1923-2004)
 Richard Avedon  was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon

Dovima with Elephants
1955

Richard Avedon characterized his improvised approach to fashion photography as “a vacation from life.” Dovima with Elephants originally appeared in a 14-page story on Paris fashions published in the September 1955 issue of Harper’s Bazaar (where Avedon was staff photographer from 1946 to 1965). Avedon photographed the model known as Dovima (born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba) in a studio and various Paris locations, including the Cirque d’Hiver, where this image was shot. He later recounted, “I saw the elephants under an enormous skylight… . I then had to find the right dress and I knew there was a potential here for a kind of dream image.” The dress chosen was in fact the first design for Dior by 19-year-old Yves Saint Laurent. In the photograph Dovima appears poised and fearless, her sinuous contours echoing those of the massive pachyderms she seems to command.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/221681/dovima-with-elephants-evening-dress-by-dior-cirque-d-hiver-paris
 

 Edward Weston

(1886-1958)

Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..."[and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still-lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Weston
https://edward-weston.com/

 

Juniper, Lake Tenaya  

1937

Robert Capa

(1913-1954)
Robert Capa (born Endre Ernő Friedmann) was a Hungarian-American war photographer and photojournalist as well as the companion and professional partner of photographer Gerda Taro. He is considered by some to be the greatest combat and adventure photographer in history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Capa

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/robert-capa/

 

 Sicilian peasant telling an American officer which way the Germans had gone. 

Near Troina. Italy. August, 1943

Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-2004)
 

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947. In the 1970s he took up drawing—he had studied painting in the 1920s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/henri-cartier-bresso

 

 The Var department. Hyères, France. 1932.

Dorothea Lange
(1895 - 1965)

Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange
https://www.moma.org/artists/3373

A very blue eagle.
Along California highway, Nov. 1936

  Yousuf-Karsh

(1908 - 2002)

Yousuf Karsh CC was an Armenian-Canadian photographer known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yousuf_Karsh
https://karsh.org/a-life-in-images/#thumbnails

Albert Einstein
1948