WeeGee

 (1899-1968)
 

Arthur (Usher) Fellig known by his pseudonym Weegee, was a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography in New York City.
Weegee worked in Manhattan's Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and 1940s and developed his signature style by following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death. Weegee published photographic books and also worked in cinema, initially making his own short films and later collaborating with film directors such as Jack Donohue and Stanley Kubrick.

Coney Island at noon Saturday, July 5, 1942

According to Miles Barth, co-author of the book Weegee's World, Coney Island was a bit off our lensman's beat. "When it came to warm weather, Weegee was the last person you could imagine in shorts and sneakers and a T-shirt," Barth told me. "It was against everything he understood. He was doing fires, floods, car wrecks, murders. What interested him was crime."
"Whatever it took to get the shot, Weegee did it," Barth says. "That was part of his genius." Barth has it from Louie Liotta, Weegee's longtime assistant, that the boss climbed up on a lifeguard station and screamed and danced until everybody started to look. "And when they did," says Barth, "he took the photograph. It was that simple."

Walker Evans
(1906-1975) 

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8×10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Evans
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/evan/hd_evan.htm

Fish Market Near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936

Gerda Taro

 (1910-1937)

Gerta Pohorylle known professionally as Gerda Taro, was a German Jewish war photographer active during the Spanish Civil War. She is regarded as the first woman photojournalist to have died while covering the frontline in a war. 

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

militia-woman training on the beach. Outside Barcelona. August 1936.

Nat Farbman

 (1907-1911)

Nat Farbman was born in Poland and migrated to United States 1911. He was a photographer for LIFE magazine from 1946–61.
At the University of Santa Clara Farbman enrolled in electrical engineering. He became a photojournalist, commercial and fashion photographer.
He married Patsy (Pat) English, a model who became a photographer, in 1938. She had learned photography from Ansel Adams whom she met in 1936, modelling for him on commercial jobs. They produced a series of photographs of the Bechuanaland (now Botswana) bushmen tribes in 1947, six of which were used in The Family of Man

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

Bushman children, Botswana 1947

 Irving Penn 

(1917-2009)

Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.

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

Miles Davis, New York 1986
Photo session for the album Tutu.

W. Eugene Smith 

(1918-1978)

William Eugene Smith  was an American photojournalist. He has been described as "perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay." His major photo essays include World War II photographs, the visual stories of an American country doctor and a nurse midwife, the clinic of Albert Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa, the city of Pittsburgh, and the pollution which damaged the health of the residents of Minamata in Japan. His 1948 series, Country Doctor, photographed for Life, is now recognized as "the first extended editorial photo story".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Eugene_Smith

 

The Walk to Paradise Garden. USA, 1946.

After being severely wounded in 1945 by Japanese mortar fire at Okinawa while covering World War II for LIFE magazine, W. Eugene Smith returned home to New York state for the long process of recuperation. He was unable to hold a camera properly or take photographs for another year. After multiple surgeries, his first attempt became iconic. Smith chose to photograph his two young children, Patrick and Juanita, scampering through the woods behind the house. The resulting image, entitled “The Walk to Paradise Garden,” became Smith’s most popular. Many have attributed its universal appeal to its perspective from behind, allowing viewers to imagine that Smith’s two children could be their own. Edward Steichen chose it as the final print in his landmark exhibition, The Family of Man, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. 

https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/collectors-prints/the-walk-to-paradise-garden-usa-1946/

 An addition to yesterday’s post:
In 2014, Jonathan Day  published a photo book that was based on The Americans by Robert Frank:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28571190-postcards-from-the-road

This was his take on the New Orleans trolley bus photo:

 Trolley, New Orleans