What contemporary photographers are you interested in?

J

Jamie123

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This forum seems to be a lot about the past and everybody seems to have their own heroes. But what I'd really like to know what contemporary photographers people here are interested in, especially the ones who are getting more recognition in the past few years.

Right now I'm very interested in Roe Ethridge's work. Alec Soth is also a long time favourite and so is Taryn Simon. Her newest body of work is a bit laborious but I like it. I'm also liking Alex Prager's stuff but the constant use of wigs can get boring at times. Same goes for Lise Sarfati.

I'm intentionally just naming 'art' photographers as the list of purely commercial photographers I like could go on forever.


PS: I know it will come off as elitist but I would prefer it if everyone could refrain from brown-nosing and naming fellow RFFers.
 
I'm liking the works of Jeff Wall and my own wife... Tina Hage (not really brown nosing as she's not a RFFr ;-I)
 
kehng said:
I'm liking the works of Jeff Wall and my own wife... Tina Hage (not really brown nosing as she's not a RFFr ;-I)
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I'm a huge fan of Jeff Wall, i.e. he's probably number one in my list. I didn't list him because, while he's still very actively working, I consider him a late 20th century photographer and I wanted to list a few of the more recent ones that inspire me. Of course I'm also quite fond of Gursky's and Demand's work. Struth I find ok but I'm not too fond of Ruff. Crewdson is a bit tricky for me. While I like the idea of his works, somehow they just don't impress me all that much. Maybe a bit too theatrical for my taste.
No problem with you listing your wife's work. :)
 
I'm biased towards portrait photography, and Rania Matar impresses the hell out of me. If you like environmental portraiture at all, have a look at A GIRL AND HER ROOM.


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Edited to add: She apparently uses Leica Ms for some of her stuff.
 
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Frank Version Two said:
http://frankpetronio.com/archive/photographers_i_like.html

The quality of the photographer seems to be inversely related to the quality of their stupid pretentious Flash websites.
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Good list. I like Dan Winters' work although I might not be as passionate about it as you. His website isn't too bad for a flash site. Frank Ockenfels III website is indeed horrible, though. Toledano's site I quite like and as far as I can see he doesn't use Flash.

Anyways, from the first section of your list I probably like Kander the most. I share your guilty pleasure for McGinley although I don't like that he choses to print his work big. Seems too forced to me. I admit that I didn't know Richard Kern's work but I'm liking it quite a bit. TR I sort of like and hate at the same time. I do like his aesthetic but I just don't understand how his own work doesn't bore him by now. And also, he's clearly an exploitative a**.
Araki is a tricky one for me. I don't really like his work but I think that's mostly because I just can't relate to that part of Japanese culture. It's like Takashi Murakami's work. I can see why it might be of importance but it just doesn't do anything for me.
 
Alec Soth, Hiroh Kikai, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yasumasa Morimura. I never thought I would ever like the latter, but a couple of very good interviews changed my approach to his work.
 
With contemporary photographers, it is very difficult to find one who you can consistently like.

The vast majority specialize: commercial, portrait, staged, nude, landscape, heavy montage...etc. Specializations really bore me. And it is extremely difficult to find photographers who don't mistake "moving on" with "abandoning" something that works for them.

At the Arles Rencontres this year I saw a lot of very boring gallery-curator-pleasing stuff (i.e. the self-photographer who suffers through each self-take, the photojournalist who finds anything non-Western as extremely impacting per se, impact weighing purely on the photographed celebrity's recognition, and the usual share of person-in-the-room-with-the-eclectic-wall-postings shots).

Unfortunately, some of the "old" photo exhibits were disregarded merely because of their "un-newness" and lack of (surely related to the whole "celebrity recognition" way) cultural significance to most of the audience (like the Mexican Revolution photo exhibit). I guess that (not new stuff) is also boring.

But then there were some very amazing photographers --three that I liked, in total, and who were very overlooked--, of whom I only remember one name at the moment: Wang Qingsow. His work ("The History of Monuments") was very unique and intelligent, and it is difficult to translate into a neat pamphlet or online portfolio: you really have to see it to get it.
 
Agreed on Crewdson -- once you say to yourself "what fantastic lighting!", there's not really a lot to say about his images.

Taryn Simon: really excellent.

A few that interest me (but not necessarily "love to pieces"): Trevor Paglen, Loretta Lux, Edward Burtynsky, Adam Fuss

I like the abstract ones a lot: Marco Breuer, Markus Amm, Walead Beshty
 
retnull said:
Agreed on Crewdson -- once you say to yourself "what fantastic lighting!", there's not really a lot to say about his images.
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Oh, right! I remember his photos because my immediate thought was: "Really?" It's almost as if Thomas Kinkade, on a dare, had decided to go moody (in the teenage sense), hired a team of lighting technicians (one from Hollywood, another from Broadway, and another one who does the "musical guest" setup for night talk shows) and worked the agent phones.

So, OK, it's not my thing. And I'm sure it takes a lot of work (and money) to do each one of these shots. But meh. At least it's something that galleries love for a new exhibit: predictable sameness with enough differences.
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
The vast majority specialize: commercial, portrait, staged, nude, landscape, heavy montage...etc. Specializations really bore me. And it is extremely difficult to find photographers who don't mistake "moving on" with "abandoning" something that works for them.
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I think sometimes when photographers 'move on' there is a period where the new work isn't quite at the level of quality as the old work as they obviously had much more experience with the old way of working. At times it can seem like they abandoned something good but more often than not I can appreciate what they're trying to do and where they're going.
 
Being that Lee Friedlander is still working, I'll pick him. Todd Hido's night stuff is interesting as is Trent Parke's colour work.
 
I could easier tell you the ones that I despise!

So much of what is touted as successful and "of today" is so cold and academic, it's like the mass of "art" photographers have lost the entire notion of gesture, spontaneity, and a large part of what makes photography photographic. Instead the photos are more about their performance in making them, these self-absorbed, pretentious a-holes.

Instead they are just making flat images with cameras and call them "art".

And then, repeat the same damn picture, maybe in a different place but the same flat boring thing, over and over and over until they call it a "body of work" as if it were giant paint-by-numbers set, a ready-made MFA thesis repeated for years and years after graduation....

I mean Hell, all Gursky did was distill the 10,000 MFA students who followed the New Topographics doctrinaire and made his pieces larger and more expensively....

Modern portraitists are even worse, look at the Tate Portrait show for hollowing bad pictures.

Give me a Gene Smith or a Richard Avedon any day, they'd shoot circles around these silly poofs.

I don't think Terry Richardson could lick Smith or Avedon's boots but at least the guy has a personality, which is far more than most of the recent "artists".
 
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When I look at contemporary "art" photographers, I am rebuffed most of the time. Most of them are epitome of banality - banal subjects shot in a banal way in banal colour. They mostly do not feel colour, yet they use it as if it was a universal language - in fact, when applied without any creative thought, it is the universal language of banality. Guys like Egglestone, Constantine Manos or Joel Meyerowitz seem Michelangelos of colour compared to this pack.
Some here were talking of Jeff Wall or Alec Soth - just have a look at the art of banality:
http://2photo.org/wp-content/gallery/jeff-wall/rm1_destroyed_room_lrg.jpg
http://www.ahornmagazine.com/issue_2/review4_gust_soth/alec_soth_003.jpg

Personally, I prefer B&W photography, and I still choose to follow the likes of Elliot Erwitt, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Sebastiao Salgado or Ralph Gibson. If I really have to point to someone young, I would rather indicate our fellow RFF er Sanders McNew or, in my opinion the best reportage photographer since Salgado - Emmanuel Smague.http://www.smague.fr/
 
There are too many that I like to refine any favourites other than

Sally Mann
and
Thomas Joshua Cooper

would come top of my list if a new book came out or an exhibition was nearby. But I know my favourites move over time and I just look and learn from whoever grabs my attention.

Steve
 
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