Who is your favorite photographer in history - who has influenced you the most?

There's only ever been one for me: Ernst Hass, whilst I've seen others work because when you start reading about Photography the usual suspects are hard to get way from, HCB, Ansel Adams, Capa etc....But in the early days I never was really a fan of looking at others work because the way my brain works, scared of being influenced too much by others as trying to find my own way, but subconsciously hard to get away from.

I'll mention 2 others that I rarely see talked about in general, Patrick Lichfield and David Bailey, not because of their commercial work but their personal work, as I've mentioned in another thread I wanted to originally be a Portrait Photographer and their work was a deciding factor in those thoughts, but I waver....

It was his work with Colour that caught my eye and the movement, so emotional and expressive and also his simplicity, in his equipment and his abilty to be so versatile in subject matter, his Movie Still work is outstanding, yeah more portraits, ahem!

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From The Misfits

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Johnnie Ray, NY 1952


But the colour motion images captivated me and still do to this day, influence my images.

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Traffic, New York 1957

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Madison Square Garden, New York 1957

He also apparently said; “The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to SEE.”

Which makes me smile!

I do now buy Photograpy books and look at others work because I'm set in my ways now and nothing is going to change that.
Yes he is one of my favorites too. In my Pantheon of the "greats" I think Saul Leiter would beat him by a "short nose" if this were ahorse race, but Haas is right up there with Leiter. Both are terrific in the way they use colors, movement and blur.
 
This is an interesting question because I think it's very true that your influences change over time. I became interested in photography in the early 1970s because I had a study period in high school where I discovered Modern Photography magazine in the library. There I discovered Pete Turner's intense use of colour (often with filters) and graphic use of shapes which still influence my colour work today. The colour itself becomes the subject.

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But like most of us, I also tried to mimic Ansel Adams. If I just had a view camera, could learn the Zone System and could pack it all into the mountains near my home, I thought I could be a great photographer.

Walker Evans was another profound influence. Others I admired are Marie Cosindas (Polaroid work is fantastic) and Joel Meyerowitz.

Learning Ansel's technique was very helpful, but eventually, it becomes a bit of a curse. I drifted the opposite direction back to 35mm B&W and so, today, I would say I'm aiming for Robert Frank as my mentor. The Americans is perhaps my favourite monograph. (Along with Ansel's 'Yosemite and the Range of Light' of course.)
 
I'm currently parked up in a layby with minimal signal so you'll have to look him up yourselves, sorry, but as somebody who takes a lot of photos of cricket my influence has to be G W Beldam, who took what must have been some of the first action photos of cricketers, as well as golf and jiu-jitsu.
 
I thought this was going to be like choosing my favorite child, picking fro among the fsa photographers. But it rut ed out my fav was similar to the fsa photographers but not one. And, better known as a Southern writer than a photographer. Eu7dora Welty, who once lived down the street from where my sister lives now in the historic section of Oxford, Mississippi. She was a very casual photographer, just photographing around her neighborhood until her camera was stolen and she never bothered to replace it.

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Dimitris Harrisiadis for me. I got his book back in the early 90s and I was so impressed by his work.

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I consider him (together with Kostas Balafas) to have captured Greece the way I remembered it as a small kid visiting the remote villages of the Pelloponese and Epirus for holidays.

There are some pictures that feel so familiar to me - although I don't know where the following picture is taken, I spent my summers as a kid next to the sea with little taverns like this. This picture feels so familiar.

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I've been so many times through this book (and still am) that it has started falling in pieces...

Another influence is Erich Lessing. I saw one of his exhibitions about Eastern Europe back in 2007 and I was so impressed !
Now looking for this book. Thanks for sharing - I wasn’t aware of this photographer.
 
Now looking for this book. Thanks for sharing - I wasn’t aware of this photographer.
Oh, you might have run out of luck. This book was published in 1994 by the editor of the photography magazine I was buying at that time. Basically with 4 coupons found in the magazine and a bit of money, they were posting the book to you. I don't think it ever went to wider circulation.

"Φωτογράφος" magazine is still active and actually is doing well. You can email them to see if they have any stock . The book's ISBN is 960-85120-7-7

and their contact page: Επικοινωνία

Good luck 👍
 
Oh, you might have run out of luck. This book was published in 1994 by the editor of the photography magazine I was buying at that time. Basically with 4 coupons found in the magazine and a bit of money, they were posting the book to you. I don't think it ever went to wider circulation.

"Φωτογράφος" magazine is still active and actually is doing well. You can email them to see if they have any stock . The book's ISBN is 960-85120-7-7

and their contact page: Επικοινωνία

Good luck 👍
Thank you!
 
Many photographers have influenced me, but only a few that I can really put a point on. Of course, the classical street photographers like HCB, and Daido Moriyama as well. But I admire them from a distance, and emulate them only in fits and starts. I don't have the same eye.

The ones I think influenced me more were Walker Evans and Robert Frank. Specifically, American Photographs and The Americans. They're like two sides of the same coin: America made clear, but to the eye, one (Evans) and to the heart, the other (Frank). Evans has a sort of straight-on, clean, clear-eyed portrayal of everything. He took photos of quiet things, but also photos of things with a lot of pathos (like laborers and their families), made quiet through the presentation.

Evans strikes me as far more dreamlike, impressionist. His work from the American road trips which went into The Americans captures so much of the spirit of the time, even when the details are sparse. I love the way he found so much symbolism and unconsciousness in those images.

Those two are sort of the two sides of the coin that I want my photography to be. I love shooting quiet and straight-on, and I love trying to get into the unconscious, metaphysical aspect of things. I could go on for probably my whole life exploring those two dynamics.
 
Wikipedia says:

"Misonne would often photograph things that were strongly illuminated from behind, producing a halo effect. He would also retouch the lighting effects in his photographs, experimenting with and using many techniques, such as the Fresson process and later the bromoil and mediobrome processes. He also invented the "flou-net" and "photo-dessin" processes."

If I'm not mistaken, pictorialists were not beyond applying Vaseline to their lenses...
I understand vaseline on the lens. 😀 BUt that's about all - the other mentioned techniques are "all Greek" to me. 😵
 
I’d certainly say Walker Evans had a great influence but I can’t overlook Lewis Hine or the FSA photographers. And yes Ansel had a direct influence. I was one of the very lucky to spend a week with him when he was actually teaching students in the mid 70’s. It has been over 50 years and I still use information I learned from him. I never considered myself a landscape photographer but exposure and development techniques are universal and carry across the full spectrum of photography.

I’m amazed no one has mentioned Edward Weston or Imogen Cunningham.
 
Or Alfred Eisenstaedt.
A few others I’m surprised we’ve not seen mentioned are Edward S Curtis, Gordon Parks,Timmothy O’Sullivan and Man Ray.

Ansel was a pioneer in exposure and development but copied images O’Sullivan had already shot. Adams admitted to going to the same locations O’Sullivan shot years earlier.

Looking at photography, most of the people we mentioned were pioneers in the art. They did it first for the most part and the rest of us copied what they did.
 
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