8 more things

somehow i managed to get tagged again. mackenzie tagged me last week and i am just now getting around to responding. since i was already tagged so recently, i decided to limit this set of responses to 8 photographers that have changed my life dramatically (as dramatically as any photographer can i guess):

1/ julia margaret cameron was one of the first fine art photographers i was ever exposed to. i find this odd considering she is not exactly mainstream, but her work stuck with me non the less.

2/ in moments of inspirational need, i inevitably turn to emmet gowin's photos of edith. i can't seem to help myself.

3/ not only have i spent endless hours with john szarkowski's idea of louis sullivan, but i have read so many books with his forward or curatorial expertise that i can't imagine my photography education without him.

4/ robert frank and his ingeniously poetic the americans (through which i learned how photography can utilize sequence among many, many other things), allowed me for the first time to identify photography, and more importantly my own work, as a narrative means of expression.

5/ nan goldin and stephen shore, an odd pairing perhaps, both gave me insight into alternative ways to photograph my life as memoir. it took me several attempts to understand the subtle power of nan goldin's images, and now i can't understand what took me so long.

6/ lee friedlander. it wasn't until being forced to look through every image of sticks and stones while huddled over my teacher's shoulder that i ever fully understood how a formal photograph was composed (actually stephen shore could similarly be cited here as well).

7/ ralph eugene meatyard might just be my all time favorite photographer. the image below, cranston ritchie, 1964, is the first photograph of his i ever saw, and it's probably my least favorite. i love meatyard not just for his mysterious and haunting imagery, but because he seems like just the kind of quirky guy i would have gotten a kick out of. for example, i read that one of his favorite pastimes was searching the phone book for individuals with wildly eccentric names.

8/ lastly doug and mike starn. their moth pictures stop my heart a little every time i see them. also, i work for them now, so that's about as a dramatic an effect as any photographer can have.

for the record, this was much harder than i expected it to be. it hurts me to think about the photographers i left out.

(i am going to break precedent and not choose 8 bloggers to tag. mainly because i already tagged the three bloggers i could think of last time, and only one of them participated.)