A Look Back

A column of essays and profiles that a look back at the influence of notable photographic artists throughout history.

Pedro Meyer (born October 6, 1935) is among the most accomplished Latin American photographers of the modern era, pioneering the digital treatment of documentary photographs and continually raising intriguing philosophical questions through his work. Considering himself primarily a documentary photographer, Meyer nevertheless has been unafraid to present pieces constructed of several images…

In the act of appropriating the political voice and thematic structure of European Surrealism and melding it with uniquely Japanese subjects, Kansuke Yamamoto (1914 – 1987) deeply influenced the development of Japanese Surrealism, and became a singularly important…

Amongst the burgeoning creativity in Paris of the nineteen-twenties, the artist Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky,expanded the horizons of photography well beyond its representational means, and through relentless darkroom experimentation, liberated that medium from its place as a mirror to nature. His chosen name would come to reflect that mysterious and intrepid realm his photographs occupied in Modern Art. If the famed British inventor Henry Fox Talbot was to…

Burgess Franklin Collins, born August 6, 1923, began his adult life showing a great deal of promise in the sciences. He majored in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, and in 1943 was drafted..

Henry Peach Robinson’s earliest endeavors at art were highly precocious oil paintings, one of which was accepted into a prestigious gallery showing while Robinson was only 22. Although he was already fully prepared for…

Hannah Hoch (born Anna Therese Johanne Hoch on November 1, 1899) remains a well-known member of the Berlin Dada movement, and was among the first prominent artists to work with photo-montage techniques. Hoch attended the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin from 1912 to 1914, during the tense lead-up to the first World War.

Yves Klein (1928 – 1962) is considered to be one of the most noteworthy artists to emerge in the mid-20th century. He was one of the founding members of a brief but distinct art movement called Nouveau réalisme (New Realism) which sought to distinguish itself from abstract painting by returning to “reality” in its subject matter via direct appropriation of images or materials…