"Looking Down"
Second installment:
"Bed's Gotta Grip"
"A Strong Breeze"
"A Glimpse of the Mind"
"In Utero"
Insightful Flower Series first installment, continuation of series below. The below photographs were not captured by me, but were composited to create the images.
"A Midwestern Cloud"
"The Sulking Cloud"
"A Heavenly Cloud"
"Cloud Behind Lamp"
"Clouds through Canopies"
"Cloud Framed by Foliage and Interrupted by Building"
"An Invisible Cloud"
"Loud Clouds and Quiet Bridges"
"Clouds Through the Eyes of a Prisoner"
"A Friendly Cloud"
"City Livin' Cloud Lovin'"
"The Lone Bison"
Diane Arbus: Portrait Photographer
Diane Arbus was an American portrait photographer. She was known for her black-and-white images of odd or marginal people, such as circus performers, transgenders, and dwarves.
She was born in 1923 in New York City to a wealthy family. Her parents owned a popular department store on Fifth Avenue, called Russek’s, who specialized in furs. She wasn’t affected by the Great Depression during the 1930s. When she was eighteen, she married her childhood sweetheart, Allan Arbus. They had two daughters together, Doon and Amy.
Allan went to school for photography. He was a photographer for the Vietnam War for the U.S. army Signal Corps. After the war, he became a fashion photographer for ads, commercials, and Russek’s. Diane played her role as her husband’s assistant and sometimes fashion stylist.
In 1956, Diane quit the commercial photography business to study under another photographer. She worked on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire. She was doing her own photo projects in her freetime. This is when she began developing her own type of style and artistic interests. The separation from the business eventually led to their marriage separation in 1959.
Diane’s style of photography wasn’t simple. Each image was very important and thought through. She would spend weeks with a subject, following them home, and talking or listening to them. Diane Arbus took some of the most influential and honest portraits ever seen, and she was never very well known for the beautiful work she did.
In the 1960s, she taught photography at Parson’s School for Design and the Cooper Union in New York. Her first big exhibition of her work was at the MoMA in 1967, it was called “New Documents”.
Diane Arbus experienced depressive bouts throughout her life, sometimes changed her mood, or caused by symptoms of Hepatitis. July 26, 1971, she committed suicide in her New York apartment by taking barbiturates and slashing her wrists with a razor, she was 48 years old.Annie Leibovitz: Portrait Photographer
Annie Leibovitz is considered one of America’s best portrait photographers. She trademarked her style very early in her career when working for Rolling Stone magazine.
She was born October 2nd, 1949 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. Annie and her five siblings moved around a lot with their father’s assignments. Her first pictures were taken when her father was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.
She studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. After college, she worked different jobs while she was experimenting with photography, including volunteering at a kibbutz in Amir, Israel during 1969.
In 1970, she applied for a job at Rolling Stone magazine, Jann Wenner was so impressed with her portfolio, she was hired as a staff photographer. Within two years, in 1973, Wenner promoted her to chief photographer, the position she held for 10 years. When Leibovitz was working for the magazine, she was given the opportunity to photograph some of most influential musicians and celebrities in history. She had a style of portrait photography that used color so intensely for mood and poses of the body that wasn’t being published anywhere else. She produced some of the most thought provoking images of her time. Her style of photography made a very specific image for what we know and love about Rolling Stone magazine and their photographs.
She is most well known for her photograph of a nude John Lennon curled around his fully clothed wife, Yoko Ono, taken on December 8, 1980, just hours before his death.
Leibovitz left Rolling Stone in 1983, began working for Vanity Fair. Her subjects were more ranged when she worked for the entertainment magazine. This is where she took the iconic images of pregnant, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a bathtub of milk.
In 1987, she won a Clio Award for her portraits for an American Express “Membership” Campaign. In 1991, her collection of black-and-white prints were put in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
She has had exhibits, nominations for prestigious awards, books of her work, all that are glorifying the incredible images she has taken throughout her life.
