NORMAN PARKINSON Norman Parkinson CBE (1913–1990, born London, England) was an English portrait and fashion photographer whose fifty-year career fundamentally transformed British fashion photography and established him as one of the most significant image-makers of the twentieth century. Educated at Westminster School, he began his career in 1931 as an apprentice to the court photographers…

STEVE McCURRY Steve McCurry (born 1950, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American photojournalist and photographer whose four decades of work across the conflict zones, street markets, and landscapes of Asia and the Middle East have produced some of the most widely recognised images in the history of documentary photography. Educated at Pennsylvania State University, he travelled…

DORA MAAR Dora Maar (1907–1997, born Henriette Theodora Markovitch, Tours, France) was a French photographer, painter, and artist whose practice across the 1930s placed her at the intersection of Surrealism, documentary photography, and fine art at one of the most fertile moments in twentieth-century cultural history. Raised partly in Buenos Aires, where her father worked…

HERMAN LEONARD Herman Leonard (1923–2010, born Allentown, Pennsylvania) was an American photographer whose intimate and technically masterful images of jazz musicians in performance and at rest constitute the most significant body of jazz photography of the twentieth century. Upon graduating in 1947, he drove to Ottawa on the chance of working with Yousuf Karsh, the…

MICHAEL KENNA Michael Kenna (born 1953, Widnes, Lancashire, England) is a British photographer whose spare, contemplative black-and-white landscapes have earned him a reputation as one of the most distinctive and meditative practitioners of the medium in the contemporary era. Raised in the industrial northwest of England, he studied at the Banbury School of Art and…

ROBERT DOISNEAU Robert Doisneau (1912–1994, born Gentilly, France) was a French photographer whose humanist vision of Parisian street life produced some of the most beloved and enduring images in the history of photography. Trained as a lithographer at the École Estienne in Paris, he turned to photography in the early 1930s and worked briefly as…

GAVIN BOND Gavin Bond (born London, England) is a British photographer whose practice spans three decades of fashion, celebrity, and entertainment photography at the highest levels of the industry. Educated at Central Saint Martins, Bond was among the few photographers granted sustained access to the exclusive backstage world of the early 1990s supermodel era, documenting…

JULIE BLACKMON Julie Blackmon (born 1966, Springfield, Missouri) is an American photographer whose meticulously staged, large-scale colour photographs occupy a singular position between domestic observation, art historical reference, and social commentary. Raised as the oldest of nine children, Blackmon studied at Missouri State University where she discovered photography through the work of Sally Mann and…

HARRY BENSON Harry Benson CBE (born 1929, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish photographer whose seven-decade career has produced one of the most comprehensive records of public life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Born in Glasgow and raised in Troon, Benson began his career at a series of Scottish newspapers before securing an assignment in…

CECIL BEATON Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (1904–1980, born London, England) was a British photographer, designer, and diarist whose six-decade career produced some of the most elegant and enduring portrait and fashion images of the twentieth century. Born into a middle-class London family, Beaton was largely self-taught as a photographer, developing his practice through an obsessive…