Richard Avedon Richard Avedon (1923–2004, born New York City) was a photographer whose mastery of portraiture and fashion across six decades produced a body of work that ranks among the most formally ambitious in the history of the medium. Joining Harper’s Bazaar in 1945 under art director Alexey Brodovitch, Avedon established a distinctive aesthetic rooted in…

Peter Lindbergh Peter Lindbergh (1944–2019, born Lissa, Germany) was a photographer whose naturalistic, black-and-white approach to fashion and portraiture helped define the visual language of the industry in the late 1980s and 1990s, consistently challenging prevailing ideals of beauty in favor of authenticity and the unretouched reality of his subjects. Raised in Germany and initially working…

Paul Caponigro  Paul Caponigro (born 1932, Boston, Massachusetts) is a photographer whose meditative, technically precise images of the natural world and ancient sacred sites have placed him among the most respected photographers of his generation. Initially drawn equally to music and photography, Caponigro studied at the Boston University College of Music before turning fully to photography,…

Patrick Demarchelier Patrick Demarchelier (1943–2022, born Le Havre, France) was a fashion photographer whose warm, spontaneous approach and instinct for the unguarded moment gave his work a naturalness that set it apart from the more formal aesthetics of his contemporaries. Largely self-taught, Demarchelier began photographing in France before moving to New York in 1975, where he…

Mel Bochner Mel Bochner (1940–2025, born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was a conceptual artist and painter widely recognized as one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art, whose investigation of the relationship between language, perception, and meaning reshaped the possibilities of both visual art and the written word. Moving to New York in 1964 and quickly becoming part of…

Mark di Suvero Mark di Suvero (born 1933, Shanghai, China) is a sculptor whose monumental steel constructions, built from industrial materials and animated by kinetic elements that invite physical interaction, established him as one of the most important sculptors to emerge from the Abstract Expressionist era. Born in Shanghai to Italian parents and raised in San…

Louis Stettner Louis Stettner (1922–2016, born Brooklyn, New York) was a photographer whose seven-decade career produced a body of work defined by an abiding humanism and a poetic attentiveness to the lives of ordinary people in the two cities he called his spiritual homes, New York and Paris. Drawn to photography as a teenager through visits…

Joel Meyerowitz Joel Meyerowitz (born 1938, New York City) is a photographer whose pioneering advocacy for color photography helped transform the field and establish color as a legitimate expressive tool for serious photographic practice. Initially working in advertising before discovering photography through an encounter with Robert Frank, Meyerowitz became one of the leading voices of American…

Jean Dubuffet Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985, born Le Havre, France) was a painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose radical rejection of conventional aesthetics made him one of the most provocative and consequential figures in postwar European art. After brief studies at the Académie Julian in Paris, he spent nearly two decades in the wine trade before committing fully…

Irving Penn Irving Penn (1917–2009, born Plainfield, New Jersey) was a photographer of exceptional range and formal precision whose work across fashion, portraiture, still life, and documentary photography produced one of the most distinguished bodies of work in the history of the medium. Educated at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art under Alexey Brodovitch, Penn…