America's Greatest Photographers

Paul Strand (American, 1890–1976) was one of the greatest photographers in the history of the medium. It will explore the remarkable evolution of Strand’s work, from the breakthrough moment in the second decade of the twentieth century when he brought his art to the brink of abstraction to his broader vision of the place of photography in the modern world, which he would develop over the course of a career that spanned six decades. Born in New York City, Strand first studied with the social documentary photographer Lewis Hine at New York’s Ethical Culture School from 1907–09, an...

A lifelong New Yorker, Helen Levitt frequented the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, and other working-class neighborhoods of the city where life played out on the stoops and sidewalks. Using a handheld Leica camera outfitted with a right-angle viewfinder that allowed her to look in one direction but snap photographs in another, Levitt often passed unnoticed by her subjects, capturing unguarded instants of joyful play and meditative melancholy that constitute the mystery and poetry of everyday lives. Showcasing the honest, humorous and inventive works of prolific documentary photo...

Working in the tumultuous postwar decades, Winogrand captured moments of everyday American life, producing an expansive picture of a nation rich with possibility yet threatening to spin out of control. He did much of his best-known work in New York City in the 1960s, but he also traveled widely around the United States, from California and Texas to Miami and Chicago. Combining hope and buoyancy with anxiety and instability, his photographs trace the mood of the country itself, from the ebullience of the postwar optimism to the chaos of the 1960s and the gloom and depression of the...

The American photographer William Eggleston (born 1939) emerged in the early 1960s as a pioneer of modern color photography. Now, 50 years later, he is widely considered its greatest exemplar. Opening February 14 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition *William Eggleston: Los Alamos* features a landmark gift to the Museum from Jade Lau of the artist's most extraordinary portfolio, *Los Alamos*, comprising 75 dye-transfer prints from color negatives made between 1965 and 1974. The exhibition marks the first time the series will be presented in its entirety in New York City...

Walker Evans was a preeminent American photographer who shaped the history of twentieth-century photography with photographs from the 1920s to the 1970s, including the iconic images Evans made in the American South during the Great Depression—work that played a major role in solidifying the term we now refer to as documentary photography. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Evans initially aspired to become a writer. He studied literature for a year at Williams College in Massachusetts and spent time in Paris during the mid-1920s, where he encountered the work of a range of modern Europ...

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), the great American impresario of photography at the turn of the 20th century. Featuring 36 photographs, the exhibition showcases fine examples of his New York views, portraits and photographs that Stieglitz took at his family’s country home at Lake George. Alfred Stieglitz's “The Terminal”1893 Alfred Stieglitz “The Steerage” 1907 Alfred Stieglitz “From the Shelton, Looking West,” 1934 The New York views reveal the artist’s lifelong interest in the urban city, from his early explorations of the picturesque effects of rain, snow and nightfall to ...

Remembered as one of the most independent, determined and respected photographers of the 20th century, Berenice Abbott chronicled the evolution of New York City for decades beginning with the Great Depression. Images of iconic New York City landmarks such as the New York Stock Exchange (est. $3,000-5,000), the construction of Rockefeller Center (est. $1,500-2,500) and Broadway to the Battery ($1,000-2,000) (below)highlight this collection of original prints. "Berenice Abbott spent years chronicling the evolution of New York City. She captured the architecture, the people a...

In a career that spanned more than five decades Ansel Adams became one of America’s most beloved landscape photographers and one of its more respected environmentalists. There are few artists whose name and works represent the extraordinary level of popular recognition and artistic achievement as that of Ansel Adams. Adams profoundly influenced the course of 20th century photography not only through his sumptuous and technically precise images, but also by means of his devotion to advancing the cause of photography as an art form. As an artist, educator, innovator, and writer, he h...

[image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg/788px-Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg] Dorothea Lange’s well-known 1936 photograph *Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,* photographed when Lange was employed by the Farm Security Administration, is included and documents the conditions of the West in rural areas during the Great Depression. Her photographs had a humanist purpose and resulted in putting a face on the hardships of that era. Recently named the most downloaded photograph in the Library of Congress' archive, it is also one of the m...

Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century’s postwar years, revolutionized classic reportage and street photography. Over a period spanning six decades, this Swiss - American artist created photographs, experimental montages, books, and films. The Albertina is showing selected works and series that trace Robert Frank’s development: from his early photojournalistic images created on trips through Europe to the pioneering work group The Americans and on to his later, more introspective projects, over 100 works will serve to illuminate central aspe...

Never-before-seen early work of Diane Arbus (1923–71), focusing on the first seven years of her career, from 1956 to 1962—the period in which she developed the idiosyncratic style and approach for which she has been recognized, praised, criticized, and copied the world over. *diane arbus: in the beginning* [image: diane arbus: in the beginning] *diane arbus: in the beginning *focuses on seven key years that represent a crucial period of the artist’s genesis, showing Arbus as she developed her style and honed her practice. Arbus was fascinated by photography even before she received...

Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971), Louisville Flood, 1937, gelatin silver print (printed no later than 1971), 7 x 9 3/8 inches, Shogren-Meyer Collection

*Artist’s Biography* Irving Penn was born in 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1934 he enrolled at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where he studied design with Alexey Brodovitch. In 1938 he began a career in New York as a graphic artist. Then, after a year painting in Mexico, he returned to New York City and began work at Vogue magazine, where Alexander Liberman was art director. Liberman encouraged Penn to take his first color photograph, a still life that became the October 1, 1943, cover of Vogue, beginning a fruitful collaboration with the magazine that cont...