Historic Photographer - Research

Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

• Adams is known mostly for his black and white landscape photos of Yosemite National Park, which have been reproduced in calenders, books and posters over the years
• He and Fred Archer developed the Zone System which is a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of an image; this ensured that all of his images had a certain clarity and sharpness that others did not
• He was a founder of the Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston; it was a group of seven 20th century photographers from San Francisco who shared a common style of sharp-focused and well framed images
• Adams received many different awards throughout his life, including an honorary atrium doctor degree from Harvard University, as well as an honorary doctor of Fine Arts at Yale
• Inyo National Forest and a peak present in it were both renamed in 1985 to the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Mount Ansel Adams.

Robert Frank (1924)

• Franks most notable work is his 1958 book The Americans; it is a post-war photography book documenting Frank's year travelling through the USA. The intro was done by Jack Kerouac 
• Early on in his career, Frank was a fashion photographer for the magazine Harper's Bazaar in New York City
• Frank was also a documentary film maker. His first film was the 1959 Pull My Daisy, which was written and narrated by Kerouac. However, his best known film is the controversial unreleased Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues
• Frank has since moved to Nova Scotia, and he divides his time between his home there and his loft in New York. He has been known as somewhat of a recluse after the death of his daughter, Andrea, in 1974.
• Frank still continues to accept the odd assignment; he was the photographer for the 1984 Democratic National Convention, as well as directing music videos for artists such as New Order and Patti Smith

Vivian Maier (1926-2009)

• Maier worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago and pursued photography in her spare time, taking over 150,000 photos in her career
• She never gained any recognition for her work during her lifetime, and her work was only found after a group of photographers bought her undeveloped negatives from her storage locker
• Her work has repeatedly been compared to that of Robert Frank, with her style being street art in American cities and societies
• There have been various books and a few documentary films about Maier and her work
• Over the years, there have been many different exhibitions of her work throughout the world

Jack Delano (1914-1997)

• Delano was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was created during the Depression to combat American rural poverty
• He is also a composer noted for his use of Puerto Rican folk material
• Delano directed Los Peloteros, a film about poor rural Puerto Rican kids and their love for baseball
• After graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Delano decided to create a photography project on the study of mining conditions in Pennsylvania. After which, he sent sample images and applied for a job with the FSA photography program 
• Originally from Russia, Delano first went to Puerto Rico as a part of the FSA project in 1941; the trip had such an effect on him, that he eventually settled there in 1946

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)

• Cartier-Bresson is considered to be the father of photojournalism
• He helped to develop the street photography style, and coined the term The Decisive Moment, which has inspired generations of photographers ever since
• His first start at photojournalism was when he covered the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for the French weekly Regards
• In 1947, Cartier-Bresson co-founded Magnum Photos; it is an international photographic cooperative which Cartier-Bresson has described as "... a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually"
• There have been countless exhibitions on his work throughout the globe, as well as collections of his work being held all over