Photographer Research 31-Day Challenge

At the beginning of January, a prompt in my Steal Like an Artist Journal encouraged me to begin a 31-day challenge. I love photography but don’t look at others’ work as often as I would like, so I decided to do some brief research on one photographer each day and ended up with my own little personally curated gallery of artists that inspire me.

NONE of these images are my own. Please click on the images to see them and other images in the series on the photographer’s websites.

January 1: Irving Penn
Irving Penn is a photographer best known for his fashion photography but also has several interesting side projects that are worth a look.

January 2: Jon Horvath
His Pathetic Clouds series killed me.

January 3: Andrew Borowiec
I see so much of what I’ve been trying to accomplish in my Iowa series in this Ohio photographer’s work.

January 4: Kate Medley
Her work in the South is gorgeous. Unfortunately, her website doesn’t seem to be working right now, so I’ve linked to Oxford American.

January 5: Francesca Woodman
Her black and white self portraits and long exposures continue to amaze years after her death by suicide.

January 6: Chris McCaw
Long exposure sun images burn holes through the paper. In the image below, he used new paper every 30 minutes. Click the image to check out his site where you can see a wide range of techniques he used in his Sunburn project.

January 7: Matthew Brandt
This L.A. photographer is known for making C-41 prints of lakes, then soaking them in the body of water depicted in the image.

January 8: Rebecca Drolen
Rebecca Drolen’s work is uniquely surreal and witty.

January 9: Stacey Baker
This photo editor started an Instagram account where she captures women’s legs on the streets of New York.

January 10: Lucy Hilmer has taken a self portrait every year on her birthday since 1947 when she was 29 for her project “Birthday Suits.”

January 11: Maia Flore
Check out Maia Flore’s website for fun, surreal images that will make you think.

January 12: Gioia de Bruijn
This photographer finds traditional documentary photographer voyeuristic and instead believes in being involved in the situations she photographs.

January 13: Lisa Elmaleh
Lisa Elmaleh shoots 8×10 wet plates of the Florida Everglades and develops them in a darkroom in the back of her truck.

January 14: Susan Derges
This camera-less photographer makes photograms of the movement of water.

January 15: Jens Knigge
German photographer Jens Knigge makes plantinum prints

January 16: Keith Carter
For his book Uncertain to Blue, Keith Carter photographed small towns with odd names in Texas. This image is called Bebe.

January 17:Michael Weitzman
I follow this alternative process photographer’s Instagram. He uses a wide range of techniques. The image below was produced with a toy camera.

January 18: Kat Shannon
Today my photography professor showed us this “Girls in Uniform” series one of his former students, Kat Shannon, made and I instantly fell in love.

January 19: Mauro D’Agati
I checked out Italian photographer Mauro D’Agati’s book Less Vegas. He visited Las Vegas for 10 days, following permanent residents around.

January 20: Harry Callahan
Harry Callahan was a street photographer who was inspired by the look, though not so much the subject matter, of Ansel Adams. The image below is part of a series made in Chicago.

January 21: Joel Sternfeld
Check out his American Prospects series for more of his witty sense of humor.

January 22: William Christenberry
William Christenberry is known for his years-long projects taking pictures of Alabama buildings as they decay, but he also made work that exposed the evils of the KKK. He said that while some people told him that it wasn’t an appropriate subject for art, he said, “…I hold the position that there are times when an artist must examine and reveal such strange and secret brutality.”

January 23: Gulnara Samoilova
Gulnara Samoilova used handcoloring to express the hidden elements of life in the USSR.

January 24: Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun was a French transgender photographer who created Surrealist self-portraits illustrating various personas.

January 25: Rose Marasco
I checked out Rose Marasco’s book New York City Pinhole Photographs and was amazed by the sense of motion in this fish market image.

January 26: Justin Quinnell
Justin Quinnell made a pinhole camera that fit inside his mouth and photographed humorous situations for his series/book Mouthpiece.

January 27:  Sandi Haber Fifield
If you’re interested in photomontage, take a look at this photographer’s beautiful, deliberate composites.

January 28: Andrew Moore
This Omaha-based photographer takes stunning aerial photos of the Great Plains for his project Dirt Meridian. 

January 29: Chris Verne
This rural Illinois photographer photographed his family and community since high school.

January 30: Eirik Johnson
Eirik Johnson focused his series Sawdust Mountain on Northwestern identity and use of natural resources such as forests and salmon.

January 31: Lois Bielefeld
Lois Bielefeld’s body of work The Bedroom is composed of 103 portraits of bedrooms and their owners.