Bill Brandt
Bill Brandt (1904–1983) was a German-born British photographer. He pictured English life in the 1930s, London at night and in the Blitz, and later made famous wide-angle nudes.
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) was an American photojournalist who shot the first LIFE cover. She photographed steel mills, the Great Depression, World War II, Gandhi and South Africa, and opened many doors for women in photography.
Lewis Hine
Lewis Hine was an American photographer and teacher. His pictures of child workers for the National Child Labor Committee helped change American law, and his later portraits of workers, including the builders of the Empire State Building, showed the pride of people at work.
Dan Nelken
Dan Nelken is a photographer, documentary storyteller and educator based in New York City. His book HeadStrong: The Women of Rural Uganda (Kehrer Verlag, 2026) brings together portraits and stories of working women in rural Uganda.
Paul Strand
Paul Strand (1890–1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker. His sharp New York pictures of 1916 helped make photography a modern art, and his later books gave quiet portraits of small communities in New England, Italy, the Hebrides and beyond.
August Sander
August Sander (born 1876, died 1964) was a German portrait photographer. His lifelong project People of the 20th Century shows German society through hundreds of calm, direct portraits of farmers, workers, artists and outsiders.
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget (1857–1927) was a French photographer who spent about thirty years photographing old Paris with a large wooden camera. His quiet pictures of streets, courtyards and shop windows were sold as “documents for artists” and later shaped documentary photography.
Tod Papageorge
Tod Papageorge (born 1940) is an American street photographer and teacher. Close to Garry Winogrand in 1960s New York, he is best known for Passing Through Eden, his pictures of Central Park, and led Yale's graduate photography program from 1979 to 2013.
Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer who has spent fifty years photographing her friends, lovers and chosen family. Her slideshow and book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is one of the most influential photographic diaries ever made.
Larry Fink
Larry Fink (born 1941, died 2023) was an American photographer of people at parties, balls, boxing gyms and fashion shows. His series Social Graces set New York society next to a working family in rural Pennsylvania.
Justin Mott
Justin Mott is a documentary, editorial and commercial photographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam. His ongoing project Kindred Guardians follows people who dedicate their lives to animals.
JM Simpson
JM Simpson is a documentary photographer who lives in Lacey, Washington. He photographs people living without housing in Tacoma, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco.
Ben Marcin
Ben Marcin is a photographer based in Baltimore, Maryland. His first photobook, The Holdouts (GOST Books, 2026), gathers solo row houses, abandoned farmhouses and homeless camps in and around Baltimore.
Abdulla Shinose CK
Abdulla Shinose CK is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Malabar, India. His photography focuses on the interplay of tradition and modernity.
Stephanie Pommez
Stephanie Pommez is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Her book The Enchanted Ones (Kehrer Verlag, 2025) is about midwives and myths along the Amazon.
Emin Özmen
Emin Özmen is a Turkish documentary photographer and a member of Magnum Photos. His self-published book Memleket (2026) gathers fifteen years of everyday life in Turkey.
Virginia McGee Richards
Virginia “Ginna” McGee Richards is a photographer and former environmental lawyer from North Carolina. Her book The Inner Passage (The MIT Press, 2026) traces canals in the South Carolina Lowcountry built by enslaved people.