Artist Research

Anders Petersen
Anders Petersen is a swedish photographer born in 1944 in Stockholm known for his documentary style black and white photography. In 1967 he started photographing in a bar called Cafe Lehmitz in Hamburg and continued with this for 3 years and in 1970 he had his first solo exhibition. In 1973 he published his first book "Gröna Lund" based on people in an amusement park in Stockholm. Then in 1984 his first book from a trilogy was published, they were based on people in nursing homes, prison and a mental hospital. 

Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus was an American photographer, focusing mainly on 'deviant and marginal' people. Including dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists and circus performers, people that could be considered as 'out of the ordinary'. Arbus said that a camera could be 'a little cold and a little harsh' but that it showed the difference between what people wanted to see and what they really saw. She was known as the photographer of freaks. In 1972, Arbus became the first American photographer to have their work shown at the Venice Biennale. After the second world war, Diane and Allan Arbus started a commercial photography business named 'Diane & Allan Arbus'. Diane was the director and Allan the photographer, their photos featured in Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch Photographer, she lives and works in Amsterdam. Dijkstra worked as a formal portrait photographer until the early 1990's, when she began taking her own style of portrait photographs, which led to her series The Beaches between 1992-1996. This involved her photographing adolescents in their bathing suits on beaches from Ukraine to USA, which she is now very well known for, world wide. These photographs again, capture people when they are most self conscious and revealing. 

Irving Penn

Irving Penn was an American photographer, known for his fashion photography, portraits and still lifes. Penn worked for Saks Fifth Avenue as an art director for a year then left to take photographs and painting across Mexico and US. Penn returned to New York and was offered a job as an associate for VOGUE magazine, in which he worked on the layout for before being asked to try out photographing. Penn was amongst one of the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white background.

Alec Soth

Alec Soth is an American photographer known for 'large scale American projects'. His photography gives off the feel that there is a story behind each photograph, his career has been described as 'photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers'. Soth has photographed for The New York Times, Fortune and Newsweek. He has a book called 'Sleeping by the Mississippi' which contained landscapes and portraits. He photographs could be described as something out of the ordinary but they're really interesting.