Photographers I Like

Screenshot from “Afrocentric” slideshow featured in New York Times Magazine

PAOLO ROVERSI: Afrocentric [NYT, registration req'd]: Paolo Roversi’s visual style is unmistakable: painterly colors, camera blur, timeless-looking subjects and clothing, resulting in images that look more like 19th century painting than 21st century photographs. His breathtaking images and deep knowledge of photography/art history put him in the elite of elite fashion/editorial photographers globally. I really liked the images in “Afrocentric” when they appeared in the NYT last year; although apart from Liya Kebede, there wasn’t much that was African about the images (it looked more like “pan-cultural ethnic chic”).

Screenshot of e-book of images taken in Namibia by Richard Renaldi

RICHARD RENALDI: 5 Days in Namibia [PDF]. Richard Renaldi along with Alec Soth have a style of image-making with a very strong social documentation element. They typically photograph those people and places in America between the coasts, that most of us “fly over” literally and metaphorically. Renaldi’s book Figure and Ground, has images taken coast to coast, while Soth’s book Sleeping by the Mississippi is the result of trips up and down that iconic American river. Soth and Renaldi work with large format film cameras that require a slow methodical process, leading to images that are more introspective and contemplative than those taken rapid-fire style with a digital SLR, or the compact Leica favored by William Eggleston, for example.
See also: Renaldi’s photography blog.