I have a slightly-more-formal-than-usual challenge for those of you who comment: Do you have a favorite photographer whose work you look at on his or her website?
If you'd like to play, please limit your nominations to people who have their own discrete websites (no flickr, etc.), and please write at least a couple of lines to a paragraph about why you like them or what they mean to you. And play fair: please don't "game the system" by nominating yourself or getting a friend to nominate you.
I'll feature a few of the ones I don't know below, but go to the comments to see all those mentioned.
As Scott Adams would say: go!
Mike
UPDATE: I have closed the comments to this post temporarily only because I am being inundated. I will work at moderating the comments already received and then I'll reopen the post for more. Please stay tuned! —Mike the Ed.
UPDATE #2: On second thought, I've decided to leave the comments closed, as there are more than enough leads here for people to investigate for now. However, we will do this again. Thanks to everybody who contributed, and, if you wanted to contribute but weren't able to, "hold that thought." —Mike
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Beth Dow, Three Rocks, from "Fieldwork"
From Dalton: "Wow, this is a real challenge. I'm afraid I have to give you at least two: 1. Beth Dow: I have been following her work for a couple of years, it knocks my socks off. My favorite series is probably 'Fieldwork.' All of her work is printed in platinum by her husband, master printer Keith Taylor. 2. Daniel Shea: His photos from Baltimore and his 'Moving Mountains' series are both incredibly well done and very powerful."
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Sam Javanrouh, Scott's bike on a rainy day
From Wil Macaulay: "Gotta nominate Sam Javanrouh, at [daily dose of imagery]. He's got an eye for this city (Toronto) and a style which reflects what I'd like to be able to do."
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Jens Olof Lasthein, Transylvania, Romania, 2001, from "White Sea Black Sea—Pictures from the Borderland"
From EP: "I'd like to mention Jens Olof Lasthein, a photographer in Stockholm who travels a lot in the former east block. I especially like his exhibition 'Black Sea White Sea,' which also can be viewed on his website. Panoramic pictures with a lot of life."
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Ciro Totku, Namib, Sihanoukville, 2007
From Franz: "Two photographers whose sites I regularly visit for inspiration are Ciro Totku and Oleg Kasko. Ciro is an abstract photographer while Oleg is a master of the 6x6 format (well, for me anyway). With his astounding eye for finding art in the ordinary, Ciro inspires me to be more aware of everyday things. With Oleg, he's why I am saving up for a Hassy system. His 6x6 photos are dreamlike and mindblowing to say the least....
I have no relation whatsoever to either photographer; in fact they have no idea I even exist. I just find their work inspiring, that's all."
-From Markus Spring: "John Wolf for sure presents a body of work that deserves some closer looks. I enjoy very much the dry, restrained way he composes without sacrificing to simplification."
- Sergio Mottola, from Weddings —> Exhibition Two
From Jayson Merryfield: "I'll play. I follow only a few photographers, but the one I love the most is a young guy shooting people & weddings out of the Pacific Northwest—Sergio Mottola. Website. Blog."
-From Bob: "The Chinese landscape photographer Lehping Zha has the ability to take my mind when I look at his site...and the English landscape photographer Charlie Waite is a constant joy....
"However, for pure crafted photography with minute attention and the ability to strum your feelings while admiring the texture, I must direct you to the staged situations of the American photographer Dan Peebles."
- Mark Tucker, Sienna with the Wizard Head
From Erlik: "A couple of people....
"One is Mark Tucker, particularly his landscapey photos. They should tame the automatic slideshow, though. :)
"And the other is...James Nachtwey. :))) The second photo in Romania, for instance, is one of the most powerful photos I've seen."
- Camille Seaman, from "Big Cloud"
From Josh Wilson: "Camille Seaman. I discovered her work through Photolucida's annual Critical Mass, which published her book The Last Iceberg. Her new project, 'Big Cloud,' is really appealing to me with its dramatic lighting and wide open spaces."
-From Floyd Takeuchi: "The Japanese photographer Shinya Arimoto. He reduces the image to its essential elements. Arimoto-san works mostly in black and white, but also ventures into color."
-From Gavin McLelland: "I really like Struan Gray's work. I like the Northern feel. It reminds me of home."
- Magdalena Sole, CocaCola Prayer, Oaxaca, Mexico
From Edi Weitz: "I hope it's okay if I name two. The first one is Magdalena Sole. I like her work because (IMHO) she's one of the few color photographers who really use color and pay attention to it (as opposed to taking color pictures just because they can or because everybody else does). I think she has an Alex Webb-like sensibility for 'street photography' in color. The second one is Chiru Andreea. I don't understand the text on the website, I don't even know if the photographer is a man or a woman, but I like the creamy/dreamy black-and-white style. Attention: Americans might be offended by this website as there's some nudity there."
-From James Whitaker: "Possibly the only photographer's site I visit (nearly) every day just for the pictures is David Nightingale. I'm not one for extravagant photshoppery/processing, but the treatment he puts on his pictures is both subtle and evocative (figure that one out). I enjoy his images and how he makes both the ordnary and the dramatic into great images."
-From Dave Sailer: "For someone who was born in 1985 and didn't begin photographing until 2005, Alexandre Buisse has done a lot—more than I ever will, including being published in National Geographic France. Besides being a climber and general outdoorsperson, he's also chasing down a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science, And then the photography. One of my favorite recent ones (fresh daily) is 'Hidden.'"
-From Chap Lovejoy: "I really enjoy Dalton Rooney's work. His landscapes capture magic in the chaos of nature and give me inspiration to keep trying to find the same.
-From Calvin Amari: "I see that this was mentioned, but the archive section of Ralph Gibson's site (which, as luck would have it, appears to be down today) is really one of the most rewarding things on the interweb. It appears to contain all the images, in their original groupings and sequence, from Gibson's self-published monographs over the years beginning, as I recall, with The Somnambulist.
"Gibson, a sort of street-formalist, has always been sort of an enigma to me. His influences always seem palpably obvious, and those from whom he has managed to absorb so much are among my favorites. Despite the obvious influences, Gibson also manages to be his own singular artist. A glance through that archive reveals just how many iconic images he has produced.
"Similarly, I'm not sure Gibson's contribution to the art of the photo-book are conceptually unique, but I am confident that his monographs stand as pure and rigorous examples of that form. His editing and sequencing create tensions that generate, like sparks, idea after idea about visual information. And this is precisely the value of the archive section of his website. I'm not sure whether the ideas come through more clearly on the website or whether it is just a matter of convenience. (I don't own all Gibson's books and, even if I did, I'm not sure if I would ever pull them all off the shelf to page through them, one after another.) I've mentioned this quite often even to those who are not photogeeks: if you have an hour or so to surf the web, I personally don't know a more valuable way to spend it than to carefully peruse Gibson's archive. Best of all, the experience only improves with repetition."
-From Ken Bennett: "That's easy, Damon Winter."
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Philip Bebbington, A Chair, Two Bowls, A Bottle & Red. Vrahassi, Crete
From Michael MacLean: "I regularly follow lots of great photoblogs and would highly recommend Xavier Rey Photoblog by Xavier Rey and Terrorkitten by Philip Bebbington."
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Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled (from the AILA series), 2003
From Ivan: "Rinko Kawauchi, whose latest work I saw at Photo Miami 09. She shoots mainly 6x6 and is popular in Japan, but her books are hard to come by in the U.S. (I believe you can order them online through Mountain Fold Gallery). Another is Christoph Maout, particularly his Homelux and Spring projects. One thing I like about both is that they're unsentimental. And I would love to know what Maout is doing when he creates his JPEGs for the web; they're utterly perfect."