Silver Belles: Holiday Show

Lillian Bassman (1917 - 2012) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She worked as a textile designer and fashion illustrator before working at Harper’s Bazaar in 1946. In 1949, she photographed her first Paris couture collection, which lead to Lillian Bassman’s distinguished career photographing the foremost models of her day. Renowned for her innovative work in the darkroom, Lillian Bassman experimented by printing through unique materials, burning certain areas, or bleaching sections of the photograph to create images that appeared to be a cross between a watercolor and a photograph. Lillian Bassman’s photography has been featured internationally...

Ruth Bernhard was a distinguished 20th-century photographer known for her classical black-and-white photographs of the female nude and inanimate objects. In 1935, she met Edward Weston and became part of Group f/64, joining Modernist West Coast photographers like Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Wynn Bullock, and Dorothea Lange. The group took a purist approach to their subjects, and their work is characterized by photographic clarity and detailed precision.

Harry Callahan's photography is mainly in black and white and features portraits of his wife, Eleanor, who served as a primary subject in many of his works throughout his career. He studied engineering at Michigan State College, but never formally studied photography in a classroom. Harry Callahan discovered photography at the age of 26 in 1938. For the next sixty years, Harry Callahan's photography style would develop into an exploratory art, using many different subjects and series experiments. Harry Callahan's photos experiment with many different subjects, as he once said, “If you choose your subject selectively —...

Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898–1995) was a German-American photographer and photojournalist. Photographer Alfred Esienstaedt is renowned for his candid photographs, frequently made using various models of a 35mm Leica rangefinder camera. Alfred Eisenstaedt is best known for his photograph capturing the celebration of V-J Day, Times Square,1945. Over the years, Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured over 2500 assignments (86 covers) for LIFE of current events and influential people of the twentieth century, from John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Winston Churchill to name a few.

Alfred Esienstaedt's photos have been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art,...

American documentary photographer Elliott Erwitt was born Elio Romano Erwitz in 1928 in Paris to Russian parents. Often considered a master of style, Elliott Erwitt is best known for the candor and humor that shines through his black-and-white pictures. He began dabbling in photography as a teenager living in Los Angeles, shooting weddings. Later, Elliott Erwitt shot for the Army in France and Germany; later living in New York, he met fellow war photographer Robert Capa, who invited him to join the Magnum Photos agency. Elliott Erwitt is responsible for making some of the most prominent portraits...

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1903, Walker Evans took up photography in 1928. He is best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Walker Evans' photography from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera. Walker Evans said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are 'literate, authoritative, transcendent'. Walker Evan’s photography is featured in the permanent collections of museums, and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921 – September 12, 1986) was a photojournalist and a pioneering color photographer . During his 40-year career, the Austrian-born artist bridged the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a medium for expression and creativity. In addition to his prolific coverage of events around the globe after World War II , Haas was an early innovator in color photography. His images were widely disseminated by magazines like Life and Vogue and, in 1962, were the subject of the first single-artist exhibition of color photography at New York’s Museum of Modern...

Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) was in Weissenfels-an-der-Salle, Germany. Originally channeling inspiration for shooting fashion from Baron George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst eventually developed his own style, particularly manipulating light to highlight subjects’ features. By 1931, Horst P. Horst was shooting regularly for French Vogue, as fostered through a friendship with Hoyningen-Huene. Eight years later he made one of his most famous works, Mainbocher Corset, which featured a woman’s back strapped into a corset and published in Vogue. Horst P. Horst primarily worked in the studio, sometimes taking days to strike the right balance of light and...

Born in New York City a year before the Depression started, French photographer and filmmaker William Klein’s (1928 - present) first forays into art were through painting. Although he eventually switched gears towards the camera, he never formally studied photography, which explains his abstract approach. William Klein won his first camera during a poker game in 1946 while part of the U.S. Army stationed in Germany. He worked a brief stint as assistant to French painter and sculptor Fernand Léger’s in Paris in 1948. William Klein’s photography in fashion has appeared in magazines, books and documentary and...

Herman Leonard was born in Allentown, PA in 1923. At the young age of 9, he witnessed an image being developed in his brother’s darkroom and became enthralled with the magic of photography.

In 1947, after a stint in Burma during WWII, Herman Leonard graduated from Ohio University with a BFA in Photography, the only school in the nation to offer such a degree at the time. He then drove straight to Yousuf Karsh’s house in Ottowa, Canada and asked for a job. Karsh wasn’t hiring but was impressed enough with young Herman Leonard to take him...

Photographer Sally Mann (1951-present) has become synonymous with the American South, beloved for capturing its landscapes and people alike with her camera. Born and still residing in Lexington, Virginia, Sally Mann's photography — especially intimate portraits of her family — has attracted controversy but always pushes the art world's envelope, informing other young photographers' eyes. Sally Mann explored many aspects of the photographic medium throughout the 1970s, however her work exploring everyday elements of childhood remains some of her most famous and moving photography work. The photographer has worked with color, yet seems most drawn to producing...

Tommy Nease is a young soul who uses his obsession with imagery to unearth deep secrets within his subconscious. Tommy Nease’s photography lies in a no man’s land between the spiritual polars of light and dark, and shares aesthetic sensibilities with the likes of Man Ray, Roger Ballen and Ryan McGinley. Tommy Nease’s work has been both exhibited and published throughout the United States and Europe including collaborations with: Dazed and Confused magazine (London), Unpublished magazine (Milan), the FOAM Museum (Amsterdam), RELIC (Brooklyn), and NSPHERE (Romania), among others. Tommy Nease has had two previous solo exhibitions in...

American photographer Steve Schapiro (1934-present) was born and raised in New York City and discovered photography at age 9. The photojournalist is often celebrated for his work documenting the American Civil Rights Movement and the Selma to Montgomery march. LIFE Magazine called Steve Schapiro to Memphis to document the tragedy unfolding after Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Although typically associated with civil justice documentary work, Steve Schapiro created some iconic portraits of figures like James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Ray Charles, and more, all of which appear in his book Heroes (2007); the collection won an Art...

Mark Steinmetz (b. 1961) is an Athens, Georgia-based photographer whose work captures black-and-white images of Southern Americana as seen in urban, rural and suburban landscapes. “I like to stress the poetry and ambiance of a place, while still trying to be truthful,” he has remarked, and his candid shots of everyday life reflect this statement. Examples of this sentiment are strikingly portrayed in Steinmetz's new photo series Terminus, showing the everyday moments of people passing through airports. “At the airport, people from all over the world and from all walks of life can be found in the...

Masao Yamamoto's photography is known for evoking emotional power in the form of small-scale photographs. Photographer Masao Yamamoto (1957-present) was born in Aichi Prefecture in Japan. Originally interested in pursuing painting, studying oil painting specifically under Goro Saito. Though Masao Yamamoto eventually transitioned into photography in 1993, his painting background is apparent in his works’ painterly look, incorporating blurs and experimenting with printing surfaces; with many Masao Yamamoto photographs, he manipulated the silver gelatin prints through analogue, which means such as painting the images with tea or actual paint and tearing them. Subjects vary wildly, ranging from...