The 25 Photographers You Should Know

I enjoy a wide range of contemporary photographers, from the very emerging to the very blue-chip, so it was very difficult for me to select just 25 for COMPLEX's 25 Photographers You Should Know. Any list of this kind is by its very nature incomplete, but I hope the end result, which involved a very painful peeling away from my initial group of 86, gives a sense of some of the voices (ordered alphabetically from the bottom up) shaping photography in 2012.

Elisa Carmichael, Editor-in-chief, tasj magazine.

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The transfixing work of Francesca Woodman has been in the spotlight much of late. Following an exhibition highlighting works from 1977-1981 at Rome's Libreria-Galleria il Museo del Louvre last May, the critically acclaimed retrospective Francesca Woodman, which comprises approximately 120 pieces by the late photographer, opened in November at SFMOMA, before traveling to the Guggenheim in New York, where it will remain on view through June 13. Woodman was also the focus of Marian Goodman Gallery's booth at the AADA Art Show in March. The New York and Paris-based gallery, who represent the photographer's estate, is currently exhibiting her work in their Chelsea space – go see it if you will be in New York between now and April 28!

Image: Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976, gelatin silver print. Courtesy George and Betty Woodman. (c) George and Betty Woodman

I was about to write that everyone must know who Juergen Teller is, from his mainstream fashion endeavors, if nothing else, but I just asked my sister and she said she'd never heard of him. That aside, Teller's name is practically synonymous with Marc Jacobs'; he most recently shot Xiao Wen for the Marc Jacobs Spring 2012 campaign and Erik Andersson and Alice Dellal for the designer's Marc by Marc Jacobs label. This year has also seen him shoot, amongst others, Daria Werbowy and Stella Tennant in a gorgeous series of photos for Celine S/S '12, Vivienne Westwood for the Spring 2012 cover of i-D Magazine and Irina Kulikova for the Winter 2011/2012 cover of 032c Magazine. Fashion photography is far from being the only item on Teller's 2012 cv, however, having recently closed a magical exhibition of new works at Lehmann Maupin's Lower East Side space on Chrystie St. Unable to get close enough to the walls to see the work at the show's crowded February opening, it took me two more visits to the gallery to get my fill of the engagingly eccentric pieces on display.

Image: Juergen Teller Pettitoe, Suffolk, 2011, 2011. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York. (c) Juergen Teller

There is a bottomless kind of beauty in the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose famous black and white Seascapes and Theatres form but a portion of his prolific and varied output. The 64 year old Japanese photographer began 2012 with an exhibition of delicately colored “photogenic drawings” at San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery, a series inspired by the experimental work of William Henry Fox Talbot. Before returning to the US for a show of 24 new works from his pagoda series at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in the fall, Sugimoto has two exhibitions to open in Tokyo – Five Elements at Gallery Koyanagi and From Naked To Clothed at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition to these four shows, there is another reason to celebrate this icon of contemporary photographer this year: the documentary Memories of Origin – Hiroshi Sugimoto the Contemporary Artist is getting set to hit theatres this year. I'm honestly not sure when it comes to the US, but I do know that it will open at Theatre Image Forum in Shibuya on March 31.

Image: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Winnetika Drive-In, Paramount, 1993, gelatin silver print, edition of 25, 20 x 24 in (50 x 60 cm). Courtesy the artist and Christie's. (c) Hiroshi Sugimoto

Yinka Shonibare's work is so multi-dimensional: race, class, colonialism, post-colonialism, globalisation, personal and cultural identity are just some of the themes I can think of that are explored in the 2004 Turner Prize nominee's sculptures, film and photography. Of the latter, five were on display in Addio Passato, Shinobare's recent solo exhibition at James Cohan Gallery, New York. The large-scale, color chromogenic prints, all ornately framed, reimagined famous historical death scenes with new characters dressed in the artist's costumes, which were on view in the same space. Shonibare's ability to effectively call attention to the parallels between the past and present through iconic theatrical narratives makes him one of the most relevant voices in contemporary photography and perhaps this is why his work has recently been seen in / is coming to so many places. In addition to his New York show and the solo exhibition Yinka Shonibare, MBE, which traveled from Alcalà 31, Madrid to Centro Atlantic de Arte Moderno, Canary Islands, his work has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Smiths Row, London, National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, New Walk Museum & Gallery, Leicester, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba and Glenbow Art Museum, Calgary. (Yes, a very long list.)

Image: Yinka Shonibare MBE, Fake Death Picture (The Death of Chatterton - Henry Wallis), 2011, digital chromogenic print, framed: 58 5/8 x 71 1/4 in. (148.91 x 180.98 cm) Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York / Shanghai. (c) Yinka Shonibare MBE

2012 is without a doubt the year of Cindy Sherman, whose highly anticipated 35 year retrospective at MoMA opened in February to unanimously positive reviews from the press and public alike. Auction results have told a similar story; to note but one example, I attended the March 8 Phillips de Pury Contemporary Evening Sale at which Untitled 426 (a monumental clown portrait) sold for close to half a million dollars. In addition to her MoMA show, which will travel to San Francisco, Minneapolis and Dallas, Sherman has an exhibition opening April 28 at her New York gallery, Metro Pictures, whose showcase of the photographer's early Murder Mystery collages at the recent ADAA Art Show was one of the highlights of The Park Ave Armory-hosted fair.

Image: Cindy Sherman, Untitled #425, 2004, chromogenic color print, 179.7 x 228 cm. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York. (c) Cindy Sherman

Thomas Ruff falls into the category of photographers whose work, more often than not and no matter how careful I am, gets flagged and removed when I post it to tasj's Facebook page. The German, who has been building his series of cloudy nudes since 2003, is currently making his Gagosian debut in triumphant form by taking up not one, but two of the gallery's majestic spaces. The Davies St spot plays host to Ruff's newest Nudes, while Brittania St's walls are graced with the new ma.r.s, which exposes the photographer's fascination with astronomy. A survey exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Munich runs concurrently with these shows, and includes, amongst much more, the architectural and landscape photography he does so well.

Image: Thomas Ruff, from the retrospective Thomas Ruff, 2012, at Haus der Kunst, Munich. Courtesy the artist and Haus der Kunst, Munich. (c) Thomas Ruff

Everything else aside, Terry Richardson is proof that negative press (just google “terry richardson scandal” or something along those lines) only contributes to the legend of an artist and the success of his or her career. This was most recently perceived at the opening of TERRYWORLD at OHWOW Gallery, Los Angeles this February, which drew swarms of fans and fellow celebrities, including James Franco, Tom Ford and Jared Leto. Personally, the hype around Richardson, whether good or bad, doesn't interest me as much as perhaps it should: I simply think he is a talented, highly relevant photographer and enjoy following what he does.

Image: Terry Richardson, Untitled (red lips), 2011, c-print, 48 x 72 in. Courtesy the artist and OHWOW, Los Angeles. (c) Terry Richardson

The fact that Alex Prager's upcoming exhibition Compulsion is opening at not one, but three galleries in three cities this April is a bit of a signifier of her popularity. M+B in Los Angeles, Yancey Richardson in New York and Michael Hoppen in London will all be celebrating the equal part glamourous and talented photographer, who was recently awarded the prestigious 2012 Foam Paul Huf Award, this spring, before she goes on to present a solo exhibition at Amsterdam's Foam Museum in August. For those who can't wait until April, Prager's work is currently on view at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf in the institution's State of the Art Photography show.

Image: Alex Prager, from the series Compulsion, on view at M+B, Yancey Richardson Gallery and Michael Hoppen Gallery, April, 2012. (c) Alex Prager

At this point in his career, Estevan Oriol's name is synonymous with many of the most essential reference points of contemporary LA culture, from its urban and hip hop to lowrider and Latino lifestyles. The city is far from being Oriol's only source of inspiration, however: the past year alone has taken him on shoots to Rio de Janiero, Berlin, Sydney, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Prague, London, Paris, Monaco and many, many more. I have had the fortune to work closely with Estevan and his father, Eriberto, an equally talented photographer who has documented the changing landscape of Los Angeles for more than four decades, over the past six months, and the experience has taught me more about the city than six years of living here has. I think that says a lot about the importance of their work.

Image: Estevan Oriol, 76 Caprice Scraping, 1997, archival silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in (40.64 x 50.8 cm) / 30 x 40 in (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Courtesy the artist and Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles. (c) Estevan Oriol

Gladstone Gallery opened their fifth exhibition with Iranian-born, Soho, New York-based artist Shirin Neshat at the beginning of the year and I wish I could have had the opportunity to see it. In addition to a new three-channel video installation, the show featured the photographer's new series The Book of Kings, which explores the recent political uprisings in the Arab world via portraits of young Iranians and Arabs with ancient Persian poetry inscribed over their faces and bodies à la Neshat's iconic Women of Allah series. Neshat's socio-cultural commentary on the Middle East is one of the boldest in contemporary art, regardless of medium. As well as working on her second feature length film, which focuses on the life of Egyptian singer, Oum Kolthum, and a Qatar National Museum-commissioned video installation, she is currently readying for a major retrospective of her work, organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts and opening in April, 2013.

Image: Shirin Neshat, Roja, 2012, ink on LE gelatin silver print, framed 60.25 x 45.25 in (153 x 114.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. (c) Shirin Neshat

Born in 1938, I believe Daido Moriyama is the oldest photographer on this list. Quite appropriately, he is set to receive the ICP (International Center of Photography) Lifetime Achievement Award at a gala event in New York on May 2, just days before he opens one solo exhibition, at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, and closes another, at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum. From April to June, LACMA will host Fracture: Daido Moriyama, the photographer's first Los Angeles solo museum show. I can't believe I'm leaving town the day before the April 7 panel discussion; I would have loved to hear him speak about his work. London is the final stop in 2012 for the Japanese photographer: an exhibition exploring the relationship between his work and that of William Klein opens at Tate Modern in October.

Image: Daido Moriyama, How to Create a Beautiful Picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido, 1987, black and white print. Courtesy the artist and Taka Ishii Gallery. (c) Daido Moriyama

Even at her most garishly grotesque, I find Marilyn Minter unendingly wonderful. Looking at her photographs is such a sensory experience – I honestly feel I can taste and smell what I am looking at, even if I have no idea at first what it is. That's another of Minter's great talents: taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary by completely shifting perspective, often with the aid of a lot of glitter and, in her show at Salon 94 last November, dirty, splashing water. The photographer, whose auction results continue to rise and whose designs will grace New York City's water tanks in 2013 alongside those of, amongst others, Ed Ruscha and Jay-Z, has also recently turned curator: her first project, The Virgins, featured artists who had never exhibited outside an academic environment and opened at Family Business, a new gallery owned by Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director of the New Museum), on February 16.

Image: Marilyn Minter, Cat's Eye, 2006, c-print, edition of 5, 40 x 27 in (101.6 x 68.6 cm). Courtesy the artist and Phillips de Pury. (c) Marilyn Minter

If Ryan McGinley's last exhibition at Team Gallery (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 2010) is anything to go by (it got the block shut down), you're going to have to line up early, or be prepared to wait, if you want to make it inside to see Animals or Grids, the shows McGinley has opening in each of Team's Soho spaces on May 2. McGinley is also featured in The New Ages of Life, a contemporary art and science exhibition that opened at the Palazzo de Enzo, Bologna before traveling to the Triennale Bovisa, Milan. His photographs for the Edun S/S '12 campaign are also particularly stunning.

Image: Charlotte Free by Ryan McGinley for Edun S/S 2012 campaign. (c) Ryan McGinley

It is no easy task to choose a favorite body of work by the multi-faceted Mona Kuhn, but her Bordeaux Series (2011), shown first at Flowers Gallery's London space at the end of 2011, then at their New York gallery in February, 2012, has an air of calm maturity and confident precision that suggests that the Brazil-born photographer is only getting better and better at her craft. Kuhn's Native series from 2009 was recently exhibited at Brancolini Grimaldi, Florence and will be on view from June to August at Galeria Pilar Serra, Madrid. She also shot the Bottega Veneta 2012 Resort Campaign and will participate in Moskau House of Photography's Traummänner Ausstellung, Fashion and Style Festival in 2013.

Image: Mona Kuhn, Portrait 22, 2011, from her Bordeaux Series, chromogenic print, signed, dated, numbered and titled verso, 15 x 15 in, edition of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs. Courtesy the artist and Flowers Galleries, London / New York. (c) Mona Kuhn

To date, Rinko Kawauchi has published a number of books featuring her signature square-shaped photography. The most recent, Illuminance, which spans 15 years of dreamy contemplation and comprises a series of images that were exhibited less than a year ago at Hermès on Madison Ave, earned her a nomination for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Organized by The Photogaphers' Gallery in London, the winner will receive a £30,000 cash prize for having “significantly contributed to photography in Europe between 01 October 2010 and 30 September 2011.” Regardless of the outcome, Kawauchi will exhibit her work alongside fellow nominees John Stezaker, Pieter Hugo and Christopher Williams at The Photographer's Gallery this summer.

Image: Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series Illuminance, 2009. (c) Rinko Kawauchi

The winner of the 2011 TED prize, JR is best known for his 28 Milimetres series - Portrait of a Generation, Face2Face, and Women. The final part of this project spawned the documentary Women Are Heroes, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. While JR's most recent indoor exhibitions, organized by Galerie Perrotin, have taken place in Paris and Miami, his current campaign, Wrinkles of the City, has seen his work hit the streets of Cartajenas, Shanghai, Los Angeles and, most recently, Havana. The Frenchman also recently collaborated on a project in New York City with fellow photographer, Liu Bolin. I, along with his legions of fans, am excited to see where the photographer, whose TED wish was “to use art to turn the world inside out”, goes next, both artistically and geographically.

Image: JR, view of the exhibition Wall & Paper, 2011, at The M Building, Miami. Photo by Mariano Pauser. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin, Paris.

The Pieter Hugo exhibition currently on view at The Hague Museum of Photography proclaims itself to be the most comprehensive survey of the South African photographer's work to date. Entitled This Must be the Place: Selected Works 2003-2011, the show travels to the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne (where I hope to see it) in June. Hugo also has a solo show running concurrently at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, which includes 27 photographs from his Permanent Error series. The exhibition forms part of the museum's larger Re-cycle: Strategies for Architecture, City and Planet group show, which runs through April 29. Like the aforementioned Rinko Kawauchi, Hugo has been nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Image: Pieter Hugo, Aissah Salifu, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010, from the series Permanent Error, diigital c-print, 68 × 68 in. Courtesy the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. (c) Pieter Hugo

From her first slideshow in a New York nightclub in 1979 to the five institutional shows scheduled in 2012, Nan Goldin has convincingly established herself as one of the darlings of contemporary American photography. There aren't many artists whose work invites you into their lives so definitively without feeling contrived, and that is one of the most singular aspects of her staggeringly large series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency series. Even the briefest scan of the 900+ photographs leaves you with the sense that the family, friends and lovers who comprise it are yours, too. Back to those 2012 shows, however: a solo at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro and group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Salone degli Incanti, Trieste all opened in February, with shows at Malba – Fundacion Costantini, Buenos Aires and the Tacoma Art Museum not far behind in March. Her Scopophilia exhibition is currently part of Patrice Chéreau's special program at the Louvre.

Image: Nan Goldin, Self-portrait, New Year's Eve, Malibu, 2006, cibachrome print, 30 x 40 in (76 x 102 cm). Courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. (c) Nan Goldin

To be honest, I didn't really care whether or not Elger Esser was doing anything in 2012; he is one of my favorite photographers and I planned to squeeze him in anyway. Fortunately for the purposes of this list, however, he has no less than four solo exhibitions, three group exhibitions and a fellowship at the Hanswe-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), Delmenhorst Institute for Advanced Study this year. The seven shows he has scheduled take place in spaces that span Western Europe: LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, Katz Contemporary, Zurich, Lichte Weite Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Oldenburg, Galerie d’art du Conseil général, Hôtel de Castillon, Aix-en-Provence, Stadtgalerie, Kiel and Salone degli Incanti – ex Pescheria, Trieste. Esser hasn't totally ignored the US this year, however: his Voyage en Egypte exhibition was on view through February 18 at Rose Gallery, Los Angeles.

Image: Elger Esser, Giverny VIII, Frankreich, 2010, c-print, aludibond / forex, 122 x 184 x 4 cm (48 x 72 x 2 in). Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris / Salzburg. (c) Elger Esser

SFMOMA and the Guggenheim are having a bit of a Marian Goodman moment this year, with both playing host to surveys of two of the gallery's female photographers, the aforementioned Francesca Woodman and the innovative Dutch portraitrait Rineke Dijkstra. The latter's retrospective, which features over 70 photographs and five video installations, is her first major one in the US. If you are currently in New York and can't wait for the Guggenheim's opening at the end of June, head to The AIPAD Photography Show at the end of March (March 31, 10am, to be exact) to hear Dijkstra in conversation with Jennifer Blessing, curator of photography at the Guggenheim.

Image: Rineke Dijkstra, film still from The Krazyhouse, 2010. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin. (c) Rineke Dijkstra

The mostly heavily touted booth at the upcoming AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers) Photography Show is indisputably the newly inducted powerhouse Chelsea gallery David Zwirner's, which will feature recent works from Philip-Lorca diCorcia's East of Eden series, a Book of Genesis-inspired take on the US economic and political climate. DiCorcia is also part of the 2012 exhibitions Across The Province: Bearing Witness, an exhibition traveling through British Columbia, I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Performing for the Camera, ASU Art Museum, Arizona State University, Tempe and Atelier + Küche = Labore der Sinne at Marta Herford, Herford.

Image: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, from the East of Eden series, 2008-ongoing. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York. (c) Philip-Lorca diCorcia

I was excited to see Jonathas de Andrade's work in person when I attended The Ungovernables, the 2nd New Museum Triennial, in New York last month. The exhibition featured the Brazilian's installation piece, Ressaca Tropical (Tropical Hangover), which was previously on view in last year's 12th Instanbul Biennial. Ressaca Tropical combines anonymous diary entries that de Andrade found in the trash with over a hundred photographs to create a portrait of a generic Latin American city modeled on his native Recife's failed attempt to embrace Modernism in the 1980s. The photographer also opened a solo exhibition at Marcantonio Vilaca in Rio de Janeiro on March 13.

Image: Jonathas de Andrade, Ressaca Tropical (Tropical Hangover), 2009, Installation View, The Ungovernables: The 2nd New Museum Triennial, 2012, New York. Via pipaprize.com.

Nobody does staged photography quite like Gregory Crewdson. By way of dark, elaborate sets that can take months to create, he infuses scenes depicting small-town American life with uniquely fantastical, slightly disturbing moments. These photographs form part of Beneath The Roses, the iconic body of work that assisted in elevating Crewdson above his peers to become recognized as one of the most influential photographers of his time and is the subject of the documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, which is currently touring the 2012 festival circuit. I can't wait to get a copy so I can find out more about Crewdson's stunning process of creation and how he shifted from the large-scale productions of Beneath The Roses to the much simpler Sanctuary, which comprises black and white photos of Cinecitta.

Image: Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (Boy with Hand in Drain), 2001-2, color coupler print, edition of 10, 48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm). Courtesy the artist and Christie's. (c) Gregory Crewdson

While they are perhaps lesser known to the general public than his sculptural, conceptual, architectural and social media projects, Ai Weiwei's photography – from his black and white images of New York City in the 1980s/90 to the Study of Perspective series (1995-2003), in which he snapped his extended middle finger in front of famous international monuments – is nevertheless a key component to understanding the socially-activated artist's creative arc. Ai, whose supporters recently stripped nude in a viral photo campaign that outraged the Chinese government, will be presented with the Cornell Capa Award from The International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York this May. His exhibitions at LACMA, Los Angeles, Chambers Fine Art, New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London are off the walls, but those at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Jeu de Paume, Paris and De Pont Museum, Tilburg are still on view. Coming up in May are solos at Kistefos-Museet, Jevnaker and Lisson Gallery, London.

Image: Ai Weiwei, from the series Study of Perspective, 1995-2003. (c) Ai Weiwei