Image via Complex Original
Without a doubt, photography has helped to shape our experience. It captures our joys, desires, accomplishments just as it does our problems, fears and failures. This list aims to mention many of the photographers affecting the way we see the world we live in—from the isolated forests of a far off land, to fashion models, to your kitchen sink.
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The 50 Most Influential Photographers of the Past 10 Years
50. Malick Sidibe
50. Malick Sidibe
Malian photographer Sidibe is most noted for his black-and-white photographs of 1960s Bamako. In the following decade, Sidibe turned to studio portraits. His work was mostly unknown outside of Mali until the late 1990s; since then, he has received the Hasselblad Award for Photography in 2003, and the Venice Bienniale's Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement in 2007-the first to ever be awarded to a photographer. Now in his seventies, Sidibe remains productive. His reworked old portraits, with hand-drawn frames arranged in large circular clusters, were last mounted in 2005 at NYC's Jack Shainman Gallery.
Above: Untitled (Installation), 1965—2006
49. Hiroshi Sugimoto
49. Hiroshi Sugimoto
Myths often accompany the work of legendary artists, and Sugimoto and his 2003 series Joe are no different. In the summer of 2003, Sugimoto traveled to St. Louis to photograph the Tadao Ando-designed Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts Building. Legend has it that on the way there, he was distracted by Richard Serra's public sculpture Joe, named after Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. and the first of Serra's Torqued Spiral series. The result is a number of hand-pulled prints that Sugimoto describes as the "transformation from the three-dimensional steel source sculpture to the thin layers of what I would call my 'silver sculpture.'" Serra's minimal and monumental sculpture has been collapsed into silver gelatin abstract geometries of light and shadow, which in their printed reincarnation become another phenomenological experience of their own.
Above: Joe, 2003
48. Rinko Kawauchi
48. Rinko Kawauchi
Japan's photo book market is booming. At the forefront of this creative blossom is the serene photography of Rinko Kawauchi. Her camera focuses on the dreamy slices of the everyday: lens flares, dew drops, ants, billowing curtains, school children—the list could go on. The content might sound underwhelming, but her approach to each photograph feels precious and full of joy. Her newest book Ametsuchi is slated to be released this month.
Above: Illuminance, 2011
47. Katy Grannan
47. Katy Grannan
The familiar but alien characters of Grannan's series on the streets of L.A. and San Francisco appear in richly detailed, almost life-size prints that allow viewers to indulge in their fantasies as sidewalk voyeurs and admirers. Grannan captures the faces and bodies of characters that both allure and repel by their status on what seems to be the fringe: the shirtless man clutching bunnies, an elderly woman rendered faceless by her windswept hair, the sad Marilyn. The slouching, the disheveled, and the unkempt all share space on Grannan's sidewalk.
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Above: Anonymous, Los Angeles, Boulevard 26, 2008
46. Moyra Davey
46. Moyra Davey
In the first moments of her video interview for the Whitney Museum of American Art, artist Davey looks back 2001's Mary, Marie and We Are Young and We Are Friends of Time]. "They're mail art essentially," she says, photographs of published letters and diaries of Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) and Mary Wollstonecraft (an 18th-century advocate of women's rights) folded and sent to various friends and family. Her photographs pick out particular words from the appropriated literature, which are then assembled in symbolic groupings. Although their final resting place is tacked onto a museum wall beneath floodlights, Davey urges the audience to imagine these physical photographs' passage through time and space via the postal service. Her process echoes Alighiero Boetti's mailing project, reinterpreting and admiring the marks of reality, incident, and coincidence.
Above: Mary, Marie, 2011
45. Frans Lanting
45. Frans Lanting
Dutch photographer Lanting is the photographer-in-residence for National Geographic, which means that he has probably shaped the way you think about the world's most exotic (and unreachable) locales. In 2006, Lanting launched the LIFE project, defined as a "lyrical interpretation of the history of Earth." His current work on the project includes mountain lions in California and wildlife in Ghana.
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Above: Mountain Landscape, 2006
44. Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor
44. Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor
Peters and Taylor of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital are not traditional art photographers in any sense—they could probably be better described as medical or science researchers. But it was the duo's Bright Brain photograph that won the National Geographic's 2012 Microphotography Competition. Their image is "believed to be the first image ever to show the formation of the blood-brain barrier in a live... transparent zebrafish embryo." Peters and Taylor's prize-winning picture is comprised of several different layers of images; think of it as a bio-tech-photo-collage...or something.
Above: Bright Brain, 2012
43. Sara VanDerBeek
43. Sara VanDerBeek
Should we consider the New York-based VanDerBeek a photographer? Or sculptor? Or installation artist? Does it matter? VanDerBeek constructs fanciful assemblages consisting of family snapshots, magazine clippings, bits of string, and banal trinkets. Her delicate sculptural "constellations" suspend the objects in such a way that we feel as though they are weightless, bouncing in the ambient air. The pieces take on a stark, high modernist character in the theatrical spotlight, and are forever frozen in her photographs. Her work has been cited as a practice that expands the conversation regarding the complicated relationship between sculpture, installation and photography.
Above: Athena, 2006
42. Gerald Herbert
42. Gerald Herbert
Herbert is another Associate Press photographer whose mission is to give the public eyes where they can not be. In this case, Herbert takes to the air to put into context the extent of the massive BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill from the summer of 2010. A tiny boat trails across the water's surface, leaving a notable difference between the tide and its wake. But the boat's presence is insignificant in comparison to the haunting spectacle of the oil-slicked water. The effect of the sunset on the sea's surface creates a sort of rainbow effect that we are more used to seeing on asphalt streets.
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Above: Documentation of the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill, July 31 , 2010
41. Liz Deschenes
41. Liz Deschenes
Deschenes' work has been described by the Whitney Museum as "hovering between photographic images and three-dimensional art objects." Her well-known Tilt/Swing series was mostly created without cameras; instead, photosensitive paper was exposed to light in controlled increments, revealing a spectrum of varying tones. Her 2009 Moiré series pursues the same visual destabilization, but in this case, the effect is a vibration of perception akin to (but notably different than) Op Art. Deschenes' work cannot be simply defined as optical play, especially when her photographs interact with the architectural space they inhabit.
Above: Installation view, Secession, Vienna, Austria, 2012
40. Ryan McGinley
40. Ryan McGinley
McGinley's photographs capture the fleeting moments of his idealized cast of twentysomething waifs. They wander through flowered fields at sundown, play in trees and caves after dark, and dematerialize into the flares of handheld sparkers. The whimsical fantasy of his youthful subjects has inspired hundreds of young photographers and Tumblrs while pioneering the modern aesthetic of road-tripping photography.
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Above: Olivia (Sparks), 2010
39. Elad Lassry
39. Elad Lassry
The work of the Israeli-born, L.A.-based Lassry is quite funny. Despite his offbeat subjects—puppies nursing from cats, gourds, lipstick, and toy slippers—his photographs often retain a commercial slickness. All props and sitters, conventional and otherwise, are treated with similar preciousness. Lassry's colors are bright (no doubt), and their pop is only accentuated by their matching frames, which has become one of his trademarks.
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Above: Circles and Squares (A Tasteful Organic Melons Arrangement) 2, 2007
38. Carter Mull
38. Carter Mull
In a time when film is on the out and photography is most accessible through cell phones, Mull is making his mark in the digital age. Mull coined the term "analog Photoshop," which caught on in 2003 as a means to describe the ubiquitous mode of image manipulation and production that Adobe Photoshop provides to the masses. Mull is grappling with photography through process, questioning exactly what constitutes a photograph and a photographer, His images are sourced from a range of materials, from the Los Angeles Times to human hair, dust, and fake jewels. Philippe Vergne, director of the Dia Art Foundation, says Mull "is pushing the tradition of pictorialism to a new limit.... The layering of materials suggests entropy, that we are always in flux, and that everything we think is here permanently is bound to disappear."
Above: Before and After, 2009
37. Leslie Hewitt
37. Leslie Hewitt
It would be easy for the inattentive viewer to suggest that Hewitt's work is solely photographic. It would be more difficult to actually consider the full operation of Hewitt's framing and installation. It is this long and medium-meshing conversation that underlies Hewitt's invitation to "experience a unique space between photography and sculpture." Slick and heavy wooden frames lean up against walls, while other photographs are mounted weightlessly at eye level. Some photographs are clustered in what seems like a sequence, while others stand alone. Subjects vary from photograph to photograph, but all could be described as "mundane." Somehow, amidst these benign object arrangements, Hewitt is able to draw out the cultural, political, social, and historical potency of each subject.
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Above: Make it Plain, 2006
36. Shirin Neshat
36. Shirin Neshat
Neshat's elegant black-and-white photographs are imbued with a certain sense of somberness. Her latest filmic work, Women Without Men, debuted in 2009, and earned her the Silver Lion Award for best director at the Venice Film Festival. Book of Kings, her latest body of work, features the faces of a number of Iranian and Arab citizens (mostly youth) and was mounted at New York's Gladstone Gallery last year. The exhibition, described as being "suffused with humanity," was inspired by the waves of political uprising throughout the Arab world over the last year. The title is a reference to the ancient book of Shahnameh, the words of which have been inscribed over some of the faces of Neshat's sitters.
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Above: Roja, 2012
35. Zoe Leonard
35. Zoe Leonard
At her first show at Murray Guy in New York City in 2012, Leonard turned half of the gallery space into a camera obscura "in order to consider photography anew." Leonard's installation 453 West 17th Street is the fourth in an ongoing series. Upon first entering the darkened space of the gallery, one sees nothing but the architecture of the room. Then slowly, as our eyes adjust, an inverted image of the world outside is projected onto the entire room. Pedestrians and taxi cabs rush past overhead while building facades stretch across the floor and change sharply at corners. Now is this photography? Yes.
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Above: 453 West 17th Street, 2012
34. Javier Manzano
34. Javier Manzano
Maybe you aren't familiar with Javier Manzano's name, but you definitely should be. Manzano is taking pictures in the world's most tumultuous and violent regions: beside Free Syrian Army fighters in Aleppo's Karm al-Jabal neighborhood and in close proximity to the violent Mexican drug cartels in Juarez. His chilling images reveal more than you could find on the nightly news.
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Above: Siege of Aleppo, 2013
33. Manish Swarup
33. Manish Swarup
The Indian-born Associated Press photographer, Manish Swarup, shows us things we wish didn't exist to be photographed. During a March 2012 protest to end Chinese occupation in Tibet, Swarup documented a 27-year-old Tibetan activist Jamphel Yeshi after his self-immolation at a demonstration ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to New Delhi, India. Swarup went on to bear witness to Yeshi's massive funeral, attended by thousands of Tibetan exiles, who chanted, "May Matyr Jamphel Yeshi's name be immortal."
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Above: A Tibetan's Last Stand, 2012
32. Rineke Dijkstra
32. Rineke Dijkstra
Dijkstra may be best known for her 1992 to 2002 series of seemingly nonchalant portraits of adolescents on generic beaches. Over the last decade, the Dutch artist has continued to pursue the transitional adolescent as her primary subject, though she has also photographed new mothers, young bullfighters, and soldiers. For her 2008 series The Krazyhouse, Dijkstra turned to the habitual visitors of a Liverpool dance club, setting up a makeshift studio space to film the teens dancing to their favorite music. Her photographs and films tap into viewers' empathy, causing them to both react and relive their pasts through the self-consciousness of her young subjects.
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Above: Amy, 2008
31. Iwan Baan
31. Iwan Baan
The Dutch architectural photographer became a household name when his aerial shot of an eerily darkened post-(Hurricane) Sandy Manhattan graced the cover of New York, eventually earning the magazine the American Society of Magazine Editors' "Cover of the Year" award. Baan captured Manhattanites idling on street corners illuminated by hues of garish blue, pink, and blinding white. The facades and sidewalks of New York City's well-filmed midtown neighborhoods resembled uncanny film sets more than the city imaged by the likes of Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Vivian Maier, or Lee Friedlander. Baan's photos of post-Sandy Manhattan are ubiquitous and documented something otherwise unimaginable.
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Above: The City and the Storm, 2012
30. Terry Richardson
30. Terry Richardson
The infamous Richardson had his first solo exhibition at OHWOW Gallery in L.A., entitled TERRYWOOD. His online diary makes his celerity network apparent—Aaron Paul or James Franco dropping in one day, Louis C.K., a supermodel, or even the POTUS the next. And amid all the chatter about his work this past year, Lady Gaga also announced that Richardson would be spearheading a documentary about her life. Sold.
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Above: Barack Obama, 2012
29. Christopher Williams
29. Christopher Williams
Conceptual artist/photographer Christopher Williams works to unpack the ostensibly simple commercial image in a number of ways—for example, titling, which at times becomes a lengthy history more than a succinct summation, as well as the "opening" of various frames to reveal the interior systems of the image-making process. In the case of Williams' Cutaway model Nikon... (2008), viewers are able to peek (ever so slightly) into the physical mechanics of image-making. In his other works, such as the Kodak Three Point Reflection Guide series (2005), Williams exposes the conventions of commercial color and what is usually hidden to the typical consumer.
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Above: Kodak Three Point Reflection Guide, © 1968 Eastman Kodak Company, 1968. (Miko laughing), Vancouver, B.C., April 6, 2005, 2005
28. Catherine Opie
28. Catherine Opie
Opie's portraiture always feels direct, like there's a truth bared by the sitters, whether they be supermodels clad in luxury gowns or teenage football players still perspiring from practice drills. She speaks often of "bearing witness"—to life, to people, or to an event. Over the last 10 years, our cameras have gone from an apparatus to supplement memory to a device that replaces our memory and perception altogether. Opie's series on President Obama's inauguration speaks to just that. Her photographs are a reminder to remove our new Insta-tinted frames and pay attention to the things we see through our lenses.
Above: Untitled #5 (Inauguration Portrait), 2009
27. Uta Barth
27. Uta Barth
Barth's 2011 series ...and to draw a bright white line with light has done away with distant images of familiar architecture and instead has returned to the quiet space (or spacelessness) of abstraction. ...and to draw a bright white line with light looks closely at curtains in Barth's own home, and at moments the photographs seem as though they can hardly contain their content. Light in this series feels simultaneously serene and volatile, sublimely bursting out of every photographic grain, as the photographs teeter on the edge of overexposure. The light Barth's captures through film gains a kind of density and mass that presses against the frame of the image. At times it feels as though the undulating beams of sunshine in her photographs might break through and illuminate the entire rooms that hold them.
Above: ...and to draw a bright white line with light, 2011
26. Eileen Quinlan
26. Eileen Quinlan
In a September 2009 interview with artist Walead Beshty, the Brooklyn-based Quinlin brought up her 2006 work consisting (initially) of five separate editions of identical prints, plus artist's proof (AP). "I was interested in collapsing the idea of the edition by turning it into something unique. So the five prints plus the AP couldn't be broken up, and it was titled as one work: The Full Edition of Smoke & Mirrors #24A." By reacting to the reproducible possibilities of photography, Quinlin changed the market approach.
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Above: The Full Edition of Smoke & Mirros #24A, 2009
25. Cristina Mittermeier
25. Cristina Mittermeier
Mittermeier is the founder of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) and has been described as "one of the leading advocates who are shining light on the plight of indigenous people, endangered species, and diminishing resources through stunning and inspirational photography." This Mexican-born artist-activist has been working for over a decade to document and bring awareness to the hidden and dwindling treasures around the world. For a sample of her work, read her 2011 piece Farewell to a wild river on National Geographic's website.
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Above: Farewell to a wild river, 2011
24. Jessica Hill
24. Jessica Hill
The Associated Press' Hill caught this heart-wrenching moment of Carlee Soto receiving the painful news that her sister, Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher at Sandy Hook elementary school, was killed in the Newtown, Conn. tragedy. Soto's face is contorted in overwhelming sadness. Even months after this unimaginable event, Hill's photograph refuses to let the memory fade in vain.
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Above: Carlee Soto, Newtown, CT., 2013
23. Gregory Crewdson
23. Gregory Crewdson
The typical Gregory Crewdson photograph looks like something plucked from a science-fiction film. The characters embedded in the scene are often aloof or have a look of longing. But they are only pawns in the game of theatre constructed in the photograph. Each image's elaborate stage becomes an affective vessel for the unaffected inhabitants. Crewdson's use of theatrical lighting heightens the drama of the photograph, seducing us into a narrative that may not even exist.
Above: Untitled (Maple Street), 2003
22. James Balog
22. James Balog
Since 2007, Balog has been working on what he calls an Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) "to tell the story of a planet in flux." Balog's approach incorporates innovative forms of time-lapse imagery and technology. Balog has led a team of others to work in the Arctic to assist in photographing and revealing the astounding rate at which ice is melting and how that affects the world around us. As a part of the ongoing project, EIS has installed 27 time-lapse cameras at a number of secluded areas in Iceland, Nepal, Alaska, Greenland, and the Rocky Mountains.
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Above: Extreme Ice Survey Project, 2007—ongoing
21. Jon Rafman
21. Jon Rafman
Rafman's 2009 project 9 Eyes of Google Street View was another bind for the world of photography. None of the images were physically taken by him but instead pulled from the infinite number of images that Google has taken to make up their virtual maps of neighborhoods around the world. His selections are unexpected slices of life—some are funny and cheerful, while others are uncanny and at times haunting.
Above: 4 Van Helomaweg, Wapserveen, Nederland, 2011
20. LaToya Ruby Frazier
20. LaToya Ruby Frazier
Frazier's style has yet to trickle down to the Insta-circuit, but maybe because it truly has no filter. Her work has a straightforward documentary quality. Frazier always confronts her vulnerable subjects head on, unafraid to show the face of a not-so-utopic reality. Her work knocks at the door of massive cultural shifts: "rapid de-industrialization and outsourcing, environmental negligence, and inner-city gentrification." Her solo exhibition, LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital, runs through August 11 at the Brooklyn Museum.
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Above: Huxtables, Mom and Me, 2009
19. Nick Knight
19. Nick Knight
A shorthand history of Knight might go something like this: a 1982 book of photographs entitled Skinheads, followed by college graduation, then a series of 100 portraits for i-D Magazine's fifth anniversary issue, which then led to another commission to shoot the 1986 catalog for Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, and music-video collaborations with Bjork and Lady Gaga. If that wasn't enough, Knight went on to shoot editorials for Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, Jil Sander, and Yves Saint Laurent. In 2000, Knight launched SHOWstudio.com, an online platform that was responsible for Gareth Pugh's unprecedented digital runway shows of the Autumn/Winter 2008 and 2009 season. His impact extends far beyond one photograph and instead encompasses the immense influence of his imaging in the fashion world, and his push for new platforms to experience them in.
Above: Insensate, 2008
18. Alec Soth
18. Alec Soth
There is always something wonderfully unspectacular about Soth's photographs—which isn't to say they aren't interesting or captivating, because they often are. He and his camera have traveled from Bogota, Colombia to Niagara Falls (and lots of places in between). Soth has an eye for a place with character. His photo stories create narratives of places that are simultaneously dreary and dreamy. We should also note Soth's creative book-making endeavor, which explores the format of the the book as a medium.
Above: Two Towels, 2004
17. Juergen Teller
17. Juergen Teller
The German-born Teller is responsible for every advertisement from Marc Jacobs since 1998. He has photographed the likes of Winona Ryder, Kate Moss, Charlotte Rampling, Roni Horn, Sofia Coppola, and Bjork. He has been tapped by internationally renowned luxury labels such as Yves Saint Laurent and Céline, and continues to bring redemption to the onboard flash. And despite his work's viral popularity, it has retained its edge and taps into our collective nostalgia of '90s grunge.
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Above: Kate Moss, Gloucestershire, 2010, No. 4, 2010
16. Walid Raad
16. Walid Raad
Raad's work includes photographs, videos, and written essays. His 1999 invention, the fictive collective The Atlas Group (consisting of only Raad himself), investigates the contemporary history of Lebanon. The Atlas Group's investigations are concerned with collective history and trauma, and as such they "produced and found several documents including notebooks, films, videotapes, photographs and other objects." These documents eventually came to form The Atlas Group Archive.
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Above: The Atlas Group (1989—2004), 2008
15. Lorna Simpson
15. Lorna Simpson
The Brooklyn-born Simpson began working as a street photographer and has traveled a long distance since. Her practice has expanded to include felt works, films, drawings, and photography; when installed, they inhabit a space of their own and become more than just pictures on walls. Parts of her current Blues for Smoke exhibition take on the form of small framed photographs in amorphous wall clusters. Some of the tiny frames are filled with photographed culled from eBay and flea markets, while others are enclosed only by the empty black backing of an old photo album. Simpson's alternative means of photo collection and archiving has become a central motif in her work. Her May June July August, '57/'09 series, some of which was mounted at the Brooklyn Museum in 2011, began as an incorporation of hundreds of found photographs of African-Americans that Simpson then reenacts to subvert the assumption that "archival materials are objective documents of history."
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Above: Please remind me of who I am, 2009
14. An-My Lê
14. An-My Lê
A recent recipient of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship, Lê was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1960, and fled from the country with her family at the age of 15. Her photographs reveal the influence of the military on her own life while also examining the "impact, consequences and representation of war." Her 2003-2004 series 29 Palms continues in the same trajectory as her older series Viêt Nam and Small Wars, documenting U.S. Marines preparing for deployment in a "virtual Middle East in the California desert." Her work toggles between temporalities and localities—neither acting nor fighting, neither historical nor contemporaneous, but suspended somewhere in between.
Above: 29 Palms: Night Operations, 2003—2004
13. Cindy Sherman
13. Cindy Sherman
Sherman is best known for her Untitled Film Stills series from the late 1970s. But since those infamous black-and-white photographs, Sherman has been hard at work transforming herself into medieval portrait sitters, patients of plastic surgery botches, and, more recently, clowns and aging women. Her work has been influential over the past three decades of her career, and her exploration of subjectivity and identity continues to inform a growing generation of artists.
Above: Untitled #465, 2008
12. Tommy Ton
12. Tommy Ton
Ton, the Canadian photographer of the fashion blog Jak & Jil, was officially declared as the successor to Scott Schuman as the official style shooter of Style.com in 2009. Such an auspicious appointment demanded an equally keen eye to match that of the departing Sartorialist. And although Ton had other platforms to share his work, Style.com has enabled Ton's eye for fashion be broadcast on an unrivaled plane. Ton has recently produced a ranked list of his own, featuring his favorite styled gentlemen. After thumbing through hundreds of photographs of his work, it is clear that Ton has grown more adventurous—in the choice of his subjects, their proportions and combinations, in angle, and in lighting.
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Above: New York City, March 26, 2013
11. Walead Beshty
11. Walead Beshty
Beshty's 2009 series Passages is a complicated case for photography. Upon returning from traveling abroad in 2006, Beshty developed unexposed rolls of film and discovered only random lines of color —an unintentional exposure caused by the airport security's X-ray machines. The irradiated film bore the (seemingly invisible) effects of international travel in a post-9/11 world. Beshty's method of film exposure became not only a destabilization of the traditional process and content of photography, but extended the definition of film-based photography as a documentary medium.
Above: Transparency (Negative) [Kodak NC Color Film: May 8 – May 18, 2008 ORD/LHR LHR/IAD IAD/JFK LGA/DCA DCA/ORD], 2009
10. Taryn Simon
10. Taryn Simon
In an age when images are exchanged and made with seemingly frictionless ease, Simon chooses to belabor the act of photography with her large-format photography. She approaches archiving and categorization as an artful activity. Among her epic collections of images is the well-known 2010 work Contraband, which features 1,075 images of the items seized from passengers and mail packages at New York City's JFK Airport within a span of a few days.
Above: Contraband, 2010
9. Christian Marclay
9. Christian Marclay
Not only is Marclay responsible for The Clock (2010), the epic, real-time, 24-hour montage that won the Golden Lion Award, but he's also behind a number of other photographic works and collages that function much in the same way. His Fourth of July series from 2005 features a number of torn C-prints, mounted and reframed. The idea of the photograph as document has not only been disabled by Marclay's intervention, but the photo itself is paradoxically transformed into an object aware of its own flatness and inability to do anything but show the image it carries on its surface. There is something both pathetic and charming about this series of photographs whose full stories can never be told.
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Above: Untitled from the Fourth of July series, 2005
8. Annie Leibovitz
8. Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz is a force in contemporary portraiture. The former chief photographer for Rolling Stone—and creator of that 1980 nude photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono—continues to make work today. Her 2008 portrait of a bare-backed Miley Cyrus was whipped into a scandal by the media. Cyrus responded with a public apology to her fans, while Leibovitz simply said, "I'm sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted.... The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, with little make up, and I thinking it is very beautiful." No sensation, no spectacle, just telling it like it is.
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Above: Miley Cyrus, 2008
7. Photographer Unknown
7. Photographer Unknown
At a glance, the person in the image on the cover of The Economist appears dressed in an almost comical costume, but upon learning the reality of the image, the humor is replaced instantly with a sense of fear and guilt. The man standing atop the cardboard box is a prisoner at Abu Ghraib. His fingers have allegededly been connected to a source that would electrocute him upon descent. The chilling image looks as though it was snapped from a cell phone camera with a weak flash, and openly bears the recent history the United States has been clamoring to clean up.
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Above: Untitled (Prisoner at Abu Ghraib), 2004
6. Scott Schuman
6. Scott Schuman
Schuman's ongoing project "The Sartorialist" has been a mainstay of the fashionista enclave since its induction. But to label The Sartorialist solely as an ongoing catalog of fashion trends would be a vast understatement. Schuman's straight photography of street fashion and high fashion has not only cast its influence through the stylistic undertakings of its habitual visitors, but has contributing to creating an archival typology of trends (e.g., "If You're Thinking About..." posts). If you're familiar with his work, you know he is a fan of a bold sock, appropriately fitted outerwear, and a vintage photo with a rich story. His hallowed lens rewards dressers both adventurous and classic, reminding us all of the uniqueness of our own wardrobes.
Above: The Sartorialist, 2005—ongoing
5. JR
5. JR
JR's monumental photographs of eyes, hands, and faces bring out a new sense of identity not only of the sitter, but also of the architecture of the surrounding community. The scale of his work is unprecedented, unpretentious, and, at moments, unbelievable; eyes stare out from hillside favela walls, country borders, tops of trains, and the faces of well-weathered women find surprising homes in outdoor stairs. JR's building-sized wheat-paste portraits literally change the face of the neighborhood. The work has even earned JR a TED Prize in October of 2010, where he was introduced as "the one we already call the Cartier-Bresson of the 21st century." His photographic work has exercised its potential to move and to affect in a profound and accessible way.
Above: Face2Face, 2007
4. Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) Team
4. Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) Team
At a very elemental level, what could be cooler than recording the oldest bodies of light at the furthest ends of the universe? "Not much" would be the correct response. The 2012 campaign (UDF12) took place over six weeks from August to September, and was carried out by a number of astronomers under the leadership of Richard Ellis. Among many things that went over our heads—literally and figuratively—the UDF 12 campaign "reveals a previously unseen population of seven faraway galaxies, which are observed as they appeared in a period 350 million to 600 million years after the big bang." Here's to discovery, and our gratitude for photographing things we didn't even know existed.
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Above: UDF12 Campaign, 2012
3. The Team of the Curiosity Rover
3. The Team of the Curiosity Rover
Yes, the Curiosity Rover (and its highly qualified team) gets a spot on the list. It first landed on August 6, 2012, and since then has been taking rock samples while photographing and touring the surface of Mars. There has yet to be a person who can take a Hasselblad to Mars, so Curiosity & Co. earn our respect for showing humanity what the extraterrestrial frontier really looks like.
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Above: Mars Panorama, 2012
2. Joe McNally
2. Joe McNally
McNally's career has spanned over 30 years and includes covers for TIME, Newsweek, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. McNally is a longtime contributor to National Geographic and the author of Face of Ground Zero. McNally has been considered by some as "the most versatile photojournalist working today." His experience extends beyond portraiture into the realm of architecture, dance, and landscape. He even shot National Geographic's first fully digital story, entitled "The Future of Flying," in December 2003.
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Above: The Future of Flying, 2003
1. Ai Weiwei
1. Ai Weiwei
What would a Complex Art + Design list be without Ai Weiwei? Empty and incomplete of course. Weiwei has become an international star over the last decade. Out of a number of his photographic works that exist both as reportage and performance documentation, Weiwei's Study of Perspective, 1995-2003 perfectly straddles the line between performance and photograph. The series takes us to a handful of notable manmade landmarks around the world, all symbols of ubiquitous cultural power: the Eiffel Tower, the White House, Tiananmen Square, and the Mona Lisa, to name four. Usually, grand monuments like these become the backdrop for typical tourist photos, but in Weiwei's series, instead of a happy traveler we are confronted with his foreshortened, momentous, disembodied hand. Study of Perspective points to the political potential of the photograph and stirs up questions: Is this our hand? Do we agree? Where do we stand? Weiwei's fame as an activist, artist, and cyberhero has earned him a large audience awaiting his every move.
Above: Study of Perspective, 1995—2003, 1995—2003