Portrait Photographers

Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer whose career is defined by intimate photographs of celebrities, as exemplified by her famous portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, hours before the English musician’s murder. The Rolling Stone magazine provided the platform for her photographic talent during the early years of her career. She was involved in a controversy over an apparent topless photo of Miley Cyrus.

Best known for his black and white photographs, Robert Mapplethorpe chose homoerotic themes to express himself. His male nudes reflected the gay BDSM subculture of New York. His works also included flowers, still lifes, and portraits of celebrities. The gay photographer-artist eventually died of aids.

From working as a photographer to becoming one of the members of the British royal family, Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon had an amazing journey. Despite being known for his marriage with Princess Margaret, he was also known for his philanthropy and charity work. He also co-designed the Snowdon Aviary, which is now part of the famous London Zoo.

Amanda de Cadenet is an English author, photographer, and media personality. As a photographer, De Cadenet has worked for popular magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Jane, and Spin. Amanda de Cadenet has also appeared in a couple of films like Grace of My Heart and The Rachel Papers.

Cecil Beaton was a British war, portrait, and fashion photographer. A multi-talented personality, Beaton is also known for his work as a painter, diarist, interior designer, and costume designer. Cecil Beaton worked with popular publications like Vogue before becoming a leading war photographer. His work as a costume designer for the theatre and films earned him Oscars and Tony Awards.  

iO Tillett Wright is an American photographer, author, activist, TV and podcast host. He is credited with founding the now-defunct international street art magazine Overspray for which he served as the editor-in-chief until 2009. His podcast The Ballad Of Billy Balls was counted among the best of 2019 and was considered for television development.

Mathew Brady was an American photographer who captured the American Civil War through his lenses. One of the earliest photographers in the history of the US, Brady is credited with taking pictures of prominent personalities like Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Andrew Jackson. Dubbed the father of photojournalism, Mathew Brady was the most renowned American photographer during the 19th century.   

Lewis Hine was an American photographer and sociologist. Hine's photographs played a key role in the passage of the child labor laws in the USA. He worked with non-profit organizations like Russell Sage Foundation and National Child Labor Committee and captured the plight of several child laborers in the steel-making districts. These photographs helped enact the first child labor laws.

Born in Hungary, Sylvia Plachy fled to the US with her family after the Hungarian Revolution. Now a renowned photographer, she is mainly known for her stint with the US newsweekly The Village Voice. A Guggenheim fellow and a Lucie Award winner, she is also the mother of Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody.

Gyula Halász, or Brassaï, derived his pseudonym from the city of his birth, Brassó, then in Hungary. Later, he moved to Paris, where he began his career as a photographer. He published his works in volumes such as Paris de nuit. He was also a sculptor and a poet.

Italian-American photographer Tina Modotti was the daughter of migrant laborers in Austria. She later worked in a textile factory in Italy, before moving to the U.S., where she acted in Italian theater. Initially excelling in still lifes and portraits, she later gained fame for her signature close-ups of Mexican workers.

Shanna Besson is a French photographer and actress who started her acting career at age 10 when she played a girl forced into acting by her mother in I'm an Actress, which marked the directorial debut of Besson's mother Maïwenn. Besson later established a career in film-making, working with her parents as a still photographer in films like Taken 2.

Erich Salomon was a German news photographer remembered for his pictures in the legal profession. Salomon is also remembered for the methods that he used to acquire his photographs. Many of his pictures were taken by concealing the camera in his hat. He is one of two persons to have captured a session of the Supreme Court of the US.

Lotte Jacobi was a photojournalist and portrait photographer. She was trained at the Bavarian State Academy of Photography and was famous for her high-contrast black-and-white portrait photography. Her subjects were both common people and high-profile figures, and she tended to delve deeper into the traits of her subjects than in traditional portraiture. She was married to publisher Erich Reiss.  

Humphrey Spender was an English painter, photographer, and designer best remembered for his commercial photography. Spender worked for popular publications like The Daily Mirror and Harper's Bazaar. With the advent of the Second World War, Humphrey Spender also served as an official war photographer and was associated with the Royal Army Service Corps.

Otto Steinert was a German photographer. He is credited with co-founding an avant-garde photography group called Fotoform. Apart from being a photographer, Steinert also worked as a teacher. He taught at the Folkwang Hochschule school in Essen from 1959 until his death in 1978.

Ellen Auerbach was a photographer best remembered for her work with the ringl+pit studio in Berlin, which she co-founded with Argentine photographer Grete Stern. The studio, which specialized in fashion, advertising, and portrait photography, was one of the first female-run photographic businesses in the world. 

Pia Arke was a Danish visual artist, photographer, and writer. She is best remembered for creating her own life-size camera obscura which she used to photograph the landscapes of Greenland. Pia Arke is often counted among the most prominent postcolonial critics of the Nordic region.

Hugo Erfurth was a German photographer best remembered for his portraits of cultural figures and celebrities of the early-20th century. He is credited with co-founding an exhibiting group called Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner, where he played a major role in the development of the group.