This ranking is based on an algorithm that combines various factors, including the votes of our users and search trends on the internet.
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.
Vivian Maier was an American street photographer whose works received critical acclaim after her death. Maier's photographs were unpublished during her lifetime. However, her works went viral on the internet when it was published on Flickr five months after her death. Vivian Maier's life and work have inspired documentary films like Finding Vivian Maier.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
