Underrated Masters of Photography

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Why the last 30 years? Well, because it coincides with the history of this magazine, which was launched in 1978. More important, it was during this period that the visual language of photography became the predominant voice of our culture; it was also a time when photographers exercised an extraordinary liberty to create and to stretch the bound-aries of the art. Today we live in a world saturated with images that define who we are and what we are thinking about. The irony is that many of the creative minds that transformed the art over this period are at best overlooked, and in some cases nearly forgotten, by new generations of photography enthusiasts. On the following pages, we hope to take a step toward remedying this situation.

A year ago, American Photo's editor at large, Jean-Jacques Naudet, began working on a list of photographers from the past three decades whose talent and lasting influence had not been given their due. Naudet (now living in New York) is the former editor of the French edition of Photo magazine and a longtime champion of photography and photographers. As an editor and writer, he has chronicled the rise of several generations of photographers, going back to the 1970s. Moreover, he has personally known most of the great photographers of our time, giving him a unique perspective on the recent history of photography in Europe and America. "It was never enough for me to just look at someone's pictures," he says. "I always have to meet the photographers and get to know them on a human level to understand their work."

Over the years, Naudet noted how evanescent the career of a photographer could be. A particular style of fashion photography could make someone a star one day, then old news the next. Other photographers achieved great renown and then, because of personal demons, threw it away. Still others created long-lasting bodies of work, constantly reenergizing their creativity, but were overshadowed by other names. "The one thing about them all," says Naudet, "is that they were and are important talents that moved the art of photography in new directions. Their pictures influenced later generations of photographers, even though their names might have been forgotten."
Over the years, Naudet noted how evanescent the career of a photographer could be. A particular style of fashion photography could make someone a star one day, then old news the next. Other photographers achieved great renown and then, because of personal demons, threw it away. Still others created long-lasting bodies of work, constantly reenergizing their creativity, but were overshadowed by other names. “The one thing about them all,” says Naudet, “is that they were and are important talents that moved the art of photography in new directions. Their pictures influenced later generations of photographers, even though their names might have been forgotten.”

When Naudet began making his list of these underrated photographers, the project was simply a kind of parlor game -- an amusing discussion to have over lunch with friends. Later, it became ap- parent that his list needed to be published, if for no other reason than to remind young photographers of their artistic lineage. But there are other lessons implicit in the list -- lessons about how careers begin and end, especially those that implode from the creative stress that comes with sudden success. “It is the individualism, the strong sense that they need to do things their own way, that makes them significant as photographers,” says Naudet. But those very same qualities can cause them to self-destruct. “I am always reminded about what the legendary Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexi Brodovitch said about photographers,” muses Naudet. “He said even the greatest, most creative ones only have ten years on top.”

Some of the names on his list have certainly been around longer than ten years, and many are well known in photography circles. Yet, Naudet feels, their contributions as photographers still haven’t been fully recognized. “Photographers like Matthew Rolston and Duane Michals have achieved great success and a great deal of respect over long careers,” he says. “But I believe that we still don’t see them for the innovators they are. Each in his own way has changed photography profoundly.”

Naudet is not alone in that assessment. Takouhy Wise, co-director of New York’s Staley-Wise Gallery, which sells the work of many of the great fashion and celebrity photographers of the 20th century, agrees that while photographers like Michals are highly esteemed in photographic circles, the art market, by and large, ignores them. “Matthew Rolston is still an important editorial photographer, after all these years, and that is a remarkable achievement,” she says. “Yet the art market has never responded to him the way it did to, say, Herb Ritts.”

Early during the researching of this special feature, Naudet teamed up with another person who knows a little about photography over the past 30 years: Philippe Garner, the international director of photography and 20th-century arts at Christie’s. Garner has a particular interest in fashion, beauty, and celebrity photography and has written monographs on Cecil Beaton, John Cowan, Guy Bourdin, and Helmut Newton.

He and Naudet first met, in fact, in 1975, when Garner was putting together an art auction to benefit an early photo gallery in London. “I remember that during the auction one man kept bidding and bidding on every photograph that came up for sale,” says Naudet. “Everyone was booing him and laughing at this foolish man who was paying the exorbitant price of $400 for an Irving Penn print.” The man, it turned out, was Sam Wagstaff, one of the earliest and shrewdest private collectors of photography. The three men—Wagstaff, Garner, and Naudet—became close friends, and together they witnessed the rise of photography as a collectable art. (Wagstaff died of AIDS in 1989.)

It was a remarkable time in the history of the medium. Looking back at the magazines from that era, it becomes apparent very quickly just how different it was culturally and aesthetically from the one we now live in. Whether the differences are for the better or worse depends on who’s doing the looking.

The ’70s and ’80s, prior to the AIDS epidemic, were periods of unprecedented personal liberty, and the surge of social freedom was reflected in the photos being published. The sexual revolution of the 1960s, enabled in no small way by the advent of the birth control pill, spilled over into the fashion pages of magazines. In Vietnam, photojournalists, allowed unprecedented freedom by the military to go where they liked and to shoot what they wanted, covered war in a new way. After the war, this taste of freedom led news and documentary photographers to delve more deeply into social and political issues. At the same time, international photo agencies like Sygma and Sipa provided freelance photojournalists with economic security and editorial backing, allowing them to pursue stories they found personally moving.

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