Graded Unit - Inspiration for Shoot One & Two (1940s - 1980s)
Robert Capa was an American-Hungarian photographer who captured five wars over the course of his lifetime. Born Endre Friedmann on October 22, 1913 in Budapest, Hungary, Capa left his home country at the age of 18, finding work as a photojournalist in post-World War I Berlin. During this time, he concealed his Jewish heritage with a pseudonym based on his childhood nickname “Cápa,” or “Shark.”
Throughout his life, he covered many important historical events, including the rise of Soviet Communism, the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and a full survey of the politics and atrocities of World War II. Capa's photographs are recognized across the globe for their critical role in shaping public remembrance of these events. In 1947, he co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris with fellow photographers David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Capa died tragically in 1954 after stepping on a landmine while documenting the First Indochina War in Thai Binh, Vietnam.
Robert Capa made photographs that achieved their exceptionally powerful effect through his strong connection to and affection for people. This attitude, and his use of the small 35-millimeter camera, allowed him to approach his subjects and throw himself into the action as no one else. The result was a breakthrough in the history of photojournalism.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer who helped establish photojournalism as an art form through his humane, spontaneous photographs. Cartier-Bresson was born in 1908, and educated in a village near Paris. In 1927–28, he studied in Paris with André Lhote, a Cubist-influenced artist and critic. Lhote instilled in him a lifelong interest in painting, which was crucial in the development of his vision. Cartier-Bresson enrolled at the University of Cambridge in 1929 to study literature and painting.
In 1940, he was drafted into the French army's film and photography unit and was taken prisoner by the Germans the following year. He escaped after three years in prison and began working for the French underground. In 1943, he completed a series of portraits of artists such as Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque. Cartier-Bresson photographed the occupation and liberation of France in 1944 and 1945. He co-founded the Magnum agency in 1947 with Robert Capa, David Seymour, and George Rodger. Bresson went on to spend the next twenty years travelling the world.
Henri Cartier-Bresson revolutionised photography with a new aesthetic and practise, pioneered modern photojournalism, and influenced generations of followers. In all of his work, he strived for a perfect balance of content and formal composition, and he lived and worked by his mantra of 'the decisive moment,' which he defined as 'the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event as well as the precise organisation of forms.'
Bruce Davidson is an American photographer born on September 5th,1933 in Oak Park, IL. He began taking photographs from the age of 10 and had a darkroom built in his single mother’s home. Davidson went on to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University, where he developed an interest in the work of W. Eugene Smith and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Known for his images of marginalised communities and individuals. Davidson's work is marked by a fearlessness and a lack of moral judgement, as well as sympathy for those who may be hostile to the general population. Some of the artist's most famous photographs depict scenes and portraits of people riding the New York subway system in the early 1980s, when it was extremely dangerous to ride, covered in graffiti, and full of trash, and were compiled in the well-known photo book Subway (1986).
Davidson would become a widely exhibited and published photographer, and eventually a contributing member of the famed photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Davidson lives and works in New York, USA.
Ridgers was born in 1962 in Chiswick, West London. Unlike many of his colleagues, he did not grow up dreaming of becoming a photographer. Ridgers attended the Ealing School of Art and was trained as a graphic artist; during his time there (1967–71), Freddie Mercury was a fellow student. Ridgers loved music and spent many nights listening to live performances in Chiswick and other nearby neighbourhoods. Most of his photos from later life can be somehow associated with the clubs and music scenes he was a part of during the late 60s.
Ridgers documented the British style and music scene as the Punk rock era began to develop in the late 1970s. A founder of the straight-up style of photography, his observational approach to photographing London’s Youth enabled him to capture skinheads, punks, ravers, goth’s and fetishists as well as every hybrid style that has developed from these various subcultures. Derek Ridgers has published numerous books on his extensive subculture archive, some of which now have a cult status.
