Ernst Haas (1921-1986) was born in Vienna and was creative from an early age. His parents, who placed great value upon education and the arts, encouraged his creative pursuits from an early age. As a painter, he had particular interest in an artwork’s formal qualities, and developed a refined sense of composition and perspective. From 1935 to 1938, Haas attended private school in Vienna, where he studied art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and science....
Joel Meyerowitz (1938-) studied painting and medical drawing at Ohio State University and initially worked as an advertising art director in his native New York City. He taught himself photography after collaborating on an advertising project with Robert Frank in 1962. Inspired by Frank, his early work consisted mainly of black-and-white street photographs made with a Leica, however by 1976 he had turned primarily to colour photographs of architectural light and space made with a large-format view camera....
Saul Leiter (1923–2013) was an American artist and early pioneer of colour photography. With distinctive imagery infused with painterly qualities, his work represents a perfect blend of New York’s streets, architecture, and inhabitants. “A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person,” Leiter once declared. Photography seemed to be an escape for Leiter. Born in Pittsburgh his father was a well-known rabbi and Talmudic scholar, and Leiter was encouraged to become a rabbi as well....
Stephen Shore (1947-) was born in New York City and became interested in photography from an early age. At the age of six, he already had his own darkroom kit. Before he turned ten, he was making colour photographs from a 35mm camera. He was first influenced by Walker Evans’s book, American Photographs, and began his photographic career when he turned fourteen. Shore was ambitious from the start and in 1961 he personally phoned Edward Steichen, the director of MoMA’s Department of Photography....
While today we are not surprised to see the field of photography tackle the vernacular, when William Eggleston first used his immediate environment as artistic material, he inevitably placed himself on the fringes of photographic practice at the time. His work is often stunning in its simplicity and uses true yet exaggerated colour to capture life as it was, with scenes in decline permanently preserved. William Eggleston (1939-) spent some of his childhood years with his grandparents while his father served in World War II....