Photographer Profiles

For those of you who have never worked in medium format, trust me, there is a difference you can see and feel. It’s no wonder that photographers such as Douglas Sonders choose a medium format camera system over a DSLR for the bulk of their work. And in Sonders’s case, his workhorse camera system is Phase One.

Each month in this column I gather a collection of websites, sometimes with a loosely related theme. This month’s sites have little in common except an excellence of vision, proving they are not only most uncommon but the result of hard work.

A long time Seattle art photographer, Shelly Corbett’s work was primarily focused on the human figure. Corbett was recently introduced to the photo social media site Instagram, and (through a quirk of fate) was drawn into the world of toy photography.

Professional sports photography for the editorial market is an endangered species. Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with editorial clients turning away from the professional photographer to sports enthusiasts who are willing to trade their photos for season tickets.

San Francisco, 1965. The times, they were a-changin’. If you were young, it was a time to get high, have sex, and listen to mind-blowing music that your parents might, at best, not understand and, at worst, consider obscene. If you were older (and therefore not to be trusted) it was a time to take cover; everything you believed in seemed to be under attack.

This interview with Mary Ellen Mark took place before her death on May 25, 2015, at the age of 75. Considered to be the ultimate “humanist” photographer, she will always be remembered for the honesty, compassion, and empathy she gave to everyone.

John Conn has photographed landscapes, landmarks, and the underwater world, but his passion for documentary storytelling has resulted in his most compelling images: apartheid-era South Africa, residents of a Bowery flophouse, patients in a cancer hospice, the subways of 1970s New York City, and, starting three years ago, the homeless of Manhattan.<