Photographers - for Photography Class

A paper for my Photography class:

Shunda Lee

My very favorite photographer is Shunda Lee from Singapore. It is worth your time to look at the albums on his Facebook page. On this page, you will see birds from all over the world, but I know his photography work consists of so much more. He shared with me a book where his photographs from the Holy Land are featured. I do not know if he is a paid professional, but I do know that his pictures are professional and he posts almost daily from his trips around the world. He is listed in National Geographic with a stunning image of a bird in flight. Specifically, a Reeves Pheasant in flight. This pheasant is an endangered and protected bird in China.

Sometimes he shares pictures and then tells us how he captured the shot, what the climate was, and what his settings were. I particularly like it when he posts pictures of his fellow photographers. Seeing the equipment that these photographers possess while traveling is jaw-dropping. Some of the lenses are bigger than the men who are holding them. He gives us glimpses of the places they stay in and the food that they eat. Every now and again we get a photograph of the people from the country he is visiting.

I have been following Mr. Lee for years, and I look forward to opening up Facebook to see where his latest travels have taken him. I said that he mainly captures birds, but if you look through his albums, you will see whales and other mammals, jellyfish, people, locations, and food. He is such a fascinating man. I came across one comment that he made to a photographer asking how he captured a shot. Mr. Lee wrote back, “As an elderly photographer, I always shoot on a tripod with the minimal shutter speed, highest aperture to give the sharpest image for my lens and the lowest possible ISO depending on the ambient light.” I think he is too humble. He can’t be too ancient to be traveling all the places he ends up shooting photographs and sharing them with us.

Shunda Lee has opened up the world for me. Now I dream of traveling to Thailand and to other places that I would have never considered before. After all, if an elderly photographer can climb mountains and cross rivers with mountains of photography equipment, then this elderly student can cross continents with a small suitcase, her camera, and her walking shoes.

Dora Maar

Dora Maar was an artist in painting, poetry, and photography. When you look at her photographs, you see shadow and light with clarity and such beauty even in mundane subjects such as the photograph entitled Medniant aveugle which is translated as the Blind Beggar. According to a review that I read Ms. Maar was “drawn to blindness and this was a theme of hers because of the paradox of capturing the unseeing.” (artblart.com)

The one thing that is repeated over and over again in anything that I researched about Dora Maar is her affair with Picasso and how that was a trigger into her descent of despair. I do not want to write about her trouble with men. I want to focus on the body of photographs that she left instead. She was well respected as an artist, and she captured photographs that most people could never dream of obtaining. She also did more than take a picture. She would manipulate photographs, create collages, she was always experimenting and pushing the envelope. As an example, she took a picture of herself, a double exposed portrait in gelatin silver print, in which she captures her profile and another angle where she is looking off into the distance.

Another untitled portrait was a study of beauty in 1931. The picture is of a beautiful woman who looks as if she is a marble sculpture her skin is so creamy and white. We can see the crease in her neck and how the shadows caress her. The photography from this era is so much better than anything we have today.

Picasso said that photography was inferior to painting and boy was he wrong. Especially in the case of his art compared to Miss Maar. Her photographs evoke something in me that his paintings never could. Her work makes me yearn for days gone by because of the beauty and the styles the people wore. Well, most of her work makes me yearn for the earlier days. Some of her work is quite jaded and sadly pornographic.

Her name at birth was Henriette Theodora Markovitch. She was a French Photographer, painter and poet and much more than just Picasso’s lover and victim of his abuse. She lived to be 89 years old and is buried in Paris.

I just realized that you said the photographer had to have their website and she has been dead for decades. There are websites where you can still purchase her art which I will add to the references page. I hope this counts for this report because her work is among my favorites for photography. Her work and her life resonate within me.

Blimie

For the last photographer, I am choosing one that I have come across in my social media. The reason that I love her work is that she does not do stilted, formal portraits. She likes to come into your life and capture what she sees, and what she sees, at least, what she publishes is stylish, artistic and fun.

The black and white photograph of a child in a swarm of insects or smoke is wondrous. Another photograph that captures my eyes and my smile is of a child eating a piece of watermelon. The watermelon slice and her pink hat frame her sweet face. One child is bobbing for apples in a plastic container that we can see through. Blimie captured them all and shares that with us on her website. She calls her photography work: Documentary Photography.

I giggle when I think of how accurate the description of her work is because in our families we are like little wild jungles and our children are the herds of elephants or the jumping gazelles. Blimie is a photographer, and a blogger, a mother, and a genius marketer who lives in Wisconsin.

References
Shunda Lee
https://www.facebook.com/shunda.lee3…
.https://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Shunda/
https://phototravelasia.wordpress.com/…/how-good-is-the-ca…/
https://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/1429996/

Dora Maar
https://www.artsy.net/artist/dora-maar…
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/a…/pro_art_article-180968395/
https://www.newyorkartworld.com/reviews/maar.html
https://artblart.com/tag/dora-maar-mendiant-aveugle/

Blimie
https://blimiet.com/

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