20 Inspiring Film Photographers
Need some fresh inspiration? Here are 20 film photographers that will help you see the world in a new light.
Before attempting 16mm shorts or long-format projects in film school, we had to understand and practice the fundamentals. Photography is one of them.
Films are literally moving pictures. Footage is commonly recorded and projected at 24, 30, or 60 fps (frames per second). A higher frame rate1 leads to smoother movements and interesting in-camera effects like cinematic slow motion.
While studying past and present greats of film photography across pre-requisite courses, my perspective on storytelling shifted. Their stories didn’t require words or sounds. They could entertain audiences with the subtle manipulation of lights, shadows, colors, and compositions.
The following auteurs lensed images that illuminate my own world.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)
“When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued.” – Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron, one of Victorian Britain’s most famous photographers, was gifted her first camera at 48. She is perhaps best known for her softly focused, ethereal portraits. Many of her influential friends—including painter G.F. Watts and poet Alfred Lord Tennyson—sat before her lens. And her goddaughter just happened to be Virginia Woolf, the modernist author famous for penning Mrs. Dalloway.
Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989)
"Although Louise planned every picture meticulously, her photographs look like she just serendipitously chose the perfect moment to snap the girl with her scarf blowing in the wind. They were more like stories than portraits." – Valerie Steele for “The Pioneering Vision of Louise Dahl-Wolfe” in Harper’s Bazaar
While working as an electric sign designer, Louise Dahl-Wolfe discovered photography in 1921. Exacting and methodical, she pursued the art during the early 1930s and later founded a prominent studio in New York City. Eventually, Dahl-Wolfe pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography at Harper’s Bazaar, where she remained until 1958.
Man Ray (1890-1976)
“I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.” – Man Ray
Man Ray—originally called Emmanuel Radnitzky—was a prolific photographer, painter, and filmmaker who influenced the Dada and Surrealist movements. Although an American visual artist, he spent most of his years in Paris, France.
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.” – Walker Evans
Walker Evans pioneered “the documentary tradition” in the United States.2 A self-taught photographer during the social realism movement, he spent fifty years cataloging striking visuals of mundane American life. The subjects of his portraits break the fourth wall, connecting with viewers.
Cecil Beaton (1904-1980)
“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” – Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton’s talents went far beyond portrait photography. The Brit was also an inventive illustrator and designer for stage and film. Beaton’s devotion to his craft earned him three Academy Awards.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
“To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson, an early adopter of 35mm film, is heralded as the master of candid photography. Influenced by the surrealism movement, his passion for cameras emerged in 1932 after discovering the Leica. Cartier-Bresson spent three years as a prisoner of war and escaped on his third attempt. In his seminal book The Decisive Moment, he embraced spontaneity and chance encounters.
Irving Penn (1917-2009)
“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it; it is in one word, effective.” – Irving Penn
Irving Penn is admired for his alluring portraits, haunting still-life photos, and quality platinum/palladium prints. In his early years, he dreamt of becoming a painter but later designed Vogue covers. While brainstorming concepts, he picked up a camera, which sealed his fate as a fashion photographer. Penn was married to the gorgeous Lisa Fonssagrives, who was widely considered to be the world’s first supermodel.
Lillian Bassman (1917-2012)
“I am completely tied up with softness, fragility, and the problems of a feminine world.” – Lillian Bassman
After becoming a textile designer in New York City, Lillian Bassman was hired as art director Alexey Brodovitch’s first salaried assistant at Harper’s Bazaar. She eventually worked as co-art director at Junior Bazaar and gave many photographers, such as Richard Avedon, their first breaks. Her creative background led her to explore photography. As a freelance image-maker, she specialized in “lingerie, fabrics, cosmetics, and liquor.”3
Helmut Newton (1920-2004)
“The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.” – Helmut Newton
Iconic fashion photographer Helmut Newton was drawn to unconventional subjects. During the 1950s and 1960s, he rose to fame with provocative images in French Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and other major publications. Film noir, expressionist cinema, surrealism, and his wife—June Newton—served as his greatest inspirations.
Richard Avedon (1923-2004)
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ” ― Richard Avedon
From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marilyn Monroe to the Beatles, Richard Avedon photographed many famous faces. He is known for “erasing the line between art and commercial photography.”4 Long before working in fashion, he served as a Photographer’s Mate Second Class in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. This harrowing experience sharpened his eye for faces. After working as the lead photographer at Harper’s Bazaar, Avedon later operated a successful commercial studio and collaborated with Vogue, The New Yorker, and many other magazines.
Vivian Maier (1926-2009)
“If you really have something to say better to be behind the camera than in front of it.” – Vivian Maier
Vivian Maier’s photographs offer a glimpse into urban America during the second half of the twentieth century. Her street photography is considered to be some of the purest, authentically capturing the fleeting nature of our existence. When she wasn’t working as a caregiver, Maier passed the time with her film camera, collecting over 100,000 negatives.
Jerry Uelsmann (1934-2022)
“The camera basically is a license to explore.” – Jerry Uelsmann
Jerry Uelsmann studied and taught photography to college students. To this day, many wonder if he used technology like Adobe Photoshop to create otherworldly images seen across 100 solo exhibitions and 10 books. He transported audiences by innovating in the darkroom with composite printing, which required “multiple negatives and enlargers to create a single unified image.”5
William Eggleston (1939-)
“Often people ask what I’m photographing, which is a hard question to answer. And the best what I’ve come up with is I just say: Life today.” – William Eggleston
William Eggleston’s southern roots heavily influenced his vivid photographs. In response to the “vibrancy of postwar consumer culture and America’s bright promise of a better life,”6 he transitioned from black-and-white to color film stocks. Eggleston embraced his immediate surroundings, imbuing everyday objects with brilliance. He didn’t just focus on portraits of friends, family members, or strangers. His photographs also preserved gas stations, cars, shop exteriors, and other cultural monuments.
Jo Ann Callis (1940-)
“I enjoy taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar, showing it in a way that gives it a different importance.” – Jo Ann Callis
In 1973, Jo Ann Callis first picked up a camera. After completing her MFA in photography, she began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). She regularly fabricates sets, hires models, designs lighting, and selects intriguing props. Viewers can’t look away from her mesmerizing visuals that cross boundaries beyond “polite society” and challenge stereotypes.
Steve McCurry (1950-)
“We photographers say that we ‘take’ a picture, and in a certain sense, that is true. We take something from people’s lives, but in doing so we tell their story.” – Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry is perhaps most known for his photo Afghan Girl, which he captured on assignment for National Geographic. He is a renowned American photojournalist and visual storyteller. Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans' influences are evident across his work. McCurry is skilled at composing subjects, evoking powerful emotions, and utilizing color for contrast. Although he periodically shoots in a digital format, he prefers shooting with transparency film.
Sally Mann (1951-)
“Part of the artist's job is to make the commonplace singular, to project a different interpretation onto the conventional.” – Sally Mann
Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, where she continues to live and work. Many of her experimental shots are captured with an 8x10 bellows camera or via the wet plate collodion process. Her hauntingly beautiful photographs don’t shy away from the human experience. She explores themes recurring across generations: “family, desires, mortality, memory, and nature’s indifference to the human condition.”7
Nan Goldin (1953-)
“My desire is to preserve the sense of people’s lives, to endow them with the strength and beauty I see in them. I want the people in my pictures to stare back.” – Nan Goldin
At first glance, Nan Goldin’s work resembles a journal filled with the highest highs. Her intimate images are akin to portals. When observers “walk through,” they meet subjects living life to the fullest. But beyond the snapshots of happy couples and wild parties, Goldin exposes the harsh realities of life. There’s nothing contrived about her art.
Cindy Sherman (1954-)
“I want there to be hints of narrative everywhere in the image so that people can make up their own stories about them. But I don't want to have my own narrative and force it on to them.” – Cindy Sherman
For four decades, Cindy Sherman has used her body as a canvas to investigate “the diversity of human types and stereotypes” across advertising, cinema, and media.8 Her expressive self-portraits were not created to serve her own interests. Instead, she repeatedly holds up a proverbial “mirror” to viewers, so they can discover something new about themselves.
David Seidner (1957-1999)
“His photographs of clothes and costumes are still lifes that waver in a moment. Everywhere there is something missing, Always something left behind. What is excluded is sumptuous, overwhelming. We can see it. The past howls through pristine artifice. Ghosts are eternal.” – Betsy Sussler for Bomb
David Seidner flourished as a fashion photographer in Paris and beyond. Collaborations with Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Vogue were frequent. Years later, his portraits still make one stop and think. Upon closer inspection, many of his subjects appear fragmented, cropped, and dynamically lit. His techniques also included mirror reflections, multiple exposures, or chemical manipulations on photo paper.
Alex Prager (1979-)
“I won't make an image unless I feel scared to make it to some degree, challenged by something in it, terrified of the possibility of it.” – Alex Prager
Alex Prager is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker. She didn’t follow a traditional path, splitting her time between Florida, California, and Switzerland. Her early exposure to the entertainment industry left a lasting impact. Prager’s scenes, suffused with cinematic surrealism, are carefully crafted. The realities are heightened and profoundly sensorial. Nothing is random. Every detail is accounted for. In fact, her work requires multiple viewings, because there is so much to see. Her mastery of color is evident—no doubt a tribute to William Eggleston.
Art is a vulnerable extension of self, but many works are open to interpretation.
Some people resonate with one piece more than another. But why? There’s an invisible exchange. Every creator brings their own unique thoughts, feelings, and memories to a work. So do audience members.
While viewers walk through a museum or gallery, they are seeking. Seeking to find connection, inspiration, and raw emotion. I hope you find it, too.
Frame rate is the frequency (rate) at which images (frames) in a video sequence are captured or displayed.
Love this. What a great deep dive. Never heard of these talented people. Some really good photogs in there.