zens, homeless, and participants in the sex trade.
His Paris de Nuit (1933) was acclaimed as an
instant classic. Trained as an artist, painter Pablo
Picasso, sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and writer
Jean-Paul Sartre were among his notable friends.
California-based Edward Weston (1886–1958)
was among the most influential photographers of
the century for his style and for his persona.
Following Stieglitz’s lead, Weston embraced the
‘‘straight’’ style of photography—his conversion
while shooting an Ohio steel plant in 1922 has
become legendary—in which the subject is shown
in sharp detail. He also advocated ‘‘previsualiza-
tion,’’ that is, imagining the finished picture
before the shutter is released. Around 1930, Wes-
ton was a founder of Group f/64, a loose, short-
lived association of his friends and followers, in
which many of his own principles were applied. In
1937, he was awarded the first John Simon Gug-
genheim Memorial Fellowship in photography.
His relationships with other photographers, his
circle of California writers and artists, and his
three photographer sons (Brett, Neil, and Cole)
make him a singular figure. HisDaybooks, jour-
nals that he maintained from 1923 to 1943,
describing his method and outlook, are unique
resources in twentieth-century photohistory.
Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is regarded as the pre-
eminent landscape photographer of the American
West. He was a devoted member of Group f/64 and,
through a series of influential books, came to be
regarded as a technical expert. His intricate ‘‘Zone
System’’ became an ideal for determining correct
exposures. In advocating for the Sierra Club before
Congress, he exemplified how a photographer
could make a difference in terms of conserving the
land he photographed. His politically-conscious
images of the WWII internment camp for Japanese
Americans at Manzanar, California, are now seen
as important documents of the era. Adams was also
a tireless organizer, helping to establish the depart-
ment of photography at the Museum of Modern
Art (1940), and the department in what is now the
San Francisco Art Institute (1946). Imogen Cun-
ningham (1883–1976) was also a progressive west
coast photographer and a founding member of
Group f/64. Her close-ups of plant forms and later
nudes are well known. She won a Guggenheim
award in 1970, and at age 92 she began her final
project,After Ninety, a collection of portraits.
Paul Strand (1890–1976) is considered one of the
most important photographers of the century,
mainly for his socially compassionate and uncom-
promisingly ‘‘straight’’ images, yet has proven to
have influenced countless photographers practicing
in various styles and genres. Stieglitz heavily pro-
moted his formal images at gallery 291 and in the
pages ofCamera Workmagazine. Strand also made
landmark avant-garde films that were formally dar-
ing (e.g.,Manhattan, with Charles Sheeler, 1920)
and socially conscientious (e.g., The Plow that
Broke the Plains, with Pare Lorentz, 1936). His
book collaboration with photohistorian Nancy
Newhall,Time in New England(1950), where his-
torical literature is coupled with photographs taken
on location, is considered a model of the genre.
Images taken during his extensive travels, which
occupied Strand for the rest of his life, appeared in
influential books.
In his images of New Orleans, the Mississippi
river, and the ruins of the antebellum South, Clar-
ence John Laughlin (1905–1985) projected a haunt-
ing romance on regional subjects. Similarly, Wright
Morris (1910–1998) produced photographically
illustrated novels (e.g., The Inhabitants, 1946),
most of them set in the Midwest, in which the
pictures and text exist separately. Images of old
farm structures or lonely landscapes are set beside
texts describing characters and rural life.
Moving into the post-war era, Harry Callahan’s
(1912–1999) spare images of his wife, Chicago streets,
and watery landscapes remain highly influential. In
1976, he was the subject of a major exhibition at the
MoMA and became the first photographer to repre-
sent the United States at the 1978 Venice Biennale
with a one-man exhibition of his work. He has influ-
enced many photographers, first as a teacher at the
Institute of Design, in Chicago (later the Illinois
Institute of Technology) from 1946 to 1961, then at
the Rhode Island School of Design, until 1977. He is
often regarded as part of a teaching partnership
with Aaron Siskind (1903–1991). Siskind was a
socially conscious photographer in the 1930s, hav-
ing been a member of New York’s progressive
Photo League. There he worked on projects such
asHarlem Documentand met like-minded photo-
graphers such as Walter Rosenblum (b. 1919). By
the 1960s, Siskind had adopted the abstract ima-
gery—graffiti, peeling paint, faded signs—for
which he has become known.
Minor White’s (1908–1976) formal, mystical
images inaugurated a heightened subjectivism for
photography in the 1950s and 1960s. Highly edu-
cated himself, he became an important teacher, and
for some, a guru. He was a founder and editor of
Aperturemagazine, and from 1953 to 1957 curator
of exhibitions at the George Eastman House (now
the International Museum of Photography at
George Eastman House). A dedicated teacher, he
held posts at the Rochester Institute of TechnologyHISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TWENTIETH-CENTURY PIONEERS