Over the past 13 weeks, I’ve researched and shared the work of 13 photographers, and each one has offered lessons that have expanded my understanding of photography. From experimentation and long-term projects to collaboration and respecting limits, the insights gained can help any photographer grow.
Trent Parke
Always Experiment
Trent Parke’s most compelling projects often come from embracing accidents or running unique experiments. The Camera is God, for example, involved photographing the same intersection daily for a year, then cropping heavily into subjects to create ghostlike, abstract images. In The Seventh Wave, a mishap with exposure forced him to overdevelop film, resulting in grainy, high-contrast frames that are visually striking. Parke’s approach reinforces the value of committing to an idea, refining it over time, and being ready for the moments you can’t plan—letting experimentation and intuition shape the work.
Disregard Outsiders
Tatsuo Suzuki’s career has been marked by controversy, but his response to criticism offers a key lesson: don’t create for everyone. Unless your actions are truly harmful, outside disapproval shouldn’t dictate your art. Suzuki is open about his process, often shooting close and directly to capture changes in expression caused by his presence. He’s also shown how collaboration can enhance creativity—his Void Tokyo zines unite photographers with a shared focus on the city, giving visibility to those without traditional publishing outlets.
Long-Term Projects
Bruno Barbey’s decades-long documentation of China and Morocco illustrates the value of revisiting places over time. His work captures not only cultural heritage but the rapid transformations brought by modernization. In my own city of Bangkok, I’ve seen change in just six years—his example pushes me to document these shifts so they can be appreciated later.
Barbey’s career is a reminder that history unfolds incrementally, and photographers can preserve its visual record.
Masahisa Fukase
Artistic Language
From Provoke, I learned the importance of knowing what came before you. The group’s founders curated an exhibition on 100 years of photography, then rejected the straight, newspaper-like style they saw as stagnant. Their rule-breaking was informed by understanding the rules first. Provoke’s Daido Moriyama described photography as provoking language rather than directly conveying it, creating space for interpretation instead of exposition.
Considered Projects
Researching W. Eugene Smith reinforced the value of building deliberate, investigative projects. Smith emphasized starting with personal biases, confronting them, and striving for honesty and fairness. While I’ve yet to create such a project myself, his approach shows how photography can expand empathy and reshape perspectives when it’s informed by deep, thoughtful engagement with a subject.
Critical Analysis
Takuma Nakahira believed images could never fully escape their connection to reality, no matter how abstracted. His dense writings may seem pretentious to some, but they reflect the kind of serious overthinking that pushes a medium forward. His work challenges me to approach photography with intellectual rigor, not just aesthetic instinct.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Impacts on Your Life
Shomei Tomatsu’s work documenting postwar American influence in Japan reveals how photography can hold complex, even contradictory feelings. His reflections on seeing U.S. bases in Okinawa—mixing awe, nostalgia, and resentment—highlight how photographing a subject can both critique and affirm it. His career underlines photography’s role in wrestling with personal and national histories.
Write & Photograph
Matt Black’s American Geography is a model of integrating text and image. His work on wealth inequality is deeply researched, using words to bring context and meaning to the photographs. He frames the combination as an invitation to share in an open, emotional experience, aiming for greater awareness and sensitivity rather than just a presentation of facts.
Cultures
Glen E. Friedman’s documentation of hardcore punk, skateboarding, and hip-hop shows the importance of recording the subcultures you’re part of. Even when experiences feel too familiar to seem worth capturing, they’re valuable—if not now, then later. Friedman’s self-published zine sold 8,000 copies in its first year, proving that self-driven documentation can have lasting impact.
André Kertész
Limitations
Masahisa Fukase’s career is a warning about losing balance. His obsessive approach created powerful, controversial work but damaged his personal relationships. His wife described feeling seen only through his lens, a reminder that respect for subjects and personal boundaries matters as much as artistic vision.
Do It for Love
Finally, Rai’s work is a lesson in passion over recognition. Though a Magnum photographer, he remains little known outside certain circles. His images are celebrated by those familiar with them, but fame was never the point. The joy comes from creating work you love, not chasing external validation.
Together, these photographers’ careers form a set of guiding principles: experiment boldly, tune out irrelevant criticism, commit to long-term visions, learn the history of your medium, approach projects with care and depth, analyze your work critically, embrace the complexities of life, pair words with images when it adds meaning, document your own world, respect your limits, and above all, do it because you love it.
