Here’s a guide to some of my favorite photographers, and the roots of the kind of photojournalism I practice. Of course, you’ll also want to check out my books (listed on my home page).

As a young photographer, I was influenced a lot by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, but my interest in them passed pretty quickly. I started being interested in Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, and the Magnum and ex-Magnum photographers that are my age, like Alex Webb, Eugene Richards , Sebastiao Salgado, Jim Nachtwey, Gilles Peress, and Josef Koudelka.

Classical Influences

• The classic of them all is Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment. You’ll never be able to afford it. You can get it in the library, though, and see where this kind of photojournalism came from.
• Eugene Richards: Dorchester Days is his first book, and it’s been republished by Phaidon. You should go find it, it’s a collectors’ item. He has several books including Americans We with Aperture.
• Gene’s major influence was Robert Frank, so look at The Americans . That will show you something about where street photography evolved from.
• There’s also Ernst Haas, whose opus is The Creation .
  

Magnum and ex-Magnum Photojournalists

• If you want to understand Magnum, there’s a book called Magnum In Our Time . It’s from when I was a Magnum photographer, during its 40th anniversary.
• Alex Webb has several books. His book about the Amazon was a Geographic assignment that became a book. From the Sunshine State is a personal project that he did over the years, just going back to Florida many times. Also see Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds .
• With war photographer Jim Nachtwey, you’ve got Deeds of War , which came from when he was a color photographer shooting mostly for Time Magazine. Later he shot for years in black and white. He published a giant book called Inferno that’s so powerful that it’s really hard to look at. It takes several sittings to absorb.
• Gilles Peress has an out of print classic collector’s item book called Telex: Iran . He also has a book about the Rwandan genocide The Silence . And if you look at that, look at the first picture in the book and the last picture in the book. It’s two pictures he took of a guy that he knew was a murderer — he built the whole form of the book around that photo.
• Then, of course, Sebastiao Salgado is a legendary documentary photographer right now, bigger than life. His recent mega projects are Migrations and Workers , two really big books.
• Lauren Greenfield worked for several years self-funding to produce project of kids growing up in Beverly Hills , It got a huge amount of attention and now she’s doing very well.
• Phillip Jones Griffiths did a book on the Vietnam War called Vietnam Incorporated long out of print its republished this year. Phillip’s a Welsh photographer, and he had a view of Vietnam that no American photojournalist’s had. He basically summed it up that the Vietnam war was Coca-Cola. It was a war about money.
  

Wildlife Photographers

• Chris Johns and Joel Sartore are colleagues at Geographic who come from the same school I do. All three of us came from straight photojournalism and evolved into natural history. Most wildlife photographers weren’t photojournalists first, so there aren’t really a lot of people out there for us to emulate, though I will also recommend:
• Mitsuaki Iwago, a Japanese photographer, made a classic in the Serengeti that’s got a real edge to it.
• Jane Goodall’s first husband, Hugo Van Lawick, has several books, including Among Predators . Those things are hot. They’re very edgy, classic; they’re not just sunsets and pretty pictures.
• Frans Lanting takes beautiful pictures, and he’s set a standard for successful books with Eye to Eye .
  

National Geographic Photographers

• David Alan Harvey is a master of the moment in color whose career began at National Geographic and he is a Magnum photographer. His most recent book is Cuba .
• Bill Allard has a book just out called Portraits of America . Bill’s one of the classic color photographers. His career goes beyond any of us, but he’s still incredibly vibrant.