Curator's Corner

documentary photography

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Tim Hetherington

Friday, December 5, 2025 | Karl Cole

Tim Hetherington was a bold photojournalist who documented the war in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2008 in the Koragal Valley, where 70 per cent of American bombs were falling when he covered that ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Brook Reynolds

Tuesday, November 25, 2025 | Karl Cole

Photographer Brook Reynolds considers her photographs of aspects of Nature to be Enso photography. Enso photographs are inspired by the practice of Soto Zen Buddhism and influenced by the tra ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: William Bell

Thursday, September 4, 2025 | Karl Cole

The Civil War (1861–1865) was one of the earliest major wars that was extensively documented by the young art form of photography. William Bell started his career as a Daguerreotype photographer ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Marion Post Wolcott

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

Starting in the middle of the 1800s, women were encouraged to pursue photography as an art form because it could be learned at home, and women would not have to risk seeing a nude model at art academi ...

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Curator's Corner

Pioneering Photographer: Frances Benjamin Johnston

Monday, June 9, 2025 | Karl Cole

It’s high time we celebrate the art of photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. She is considered by most art historians to have been the first “press photographer,” photographing fam ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Peter Henry Emerson

Tuesday, May 13, 2025 | Karl Cole

At a time (the 1880s) when photographic processes evolved to handwork and manipulation of prints in development in order to achieve “artistic” photographs, Peter Henry Emerson advocated fo ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: William H. Jackson

Friday, April 4, 2025 | Karl Cole

Jackson took photographs of Shoshone Falls numerous times from every conceivable angle. Like the other photographers who were early chroniclers of the Western territories, Jackson's photographs emphas ...

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Curator's Corner

Photographs from October 1991: Sophie Ristelhueber

Monday, October 21, 2024 | Karl Cole

Ever since the Crimean War (1853–1856) between Russia, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Britain, and France and the American Civil War (1861–1865)—the first wars to be extensively docume ...

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Curator's Corner

Documenting Child Labor: Jacob Riis

Monday, March 25, 2024 | Karl Cole

If we think that only adult women have played an important role in American history, then we are sadly mistaken. Before child labor laws were passed in the United States (1 September 1916), young wome ...

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Curator's Corner

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Dean Brown

Monday, January 15, 2024 | Karl Cole

This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on the actual birthday of this great American leader. To mark the day, I will show you the work of photographer Dean Brown. The artist died way too young pu ...

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