Judith Joy Ross, Photographer

Judith Joy Ross was born in 1946 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and is an American portrait photographer. She has created a unique body of black-and-white portraits using traditional photographic tools and subject matter. With her old-fashioned 8x10-inch view camera mounted on a tripod, she directly confronts her sitters, whether they are children or members of Congress.

Thomas Ruff, Photographer

Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach, Germany. He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1977 to 1985, where he studied under Bernd Becher. Ruff began photographing landscapes, but while he was still a student he transitioned to interiors (1979–83) and deadpan portraits of friends. His early portraits were black-and-white and small, but he soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors. He began to experiment with large-format printing in 1986, ultimately producing photographs up to seven by five feet in size. Ruff expanded beyond portraiture with Haus (1987–91), a series of building exteriors. In 1989, he produced a series of images depicting starry skies, derived from pictures he had obtained from the astronomy institute of the Ruhr-Universitt Bochum.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Photographer

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946, the third of six children. The shift to photography as Mapplethorpe’s sole means of expression happened gradually during the mid-seventies. He acquired a large format press camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included artists, composers, socialites, pornographic film stars and members of the S & M underground. Some of these photographs were shocking for their content but exquisite in their technical mastery. Mapplethorpe told ARTnews in late 1988, “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before…I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.” During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe’s photographs began a shift toward a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.

John Coplans, Photographer

When John Coplans began photographing his aging body after he turned 60, he embarked on a documentation of age that is alternately humorous, reflective, and disquieting in the closeness of its observation. Seeing himself as an actor, Coplans examines various body parts closely, often quoting art historical postures with his sagging figure. Self-Portrait, Three Times is exemplary of his scrutinization of idealized expectations of the body and the self. Born in London in 1920, John Coplans was educated in South Africa and England. After immigrating to the United States in 1960, he began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. Coplans was the founding editor of Artforum magazine. Coplans worked as the senior curator of the Pasadena Art Museum from 1967 to 1970 and as the director of the Akron Art Museum in 1978. He has published numerous articles of art criticism, and his books include Weegee: Tater und Opfer (1978), Ellsworth Kelly (1973), Roy Lichtenstein (1972), Andy Warhol (1970), Serial Imagery (1968), and Cezanne Watercolors (1967). Coplan’s extremely close-up nude self-portraits have been exhibited at numerous institutions worldwide. He received the Frank Jewitt Mather Award of the College Art Association for services to art criticism in 1974; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships in 1969 and 1985; and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1975, 1980, 1986, and 1992.

Nobuyoshi Araki, Photographer

The photographer and artist Nobuyoshi Araki is known for his provoking and erotic pictures. He documents social taboos surrounding sexuality and death. Encompassing contemporary Japanese sub-culture, from poetic scenes of old Tokyo, to the dark side of urban life and eroticised female bodies in a variety of fantasy settings.

David Armstrong

David Armstrong grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Boston Museum School from 1974-77, where he'd planned to study painting. Instead, he switched almost immediately to photography. He moved to New York in 1977, studied at Cooper Union and spent the rest of the 70s and 80s living and working either in New York or Boston. After receiving a BFA at Tufts University in 1988, he moved back to New York permanently. During this period he worked primarily on black and white portraits. Because Armstrong works intuitively, the portraits are personal and intense. The work is forceful yet ephemeral: capturing the essence of the person while ineffably capturing the essence of Armstrong's own desire.