How They Look

PHOTOGRAPHERS’ PORTRAITS

rob becker

how they look Photographers' Portraits

Rob Becker

Introduction

P

ortraits and photographers. Portraits of photographers.

Very similar sentences, yet totally different. Still, they feel as if they are one and the same. To look at the large collection of portraits of professional photographers in this book is like playing a game of Who’s who. And once identified, they conjure up the vast amount of great images they have created. As you look at the faces of the people who made them you realize how many of their images are etched in your memory.

It is not very often that we get the opportunity to get to know photographers in this way. I dare say that most people don't know the names behind great images, nor do they care what they look like - as if it is only the result that counts. As if the persons looking through their cameras to create images we now consider important, beautiful or memorable are irrelevant.

Photographers ought to be better known for their work.

I enjoy looking at the portraits of the photographers in this book. I like to study their faces and their expressions, try to read their mind and look at the eyes that have seen so much and created such amazing stories and important pieces of art.

The things they must have seen!

Taking somebody’s portrait can be a very intimate process.

When you put a camera in front of someone to get up close you enter his or her private space. One can often tell when people are not used to having a camera aimed at them up close.

Their sense of discomfort shows in the image. That is why great portraitists take their time to get the image they want, do what they need to do to make the subject posing for

the photograph feel at ease. The one who waits gets the best result. Patience is rewarded.

I get the feeling that the photographers portrayed in this book seem to know this only too well. They are at ease, because they know the drill and they know what’s coming.

Perhaps the fact that they have been on the other side of the camera so much makes them great subjects. You might think that they would be easy subjects to photograph, but you would be wrong. Do not think for a moment that Rob Becker had an easy task, that anyone could have done this.

What Becker has done is treat them like individuals by using different approaches and specific styles. His deliberate choices show us how he saw them and help us to connect to the characters we see: photographers all, but also unique individuals.

Most of them look at us in the portraits, but some of them look away - as if they don’t want us to look them in the eye, not to give away their secrets. But even so they give us a glimpse of who they are and how they think, so that even photographing two fingers can be enough.

How they look. The way they look. How they see the world. How we see them. That’s what Becker shows us. The photographers posed and allowed him to create their portraits. Now it is up to us to take our time and study them, figure out how we see them and connect them to the images they have created.

Lars Boering, managing director World Press Photo Foundation ◀

1 michael wolf

MĂźnchen, Germany, 1954 - Cheung Chau, Hong Kong, 2019

8 sanne de wilde

Antwerpen, Belgium, 1987

2 nadav kander

Tel Aviv, Israel, 1961

3 roger ballen

New York City, New York, USA, 1950

6 martin schoeller

MĂźnchen, Germany, 1968

4 koto bolofo

Lesotho, South Africa, 1959

8 carl de keyzer

Courtrai, Belgium, 1958

2 michael kenna

Widnes, England, 1953

3 asako narahashi

Tokyo, Japan, 1959

6 jonathan bachman

Morristown, New Jersey, USA, 1984

4 tshepiso mazibuko

Thokoza, Ekhuruleni, South Africa, 1995

For this portrait monograph Dutch photographer Rob Becker decided to literally focus and shine a light on a single profession: his own.

Inspired by his curiosity about the women and men whose photographs he has studied and admires, he has made portraits of photographers from all fields of the profession and from 30 countries around the globe.

Bound in this selection are portraits of Michael Wolf, Alec Soth, Daido Moriyama, Martin Schoeller, Lynsey Addario, Albert Watson, Brent Stirton, Robin de Puy, Todd Hido, Jacob Aue Sobol, Joel Meyerowitz, Nadav Kander, Barbara Davidson, William Klein, Koos Breukel, Sanne De Wilde, Peter Lindbergh, Raymond Meeks, Magnus Wennman, Nick Ut, SebastiĂŁo Salgado, Hisaji Hara, Kadir van Lohuizen, Steve Schapiro, Miles Aldridge, Paula Bronstein, Pentti Sammallahti, Michel Comte, Erwin Olaf and many others.