Michael Wayne Plant’s Photographic Influences.
This page is a list of the people who have influences me and my development as a photographer, it will grow over time as I add more content and publish more names. Each link includes links to You Tube videos, books published by and on the photographers well as comments on what I think are the important aspects of their practices as photographers. I would like to apologise for the bias in this list and I admit that I do have a problem with this list, as it is rather male centric and I will do my best to rectify that where I can, have more women photographers planned and I will over the next posts try to rectify the gender imbalance that is in my list of influences.
I will admit also to a bias in the type of photographers that I am and will feature on this list. I am interested in documentary and street photographers, as that is what I do in my own practice. I do not have a preference for colour or black & white photography, as I like both, even though I tend to make almost exclusively colour images. That does not mean that I can’t appreciate things that are different to how I work, we all take from somewhere and mix it within our own personalities to make things that is then our own approach to making work. For me this is part of nature of being creative, if we accept that all things have been done before, but not by us, it can free us to just make work. Once you do that you never know where that liberation can take you.
No 1: Joel Meyerowitz
No 2: Robert Frank
No 3: Tony Ray-Jones
No 4: Helen Levitt
No 5: Garry Winogrand
No 6: Henri Cartier_Bresson
No 7: Sam Abell
No 8: Harry Gruyaert
No 9: Alex Webb
No 10: Lee Freidlander
No 11: Joel Sternfeld
No 12: Walker Evans
No 13: Dorothea Lange
No 14: Up next will be ????
This series is updated when I have found material that I think is good on each photographer and I have the time to write the article that I want.