Great photographers: Clark Little (surf photography), Nick Brandt (mostly African wildlife), John Hyde (mostly wildlife and Alaska), Veronika Pinke (landscapes), Dale Allman (miscellaneous; particularly beautiful are his Australian cityscapes and the HDR/DRI photos), Ansel Adams (the undisputed master of nature photography who died in 1984; famous quotes: "You don't take a photograph, you make it.", "A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. "), Michel Rajkovic (mostly marine landscape, exclusively in black and white). And again, as a tribute to a gifted artist who died far too early, the work of Bobby Model (adventure photographer). Last but not least: Onexposure, probably the biggest collection of quality photography on the net.
posted by Matthias Rascher on Sep 21, 2009 - 9 comments

Sleep tight. (I recommend you listen to this while viewing the link.)
posted by grumblebee on Aug 27, 2009 - 10 comments

Photomontage timeline, 1850-2007. Spirit photography, trick photography, comic montages, Photoshop, etc. [more inside]
posted by Miko on Mar 16, 2009 - 16 comments

Patrick Dangin on the work of a photo retoucher . Make no mistake about it: in this age, even Real Beauty is fake.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on May 8, 2008 - 49 comments

What makes a great portrait?
posted by klangklangston on Feb 7, 2008 - 20 comments

Domesticated by photographer Amy Stein explores the tension between settled and wild spaces.

Stranded is another collection of work dealing with the expectations of public and private space.

More self-explanatory: Women and Guns and Halloween in Harlem. She also has a fine blog.
posted by klangklangston on Feb 6, 2008 - 31 comments

Got an embarrassing love letter or humiliating photo from your angsty teenage years you’d like plastered all over the web, perhaps recited aloud and featured in live performances? Thought so
posted by Smedleyman on Jan 22, 2008 - 17 comments

Alison Jackson takes paparazzi shots of celebrity lookalikes. (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 19, 2007 - 8 comments

Sibling rivalry. Meet Edward Mapplethorpe, photographer. Yes, he's related to the other one. They're brothers -- which has actually made things harder for Edward than you might think. In his latest show, just wrapping up at NYC's Foley Gallery, Edward does amazing work using darkroom techniques alone: "The exhibition is composed of unique works solely created in the darkroom without the use of traditional cameras." (This one is my fave from the current show; of his earlier work, I particularly like this one and this one [nsfw].)
posted by GrammarMoses on Oct 26, 2007 - 30 comments

50mm, the Forgotten Lens Why You Should Ditch That Zoom for a Classic 50mm "Normal" Lens. [more inside]
posted by ColdChef on Oct 2, 2007 - 116 comments

The Face2face project. JR, an "undercover photographer", and Marco, a technology consultant, had 41 people - israelis and palestinians - mugging for the camera and plastered the huge, unavoidable pictures on both sides of the Israeli West Bank barrier, pair by pair : one israeli, one palestinian, both having similar jobs and posing in a similar fashion (+an imam, a rabbi and a christian priest). See also the trailer (YT, other videos available on the main site).
posted by elgilito on Sep 17, 2007 - 15 comments

Beijing artist Li Wei switched from oil painting to performance art in 1999; in 2000 he used mirrors to create a ... detached collection. Then he began falling into things.
posted by Terminal Verbosity on Jan 29, 2007 - 17 comments

Bill Sullivan calls his strict approach to taking candid shots "situational photography." Each subject in the uniformly composed photos is doing the exact same thing, like going through a turnstile or posing for a street artist. More candid street photograpy: Harry Callahan (1 2 3 4 more), Philip-Lorca diCorcia (1 2 3 4 more) ,and previously. One diCorcia photo led to a recent ruling that non-commercial street photography is protected under the 1st Amendment. 'more' links have NSFW images. The other direct links should be fine.
posted by hydrophonic on Jan 23, 2007 - 15 comments

Ridin' Dirty Face - photos by Mike Brodie in color, black & white and some polaroids.
Also, check out the The Polaroid Photography Collective.
posted by StopMakingSense on Jan 16, 2007 - 14 comments

Inner City Youth, London "In 2002, Simon Wheatley began photographing London's publich housing developments...and was able to obtain a level of intimacy with his subjects that provides a true picture of the daunting project of growing up in the intimate confines of drug use, societal neglect, and poverty." This (Flash-based) narrated slideshow features Wheatley's work, and is a look at the culture...and also the music (grime) "as an artistic response to the place and circumstance, an expression of the violence, bleakness, and neglect..." (via Future Feeder)
posted by tpl1212 on Jul 20, 2006 - 38 comments

The Adaption to my Generation - daily portraits of Jonathan Keller...from 1998 to the present (as he states, "The project will continue until the day I die. Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value."). Also of note...his links page, which includes links to other "passage of time" (like the Portrait of Louise Anna Kubelka from birth to adulthood and Nicholas Nixon's "25 Years of the Brown Sisters") and "obsessive" (like Eat22 and 365 Plrds) photo projects...via Information Aesthetics.
posted by tpl1212 on Jan 26, 2006 - 14 comments

Wrestling with Diane Arbus "She set up no lights, just pulled out her Rolleiflex, which was half as big as she was, checked the aperture and the exposure, and tested the flash. Then she asked me to lie on the bed, flat on my back on the shabby counterpane. I did as I was told. Clutching the camera she climbed on to the bed and straddled me, moving up until she was kneeling with a knee on both sides of my chest. She held the Rolleiflex at waist height with the lens right in my face. She bent her head to look through the viewfinder on top of the camera, and waited".
posted by matteo on Oct 8, 2005 - 25 comments

Nothing fancy — except, perhaps, the multidimensional sacred geometry.
posted by Rothko on Jul 30, 2005 - 11 comments

Photomuse - a searchable (and growing [NYtimes]) collection of "masterwork photography" combining the collections of the George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography... [via]
posted by tpl1212 on Jul 20, 2005 - 3 comments

Syashin Mania is a collection of photos of pop culture Japan. In this case it is fan car art of Ayumi Hamasaki, a popular singer. (Some other pages on the site are NSFW.)
posted by gen on Jul 25, 2004 - 12 comments

Mike Disfarmer had a photo studio in the resort town of Heber Springs, Arkansas throughout the 30s and 40s, creating images with an amazing blunt, unvarnished beauty and strength. Nothing speaks more eloquently about Disfarmer's artistry than the photographs themselves. His genius was the ability to capture without judgment, the essence of a people and a time.
posted by amberglow on Apr 11, 2004 - 11 comments

Project: Shutterbug. Taking pictures of tourists taking pictures. It's a small collection right now, but maybe you can help it grow. From the Hungover Gourmet.
posted by staggernation on Jan 2, 2003 - 13 comments

Today, I was searching for some stock art photos at photodisc. I needed an image of someone programming a computer, and in that search I found this picture. The words associated with it were all variations of 'hacker' but I was surprised that I didn't see 'leather and flashlight fetish' in the keywords. And by the way, don't you think a hacker would know how to type correctly?
posted by mathowie on Oct 1, 1999 - 0 comments