Get inspired by or just get acquainted with some of the world’s
greatest photographers. Here’s a short list of some of our favorite
documentaries on the lives and work of photographers to get you started.
Please note, the links will take you to Amazon U.S., which has the
broadest selection of DVDs available in NTSC (Code 1). The films
listed below may also be available in PAL (Code 2) from local
retailers or European-based online outlets.

American Photography $31.49
Time travel at its best! American Photography: A Century of Images is a remarkably complete, high-caliber PBS presentation of who Americans were and are, using 20th-century images that capture everything from the everyday to the once-in-a-lifetime. While of course you’ll see many photographs, some familiar and some new, you’ll also learn about the history of our relationship with photography and the ways pictures are used. See the progression from posed to unposed photographs and from picture postcards to digitally enhanced photos that show what a missing child might look like today. Learn about the importance of photography for social causes such as abolishing child labor, the civil rights movement in America, and the way we feel about everything from what we buy and how we dress to how we get the news. Especially interesting is the discussion of how Native Americans have been portrayed—including the photographer who brought a trunk of costumes with him to dress Native Americans the way he wanted them to look in his pictures.

American Experience: Ansel Adams (2002) $17.99
A captivating entry in the “American Experience” PBS series, “Adams” vividly brings to life the biographical details and working methods of this groundbreaking 20th-century photographer. An accomplished concert pianist, Adams gave up this path to pursue his vision of nature’s beauty by illuminating Yosemite’s Kings Canyon as it had never been seen before. With great sensitivity to Adams’s process, specifically how he achieved the distinctive look of his photos, Burns handles his subject with understated reverence, profiling the artist-as-environmentalist. Adams changed forever the way we view wilderness, and this beautiful film tells us why—and why he and his legacy still matter.

Manufactured Landscapes (2006) $26.99
Manufactured Landscapes works triple-time as a documentary portrait, a tone poem, and a work of protest. The title comes from Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s 2003 book of the same name. His large-scale images depict the ways industrialization has transformed the environment. Locations include quarries, slag heaps, and dumping grounds. Director Jennifer Baichwal (The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia) introduces photographs focusing on China and Bangladesh, and then presents Burtynsky in the process of creating them. He adds a few words here and there, but Baichwal mostly lets the people behind his prints—and the devastation that surrounds them—do the talking. Of the sites they visit, China’s monumental Three Gorges Dam is the most impressive… and depressing. At the same time the construction has created much-needed jobs, the world’s largest engineering project has also displaced 13 cities of over 1.3 million people. To paraphrase Burtynsky, Baichwal’s film “searches for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion.” With its ominous soundtrack and stately pace—cinematographer Peter Mettler’s opening pan through a vast manufacturing plant lasts eight minutes— Manufactured Landscapes is about as far from conventional as a non-fiction film can get. Like Koyanisqaatsi, Rivers and Tides, and Darwin’s Nightmare, Baichwal leaves the charts and graphs behind to
make one irrefutable point: We’re in trouble. Extra features, like deleted scenes (with commentary by Baichwal) and an extensive slide gallery (with commentary by Burtynsky) add welcome context. —Kathleen C. Fennessy

American Masters - Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light (1996) [possibly out of print]
Vividly portrayed in this American Masters Special, photographer Richard Avedon shoots for two different worlds. Primarily, he is a fashion photographer, having worked for various magazines for more than 50 years. Of particular note is the description of photographing Natassja Kinski, a shoot that took two hours of her lying naked on a cement floor as they tried to coax a snake up her body. As a fashion photographer, Avedon became known for his sense of movement and the energy he captured in each image; he gets exquisite models to leap, move, and flip their hair. His second, and perhaps lesser-known, body of work is art photography, including portraits of the famous and the unknown, with a signature style of photographing his sitters on a white background with no props. This documentary ably captures the tension between these two directions in his work by overlaying the positive and negative viewpoints about his photography in a collage of voiceovers. We learn how Avedon views his role as a photographer, and that for him the end result captures “the death of the moment.” Also included are the controversial images of his dying father. This program aptly depicts this highly creative man exposed through his work as vulnerable, obsessed, and a perfectionist. This 81-minute-long program will interest a broad audience, from those interested in fashion, people of our times, the history of the 20th century, artists and art historians, and photography in general. —Anne Barclay Morgan

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye (2003) $24.99
A wonderful, evocative biography of the man considered the greatest photographer of the last century. Cartier-Bresson’s life reads like a history of the century – World War II, China, Egypt, Mexico, India, Sartre, Matisse, Ghandi (minutes before he was killed), and Cuba all became subjects of his famous “decisive moment” style. Interviews with Cartier-Bresson, Isabelle Huppert, Arthur Miller and other luminaries are woven into this indelible portrait of an icon of both photography and the world.

 

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2007) $14.99
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens traces the arc of Annie’s photographic life, her aspirations to artistry and the trajectory of her career. The film depicts the various phases that shaped her life including childhood, the tumultuous sixties, her transition from Rolling Stone to Vanity Fair magazine and later her most significant personal relationships including motherhood. The documentary’s highlights center on interviews with her most famous subjects, mentors and colleagues, along with personal insight from Leibovitz herself, to reveal the evolution of inarguably one of today’s most influential visual artists.

Born into Brothels (2003) $13.49
Set in Calcutta’s notorious red-light district, Born Into Brothels explores the lives of its most vulnerable citizens. Directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, the picture’s eight small subjects shot the still footage themselves. Briski first teaches them how to shoot and edit. The children then put her lessons into practice. They gain confidence as the film proceeds, yet there’s always the threat that any of the girls, especially 14-year-old Suchitra, could be forced to “join the line” (work as a prostitute). For most, it’s only a matter of time. The boys don’t have it much better. Promising photographer Avijit’s mother is gone and his father is a drug addict. “Without help,” Briski notes, “they’re doomed,” so she takes matters a step further and tries to get them out of the brothels altogether. Produced for HBO, this heartbreaking, if inspiring film won the 2005 Academy Award for best documentary feature. —Kathleen C. Fennessy

National Geographic’s The Photographers (1994) $14.99
Going behind the camera and on assignment with veteran photographers for National Geographic, this documentary answers the eternal question asked by the magazine’s readers: “How in the world did they get that shot?” The photographers recount the grueling preparation that shooting for the magazine entails, from mundane details such as obtaining visas to preparing oneself for dangers such as severe climates, deep-sea dives, raging beasts, and local bandits. And don’t forget insects, lots and lots of insects, a point made pellucid as photographers in a fast montage rattle off how many times they’ve battled malaria. Besides the physical ordeals, there is also discussion of the emotional toll involved in shooting in brutal conditions, such as one photographer’s recounting of how distressing it was to continue shooting pictures in the famine zone of the Horn of Africa. Beyond all the hardships, the travel to the world’s farthest flung places involves considerable loneliness, but the photographers interviewed speak of having the “best job in the world,” and their enthusiasm for the work is abundant. It goes without saying that this video is a visual delight, as many examples of noteworthy National Geographic photographs, and entertaining explanations of how the shot was set up and snapped, appear throughout. —Robert J. McNamara

Contacts, Vol. 1: The Great Tradition of Photojournalism (2005) $35.99
Contacts, Vol. 2: The Renewal of Contemporary Photography (2005) $35.99
Contacts, Vol. 3: Conceptual Photography (2005) $35.99
A great series of DVDs that introduce you to a variety of photographers and photography artists. Vol. 1 Covers the following photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Raymond Depardon, Mario Giacomelli, Josef Koudelka, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Elliott Erwitt, Marc Riboud, Leonard Freed, Helmut Newton, Don McCullin. Vol. 2 Covers the following photographers: Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Duane Michals, Sarah Moon, Nobuyoshi Araki, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Lewis Baltz, Jean-Marc Bustamante. Vol. 3 Covers the following photographers: John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Christian Boltanski, Alain Fleischer, John Hilliard, Roni Horn, Martin Parr, Georges Rousse, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans.

War Photographer (2001) $26.99
Review
Engrossing! Exceptionally intimate, allowing us almost literally to see the world through Mr. Nachtwey’s eyes. —New York Times

Product Description
{OSCAR NOMINATION, Best Documentary Feature 2002}
{PEABODY AWARD, Georg Foster Peabody Award 2003}
{EMMY AWARD NOMINATION, Cinematography 2004}
{WINNER of 16 International Awards and Nominations 2002-2004}

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, WAR PHOTOGRAPHER is the compelling portrait of the man considered the bravest and most important war photographer of our time, James Nachtwey. The film has been in competition in 36 major international film festivals, played theatrically in over 50 cities and has 5 times won prizes for Best Film or Best Documentary.

Although he has won many prestigious photography awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year several times, Nachtwey is still not well-known by name. Most people, however, would recognize his extraordinarily powerful images of the violence and suffering of wartime that have appeared in almost every major publication worldwide over the last two decades.

For over two years Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei follows Nachtwey around the world, uncovering compassionate and unsettling images from some of the most incendiary spots on the globe — the burning farmhouses of Kosovo, the homeless and hungry of Indonesia, a battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youth on the West Bank. Frei has created an enthralling yet solemn film about the renowned photographer’s daily routine and also his primary motivations, fears and beliefs.

Interviews with colleagues, including CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, help describe the remarkable personality of James Nachtwey. Hardly fitting the standard description of a hard-boiled war veteran, instead Nachtwey is a shy, unobtrusive man with the distinction of a philosophy professor and an inner reserve that have allowed him to persevere through the horrors he uncovers and records.