Corinne Day, the fashion photographer who helped catapult Kate Moss to fame with her images of the future supermodel as a teenager in the early ’90s, has died of a brain tumor. She was 45.

According to Day’s website, the photographer passed away last weekend “peacefully at home, after a long illness.”

As one of the most sought-after British fashion photographers, Day popularized the waifish look that would become so ubiquitous in fashion magazines during the ’90s. Regularly commissioned by Italian, British and Japanese Vogue, the photographer’s controversial “heroin-chic” style, especially in her work with a very young Kate Moss, drew heavy criticism.

Still, Day was acclaimed for her unrelenting pursuit of a gritty, visceral feel in her photographs. She refused to retouch her images, claiming that, as a former model herself, she hated being made “into someone I wasn’t.”

“Corinne was a photographer of huge talent and integrity,” said Alexandra Shulman, Vogue’s editor. “Her work for British Vogue was entirely original and will always be remembered. She could capture raw beauty like few others.”

More recently Day had ventured into documentary photography. The discovery of her brain tumor in 1996 after collapsing in New York prompted her to photograph her treatment and illness over the next decade, a project that allowed her to further pursue the idea of visual integrity.

“Photography is getting as close as you can to real life,” she said, “showing us things we don’t normally see. These are people’s most intimate moments, and sometimes intimacy is sad.”

Photo © Herman Leonard

Herman Leonard, one of the most prominent jazz photographers of the 20th century who became famous for capturing musical greats like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday, has died at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 87.

Leonard passed away Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA, said a family spokesperson on his website. Leonard had moved to Los Angeles from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina flooded his home and destroyed thousands of his photographic prints.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest music scene photographers of the mid-20th century, Leonard is most known for his shots of jazz and vocal greats performing in smoky blues clubs throughout the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Moving between Paris, London and New York, Leonard’s photographs displayed his signature smoky, back-lit style that is now part of the era’s unmistakable look.

As super-producer Quincy Jones recalls, “I used to tell cats that Herman Leonard did with his camera what we did with our instruments. Looking back across his career, I’m even more certain of the comparison: Herman’s camera tells the truth, and makes it swing. Musicians loved to see him around. No surprise; he made us look good.”

130 of Leonard’s photographs are in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. His most enduring images include Frank Sinatra brooding in the recording studio, Ella Fitzgerald singing in a packed club while Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman sit enraptured, and Louis Armstrong with a bottle of champagne. In 1956 he was Marlon Brando’s personal photographer on the actor’s trip to Asia.

Even after more than six decades as a photographer, Leonard later admitted that he still got the same rush when he looked at his photographs. As he said in an interview just last year, “It is amazing how an image can revive the feeling of the moment. The thrill of actually being there has never left me.”

Randy Johnson has traded in his baseballs for a camera.

The future Hall-of-Famer, who spent 22 years as one of the most dominant pitchers in the history of Major League Baseball, is now realizing his long-time dream of photographing some of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll stars in the world.

The former New York Yankees player brought his camera to Chicago’s Grant Park last weekend for the Lollapalooza music festival, and was spotted in the crowd shooting bands like Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and Soundgarden, who he is close friends with.

“This is my first summer available to go to shows, since I spent the last 26 years playing baseball, so my time was limited,” Johnson told the music site Noisecreep. “I have four kids and there is usually a concert in Arizona I can go to. I’ve enjoyed music forever, and photography, so one plus one. I envy these photographers that shoot for the bands, taking great pictures, having total access and getting them published.”

Johnson himself makes a rather unusual photographer. Not only does he stand at nearly 7 feet tall (making him one of the tallest photographers around), but he’s also had some highly-publicized run-ins with photographers before. In 2005 he got into a scrape with a TV cameraman who happened to get a little too close to the star pitcher.

With his height, passion and close relationships with various rock stars, Johnson may very well have a new career as a music photographer. Let’s just hope you don’t get stuck behind him at your next concert.

The last roll of Kodachrome film ever created has wound up in good hands.

Famed photographer and photojournalist Steve McCurry, who captured “Afghan Girl” (at left), an image that has been called “the most recognized photograph” in the history of National Geographic magazine, was given the final strip of the iconic film.

The world’s most commercially successful film for much of the 20th century, Kodachrome gained popularity beginning in the Great Depression for its vibrant colors, sharpness and durability. Tragically, the Eastman Kodak Co. officially discontinued the iconic film last year after deciding digital photography is the wave of the future. They decided to give the final roll of 36 exposures to McCurry.

So what will he do with the precious strip? That’s the subject of a new documentary from National Geographic, which follows the veteran photojournalist as he travels the world and attempts to give Kodachrome a proper send-off.

“I thought, what better way to kind of honor the memory of the film than to try and photograph iconic places and people? It’s in (my) DNA to want to tell stories where the action is, that shed light on the human condition,” the photographer said.

McCurry (who has already developed the film at Dwayne’s Photo Service in Parsons, Kan. — the last place in the world that develops Kodachrome film) pointed his camera at a number of New York City landmarks, including The Brooklyn Bridge and Grand Central Station, as well as famous faces like Robert De Niro. Then he headed to India, returning to where he shot some of his most notable work, all on the classic film.

The documentary, which chronicles McCurry’s 6-week trip around the world and the pressure of capturing something important in each precious image, is scheduled to air sometime early next year.

What about you? If you had the very last roll of Kodachrome film, what would you photograph?

Here’s the video I did with Ansel Adams’ grandson Matthew, from my previous post, have a look, and let me know your conclusion about this story.

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Yesterday I videoed Matthew Adams, Ansel’s grandson and the President of the Ansel Adams Gallery, to get his take on the recent hullabalou over a Fresno man claiming he has found long lost negatives of his grandfather’s.  Matthew is skeptical that they are the real deal and told me several reasons why this claim is fishy:

1. The handwriting  doesn’t match.  The finder has claimed that the handwriting is Matthew’s grandmother Virginia’s, but it doesn’t really match up with hers. He showed me examples her her writing and what was claimed to be hers on the negative sleeves.  Sure enough, key points like the flourish on her letters, and how she capitalized them don’t match.

2. But the even bigger point were misspellings. These were of well known Yosemite landmarks, where she grew up. For example the alleged sample spells “Bridal Vail Falls” instead of the correct spelling of “Veil.” Other examples can be seen in this photo “Monteray” instead of Monterey, “Neveada” instead of Nevada, well, you get the idea. There were at least a half a dozen such examples, attributed to Virginia, a very literate  woman who knew these places well.  This to me was the biggest point that disproved the “find.”

3. Doesn’t match Ansel’s numbering. Ansel had an exact numbering system, which was 2 letters + two digits,  which the alleged negatives don’t follow, as you can see there  are 4 digits on the left. This is not consistent with Ansel’s exact approach to everything he did.

4. No exposure notes. Ansel kept meticulous notes of his exposures (we know them as metadata today) but none exist for these 61 negatives. Again, doesn’t fit.

5. How could Ansel just lose his negatives? After his Yosemite Fire of 1938 where he lost 5,000 negatives, Ansel kept them in a bank vault where he only took them out to print, or later he put them in a fireproof bunker.  How would he then “lose track” of 61 negatives? Again, it doesn’t add up.

Yesterday a woman said that she recognized the prints as being from her “Uncle Earl” in Fresno! She provided them to Scott Nichols a San Francisco art gallery owner and Ansel Adam expert. He took a look at Uncle Earl’s photographs and said the ones purchased at a garage sale held a striking resemblance. He specifically analyzed one of a pine tree on Sentinel Dome and said because of the placement of the camera and the shadows of the tree, he think the slide was taken by Earl Brooks.

There you have it folks, draw your own conclusions, I have. We should have our video up soon, so you can see the details. The final point is that of being poached as an artist, which this rings of. Ansel worked his whole life to produce his caliber of his images and for someone to swoop them up at a garage sale for $45, and then claim they are now worth $200,000,000 strikes pretty hard against an artist’s rights

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Leonard Nimoy is most widely known as the actor who played Spock in Star Trek, but the man himself is also an accomplished director, poet, musician and photographer. And after nearly 60 years honing his craft, his first solo photography show at a major museum opens this week.

Beginning August 1st, Nimoy’s “Secret Selves” will be on display at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA). With 26 color photographs, half of them life-size, the exhibit contains portraits of people in their various secret identities, an idea that Nimoy describes as an attempt to explore the lost or hidden self.

As Nimoy explains it, the genesis of the exhibit arose from his discovery of an ancient Greek tale about the origin of humanity, one that supposed that every man and woman once was attached to another, and that once separated we began searching for our other half.

“I was struck by that idea, that many of us have another side to us that we are not in touch with, or that we do not get a chance to explore or present,” Nimoy has said. “We present a certain aspect of ourselves, but there are other unexplored, or hidden, or lost parts to ourselves.”

To convey this feeling into his photographs, Nimoy gathered 100 volunteers from the local community — artists, lawyers, doctors, business owners — and asked them “Who do you think you are?” Each of them then came up with alternate identities and brought their own clothes and props, and Nimoy photographed them.

Nimoy, 79, has been taking pictures since he was 13 years old. He studied photography at UCLA before making it big in Hollywood, and now, after appearing in dozens of films and television shows, he has retired from acting in order to work with his camera full time.

Nimoy’s “Secret Selves” will debut at the MASS MoCa on Sunday, August 1st.

  Is it real or is it Memorex? Ah jeeze most readers won’t remember this famous line, so let’s translate: are these glass plates really Ansel’s or is it the same cow crap that he stepped over on his way to capturing one of his images?

I  just talked with Matthew Adams, Ansel’s grandson who runs the Ansel Adams Gallery. He’s  up to his ears over over this whole fuss and the short answer is, yep it’s the stuff on the bottom of his shoes from the southern end of a bull.

His long answer is quoted below. But stay tuned folks we’re going to be providing video evidence of the points Matthew talks about… meanwhile check out the real McCoy watch our video with Ansel’s son Michael.  

I was provided access in November 2009 to the evidence that the “Norsigian Team” had accumulated. No further evidence has been presented, and my comments are based on the information provided at the time and not updated.

Negative Sleeves –
The negative sleeves are manila envelopes with a stamp to organize handwritten information as:
No_
Name_
Remarks_

Each sleeve is numbered with a 4 digit number, starting with “8”, and a title in the “Name” field. The title is suggested to be in the hand of Virginia Best Adams, Ansel’s wife (married 1928). The dates of the any glass plate negatives pre-date the marriage, meaning that the sleeves would have been new after 1928. The supposition presented is that the negatives were rescued from Ansel’s darkroom fire of 1937, sleeved and marked at that time. Ansel’s negative numbering system usually referenced glass plate negatives as “GP”. “1-GP-##” would mean 8×10 glass plate image number ##. 1937 is certainly after Ansel started using this negative numbering system, and these examples are inconsistent with that schema.

I am not aware if any carbon dating of the negative sleeves has been done. Presumably it would be possible, and might provide scientific evidence of the date of the sleeves and possibly the date of the marking.

Handwriting – The handwriting of the negative number does not match the handwriting of the title. The handwriting of the titles has been identified by Mr. Norsigian’s team as belonging to Virginia Best Adams. The expert, Michael Nattenburg, used samples from 1927, 1929, and 1950. My opinion, without expertise but familiarity only with her handwriting of a later date, is that it does not belong to Virginia. I have viewed the sample handwriting from the 1920s and subject handwriting, and found differences that I would consider significant.

more….

Photo copyright Luis Lamar.

Famed underwater photographer Wesley Skiles, a pioneering cave-diver, explorer and conservationist, died Wednesday while on assignment for National Geographic. He was 52.

Skiles was involved in a diving accident off the coast of eastern Florida, the details of which are still under investigation. Underwater at the time, he signaled to other divers that he was ascending to get more film for his camera. However he never returned to the surface. Colleagues found him on the ocean floor and rushed him to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

Known as a pioneer in underwater photography and film making, Skiles was renowned for his enthusiasm and daring in seeking out remote underwater caverns where no one had ever filmed before. He produced over 100 films for television, and was noted for his passion for conservation education. Skiles’ amazing photo of the blue caves in the Bahamas Islands is on the cover of the current issue of National Geographic.

“Wes was a true explorer in every sense and a wonderful spirit,” said Chris Johns, National Geographic’s editor in chief. “He set a standard for underwater photography, cinematography and exploration that is unsurpassed. It was an honor to work with him, and he will be deeply missed.”

Here’s a contest, a chance to win a SanDisk card: I have two questions for you: One, what makes this image so strong for you? It was shot almost 65 years ago, yet it resonates with today’s viewers, who may have had grandparents around at the time it was taken. Really, I’m very curious to know what hits you when you see it?  For the back story of this photograph see the end of this post. *

Now two, this takes a bit of work on your end, but not too hard: Who can do a reenactment of it, even have two friends be your models, unless you are lucky enough to find an actual sailor and nurse! Shoot it on any camera (I said any, that includes your iPhone, Polaroid, Holga–whatever you’ve got.) Attach it to a comment below (or you can tweet @marcsilbershow and include the link to this post) and we’ll see who comes up with the best shot and I’ll send SanDisk card to the winner–how’s that?

© Alfred Eisenstaedt 1945

Contest Details:

Answer why you think this so powerful, or what it conveys to you. You can do that now.

Shoot a reenactment of this photograph (don’t worry about matching their wardrobe) with any camera.

Attach it to a comment below or tweet to @marcsilbershow and include the link to this post

Deadline is 7/31. Winner will be chosen by 8/8. Ok, let’s’ see what you’ve got!

*As Eisenstaedt describes it in his autobiography: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all — young girls and old ladies alike. Then I noticed the nurse, standing in that enormous crowd. I focused on her, and just as I’d hoped, the sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her.”

An eroding glacier in the Himalayas. Photo Copyright David Breashears, GlacierWorks.

Looking at the magnificent Rongbuk glacier today, it’s hard to see anything disconcerting. But compared to photographs of the same spot taken 90 years ago, it’s obvious that a massive amount of ice has disappeared. Mountaineer and photographer David Breashears is determined to document this “alarming” loss in a new series of photos from the highest point in the world.

Commissioned by the Asia Society (AS), a team of scientists, conservationists and photographers traveled to Tibet to capture images of the glaciers surrounding Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth.

The team used as their guide photographs captured by British climber George Mallory in 1921, images taken in the exact same spots nearly 90 years ago. What they reveal, says the AS, is “a startling truth: the ice of the Himalayas is disappearing.”

A new exhibit at the Asia Society in Manhattan, dubbed “Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya,” shows the melting trend as well as Breashears painstaking retracing of Mallory’s photographic expedition. Breashears, who directed the Imax film “Everest,” says the particularly difficult part of the project was figuring out how to get to the exact locations where Mallory took the photographs.

“I’ve climbed Everest five times, and I would rather do that again than reach some of these photo points,” Breashears told the New York Times. In one instance, he and his team spent 19 days (having to return to base camp three out of four times) trying to get one perfect shot.

“Climbers, they choose good routes,” he said. “A photographer chooses a position; a vantage point.”

Also in the AS exhibit is a collection of work from famed landscape photographer Vittorio Sella, who made a career out of photographing the most famous mountains in the world.

The show runs through August 15.

Marissa, Crude Awakening. Photo © Jane Fulton Alt.

Like most Americans, photographer Jane Fulton Alt is disturbed by the extreme amounts of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the broken BP pipeline. In her new collection, Crude Awakening, the artist expresses her sadness with a series of oil-slicked swimmers who appear as if they’ve just waded out of the muck.

As Fulton herself explains, “Living on the shores of Lake Michigan, I am acutely aware of the disastrous toll the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has taken on all forms of life, especially as our beaches opened to the 2010 swimming season. This environmental, social and economic catastrophe highlights a much larger problem that has inflicted untold suffering as we exploit the earth’s resources worldwide.”

Fulton’s images feature haunting profiles of oil-covered beach-goers peering into the camera, their faces graven and helpless as if reflecting the world’s current feelings of frustration towards one of the worst environmental disasters in American history — A girl emerges from the water with oil-slicked hair; A family, streaked in the dark goo, stands forlorn on the beach; A pregnant woman stares angrily while a man next to her cradles a young boy.

Some have commented that Fulton’s shoot is nowhere near the actual spill in the Gulf, and therefore it is disingenuous and inauthentic. But Fulton says this disaster is being felt no matter where you live.

“We are all responsible for leading lives that create demand for unsustainable energy,” she says on her website. “We are also all responsible for the solution and we must work together to protect the balance of life.”

What do you think? Do Fulton’s images seem inauthentic now that you know they were taken in Lake Michigan and not on the actual oily beaches of the Gulf? Or do you find them interesting regardless?

Somali refugees board a smuggler’s boat headed to Yemen. Only 11 would survive. Photo: © Alixandra Fazzina

One of the world’s most prestigious peace prizes has been awarded for the first time to a photojournalist. Photographer Alixandra Fazzina has been named the winner of the United Nation’s annual Nansen Refugee Award for her work documenting refugees and victims of war.

“Alixandra Fazzina stands out as a fearless humanitarian who achieves something remarkable by unearthing and so vividly portraying individual stories of uprooted people,” said Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

With photographs that capture everything from the effects of land mines in Kosovo, child-soldiers in Uganda and refugees in Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Fazzina’s work has brought the images of war to the front pages of papers like Time, the New York Times and The Guardian.

Her dedication to uncovering the plights of victims around the world who don’t necessarily get mainstream coverage deserves to be recognized, the international human rights organization said in a statement.

“For two years in Somalia she received no pay and spent weeks and months on end with people on the run, following them and feeling so passionate about bringing these untold stories to the rest of the world,” a UNHCR spokeswoman said.

Fazzina is the first journalist, and the first photographer, to win the award since it was created in 1954. She will be granted $100,000 which she can donate to the cause of her choice. Fazzina’s award-winning photographs are collected in the upcoming book “A Million Shillings, Escape from Somalia,” which follows the dangerous escape of Somalian refugees to Yemen via a network of smugglers.

You can read more about Fazzina and her work by visiting the UNHCR website. And after you see some of her photographs, let us know what you think. How can photographers like Fazzina help change the world?

A series of photographs from Richard Avedon, one of the most acclaimed American photographers of the 20th century, is set to head for auction in Paris this fall as part of a sale that some experts believe could net $6 million.

“Dovima with Elephants” (at left), arguably Avedon’s most iconic image, is among the photographs to be put on the block. The 2.25 meter by 1.5 meter print, of a supermodel posing angelically between elephants on a hot summer day at the Cirque d-hiver in Paris in 1955, hung over the entrance to Avedon’s studio in New York City for over 20 years. The image itself could fetch up to $700,000.

The Avedon collection, the largest of its kind, is being put up by the Avedon Foundation, which seeks to promote and maintain the legendary photographer’s legacy.

Avedon, who died in 2004 at the age of 81, made his mark in both the worlds of fashion photography and portraiture. His legacy includes celebrated campaigns for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, iconic pictures of models like Twiggy and Marilyn Monroe, album covers, Presidential portraits, as well as coverage of the fall of the Berlin wall and the Civil Rights Movement.

“Richard Avedon is by any standards a towering figure in the story of photography,” said Philippe Garner, head of 20th-century decorative arts and photographs at Christie’s auction house. “His work has power, authority and intensity, very distinctive signature.”

So what sort of effect does Richard Avedon’s work have on you? And what would you pay to get your hands on a genuine Avedon print?

Times photographer David Bebber’s prize-winning shot of Colonel Gaddafi.The best

The best and brightest talents in photojournalism are being honored this week as winners of the 2010 Press Photographer’s Year were announced, including the photograph of the year, a captivating image of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

Pooled from 317 photographers in over 20 European countries as well as Asia and North America, and over 7,500 photographs, the Press Photographer’s Year 2010 awards showcase the very best in world-wide photojournalism.

Times photographer David Bebber’s image of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, shown observing a military parade in his honor from behind protective glass in September, was named photograph of the year.

Getty Images won five of the sixteen prizes in the online competition, the most of any organization. Among its awards were Best Folio for Daniel Berehulak’s moving images from war-torn areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Best Sports Folio for Laurence Griffiths collection of soccer and auto-racing photographs.

Billed as “the only competition that showcases the outstanding press photography taken for and used by the UK media,” The PPY awards aim to honor and help maintain the influence of photography in daily global news.

“Even in an age of rolling television news, internet and satellite communication, the traditional still image burns the keenest, fastest impression on the public conscience and is the most effective way to show the world as it really is,” read a press release for the organization.

You can see a collection of amazing photograph’s from this year’s winners, as well as purchase a 240-page book featuring the best of the best, at the Press Photographer website.

After you check out the images, do any of them inspire you to get out there and shoot? Do you have a favorite photojournalist whose work you think should be recognized as well? Tell us your thoughts.

Note we are now running a contest about this photo click for details.  Edith Shain, the woman depicted in an iconic photograph kissing a sailor in Times Square at the end of World War II, has died. She was 91.

The famed photo, snapped by Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, shows a young woman in a nurse’s uniform at the mercy of a particularly excited young sailor. The pair’s lips are locked in a vehement kiss — a scene that would become one of the most iconic images of the war.

As Eisenstaedt describes it in his autobiography: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all — young girls and old ladies alike. Then I noticed the nurse, standing in that enormous crowd. I focused on her, and just as I’d hoped, the sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her.”

For decades the woman’s identity was unknown, until finally in the ’70s Shain contacted Life magazine. She went on to reveal that she had been working at Doctor’s Hospital in New york when on August 14, 1945 she decided to take the subway to join a V-J Day (Victory over Japan) celebration in Times Square.

“This guy grabbed me and we kissed,” Shain said in 2008 of the sheer spontaneity of the kiss. “And then I turned one way and he turned the other. There was no way to know who he was, but I didn’t mind because he was someone who had fought for me.”

“As for the picture,” she said, “it says so many things — hope, love, peace and tomorrow. The end of the war was a wonderful experience, and that photo represents all those feelings.”

Over the years Shain would lead numerous memorial parades honoring World War 2 veterans, and she spent much of her later years educating others about the sacrifices made during the war.

As for the sailor in the photograph, his identity is still unconfirmed. Note we are now running a contest about this photo click for details.

This 1955 photograph of Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold is among the Magnum collection now open to the public

“When you picture an iconic image, but can’t think who took it or where it can be found, it probably came from Magnum.”

The Magnum Photo archive, widely considered one of the greatest photography collections in the world, with images from photography masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and many others, is set to open its doors to the public next week.

With more than 1,300 boxes of photographic materials dating from the past 80 years, the Magnum Photos Collection features some of the last century’s most iconic photographs. That includes Steve McCurry’s haunting image from 1985 of an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s iconic puddle-jumper from 1932, Elliot Erwitt’s photo of a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband’s funeral in 1963, a series of photographs that chronicles the 1961 John Huston movie The Misfits, with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, and countless more.

The opening of the collection marks the end of decades of tight control around the images, after they were acquired by an investment firm earlier this year. Now they will be available for viewing by the public for the next five years at the University of Texas at Austin’s Ransom Center.

The Center’s director, Thomas F. Staley, lauded the collection’s immense “scope and diversity.” He added, “Magnum photographers have artfully chronicled some of the century’s most critical moments and figures, from social unrest to war, from political leaders to celebrities, and their work has often given voice to those traditionally omitted from news reporting.”

What do you think about the collections availability to the public? Which of the original prints would you be most excited to see?

Accomplished Australian fashion photographer Richard Bailey, who spent 30 years photographing the world’s biggest actresses and supermodels for magazines like Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 52.

Bailey passed away on Tuesday night in Sydney after a fight with bladder cancer that lasted six years. Despite his illness, and even in his final moments, Bailey never stopped thinking about his next shoot.

“In the last few years he made every effort to keep working, even though he was very ill,” his wife, former fashion model Gillian Bailey, said of her husband.

Richard Bailey’s career began at just 21 when he started shooting for Vogue Australia, where he would remain an integral part for the rest of his career. He actually got his break as an outdoor photographer but soon moved indoors to work in more fashionable settings, winning top photography awards and building relationships with stars like Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Janet Jackson, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Eric Bana and Katie Holmes.

Campaigns for magazines like Neiman Marcus, Gap and Victoria’s Secret, as well as editorial work for Vanity Fair and GQ earned him recognition in the US as well.

“He was always really brilliant outdoors and had that northern beaches sensibility and a beautiful sense of light. All of his work had a quality that was above and beyond everyone else in the marketplace,” says Kirstie Clements, editor for Australian Vogue. “He was right up there with the best.”

“Tetons and Snake River” by Ansel Adams is one of the many images to go under the hammer later this month. Photo by Ansel Adams.

Over a thousand photographs from the Polaroid Collection, which includes images from some of the biggest names in photography, like Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe, will be put up for auction later this month.

Famed auction house Sotheby’s will put 1,200 historic photos under the hammer as part of Polaroid’s court-approved bankruptcy sale. The sale will include the most comprehensive collection of Ansel Adams photographs (400 Polaroid and non-Polaroid images) ever sold.

“It is the largest and best collection of works by Ansel Adams to ever come on the market, representing a broad spectrum of most of his career,” said Denise Bethel, Sotheby’s photography expert.

Masterpieces such as Adams’ “Bridalveil Fall” (valued at up to $100,000) and the massive “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” (valued as high as $500,000) will go to the highest bidder. The sale also includes Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression-era “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,” which is valued at up to $80,000.

Working as a consultant for Polaroid, Adams helped build the company’s photography collection by acquiring works from masters like Lange, Weston and Imogen Cunningham, as well as those of contemporaries whose work he admired.

Many of the most well-known photographs from the 16,000+ images in the Polaroid collection will go up for sale, and they are expected to fetch a total of over $7 million. Sotheby’s will showcase the images for six days before they are auctioned on June 21-22 in New York.

So, what do you think about the auction? How much would you be willing to pay for an original Ansel Adams print?

This undated photo showing of two slave children was found by collector Keya Morgan at a moving sale in North Carolina.

A 150 year-old photograph of two slave children — ragged, barefoot and sitting solemnly together on a barrel — has been discovered in an attic in North Carolina. Experts are calling the Civil War-era image extremely rare and an important piece from a dark time in America’s past.

The photograph was discovered at a moving sale in Charlotte in August by New York collector Keya Morgan, who paid a total of $50,000 for an album of family photos (including the above image) and a document detailing the sale of a slave. The accompanying bill of sale details the purchase of John, one of the boys, for $1,150 in 1854.

Art and photography historians are calling the photograph an extremely important and rare find because of the scarcity of photographs of slave children, and also because it portrays yet another aspect of the horrors of slavery in America.

“It’s a very difficult and poignant piece of American history,” said Will Stapp, a curator and photography historian at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.. “What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history.”

Stapp and others believe the image was taken in the early 1860s by the photography studio of famed Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee portraitist Mathew Brady. Though Brady himself likely did not take the picture, experts believe it was snapped by his Timothy O’Sullivan, who is known for shooting Civil War photographs that depicted the terrors of war.

For now, Morgan says he will keep the photo in his private collection, though he has received offers from museums to purchase the image. But no matter where it ends up, Morgan says the photograph will always be a window into the lives of slavery’s victims.

“This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him,” Morgan said. “He doesn’t even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I’ve never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children.”

**UPDATE**

Could Keya Morgan’s rare find actually be quite a common photograph? Here are new details in the mystery of the slave photo.