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Over the last week I’ve really enjoyed watching the Vogue Masters series on YouTube. They’ve only been online for a few months and it was a generous surprise to discover these photographers weren’t shooting fashion. Their names were mostly new to me apart from Bruce Weber, Steve McCurry and famous LIFE editor John G. Morris.

1. Vogue Masters: Bruce Weber – 14 mins
2. Vogue Masters: Antonin Kratochvil – 20 mins
3. Vogue Masters: Davide Monteleone – 18 mins
4. Vogue Masters: Donna Ferrato – 21 mins
5. Vogue Masters: Antoine D’Agata – 19 mins
6. Vogue Masters: Franco Pagetti – 36 mins
7. Vogue Masters: Christopher Anderson – 14 mins
8. Vogue Masters: Erwin Olaf – 23 mins
9. Vogue Masters: Steve McCurry – 13 mins
10. Vogue Masters: Alex Webb – 19 mins
11. Vogue Masters: Jérôme Sessini – 16 mins
12. Vogue Masters: John G. Morris – 18 mins
13. Vogue Masters: Stanley Greene – 25 mins
14. Vogue Masters: Alessandro Imbriaco – 14 mins
15. Vogue Masters: David Alan Harvey – 9 mins
16. Vogue Masters: Giovanni Soldini – 1 min
17. Focus On: Per-Anders Pettersson – 14 mins
18. Focus On: Veronica Etro – 12 mins
19. Focus On: Stephanie Sinclair – 11 mins
20. Focus On: Erik Kessels – 19 mins
21. Focus On: Cristina de Middel – 21 mins
22. Focus On: James Estrin – 8 mins
23. Focus On: Tony Ray-Jones – 3 mins

The really impressive part of this series is the focus on the photographer frankly sitting in front of a camera and talking straight from the heart about what they do – whether it’s photojournalism, documentary, art photography, digital or film photography. There’s less of the self-promotion and more of the grit and grime of the discipline of making great pictures.

Donna Ferrato, for example, discusses her philosophy around monogomy and sexual identity and her body of work on domestic violence. She shares an intimate little story about a lover who left a photography gift discovered after his death. The story begins:

I will never be faithful to any man, period, ever. So any man who is with me has to accept that and even love it. Phillip loved it sooo much… Phillip was an incredible man…Donna Ferrato

Each photographer digs deep into their bag of being for something to give to the viewer. Insight. Process. The inescapable advice from old photographers to young photographers.

There isn’t a lot that I can say here except to recommend each and every one of these for viewing. Note that three or four aren’t in English and don’t have subtitles… but if you’re bilingual the value only increases. A big thanks to Vogue. Great stuff.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 3rd, 2013 at 9:12 am and is filed under documentary, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.