The Most Famous

PHOTOGRAPHERS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Photographers. The pantheon dataset contains 148 Photographers, 47 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Photographers.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Photographers of all time. This list of famous American Photographers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Photographers.

1. Vivian Maier (1926 - 2009)

With an HPI of 69.21, Vivian Maier is the most famous American Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 41 different languages on wikipedia.

Vivian Dorothy Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer whose work was discovered and recognized after her death. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed around the world. During her lifetime, Maier's photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never developed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier's photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier's prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier's work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, and since then, Maier's photographs have been exhibited around the world. Her life and work have been the subject of books, music and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.

2. Annie Leibovitz (b. 1949)

With an HPI of 66.63, Annie Leibovitz is the 2nd most famous American Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 48 different languages.

Anna-Lou Leibovitz ( LEE-bə-vits; born October 2, 1949) is an American portrait photographer best known for her portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery. Leibovitz was just a student in the 1970s when her photos were published for the first time: pictures of Vietnam War protesters in Israel, taken on assignment for Rolling Stone, one of which landed on the cover. Since then, she has captured film stars, politicians, athletes, royalty and artists for features and cover stories in other major publications, including Vanity Fair, Vogue and Time.

3. Diane Arbus (1923 - 1971)

With an HPI of 65.18, Diane Arbus is the 3rd most famous American Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Diane Arbus (; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer. She photographed a wide range of subjects including strippers, carnival performers, nudists, people with dwarfism, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle-class families. She photographed her subjects in familiar settings: their homes, on the street, in the workplace, in the park. "She is noted for expanding notions of acceptable subject matter and violates canons of the appropriate distance between photographer and subject. By befriending, not objectifying her subjects, she was able to capture in her work a rare psychological intensity." In his 2003 New York Times Magazine article, "Arbus Reconsidered", Arthur Lubow states, "She was fascinated by people who were visibly creating their own identities—cross-dressers, nudists, sideshow performers, tattooed men, the nouveaux riches, the movie-star fans—and by those who were trapped in a uniform that no longer provided any security or comfort." Michael Kimmelman writes in his review of the exhibition Diane Arbus Revelations, that her work "transformed the art of photography (Arbus is everywhere, for better and worse, in the work of artists today who make photographs)". Arbus's imagery helped to normalize marginalized groups and highlight the importance of proper representation of all people. In her lifetime she achieved some recognition and renown with the publication, beginning in 1960, of photographs in such magazines as Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, London's Sunday Times Magazine, and Artforum. In 1963 the Guggenheim Foundation awarded Arbus a fellowship for her proposal entitled, "American Rites, Manners and Customs". She was awarded a renewal of her fellowship in 1966. John Szarkowski, the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City from 1962 to 1991, championed her work and included it in his 1967 exhibit New Documents along with the work of Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Her photographs were also included in a number of other major group shows.: 86 In 1972, a year after her suicide, Arbus became the first photographer to be included in the Venice Biennale: 51–52 where her photographs were "the overwhelming sensation of the American Pavilion" and "extremely powerful and very strange". The first major retrospective of Arbus' work was held in 1972 at MoMA, organized by Szarkowski. The retrospective garnered the highest attendance of any exhibition in MoMA's history to date. Millions viewed traveling exhibitions of her work from 1972 to 1979. The book accompanying the exhibition, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel and first published in 1972, has never been out of print.

4. Alfred Stieglitz (1864 - 1946)

With an HPI of 65.03, Alfred Stieglitz is the 4th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

5. Richard Avedon (1923 - 2004)

With an HPI of 64.84, Richard Avedon is the 5th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".

6. Irving Penn (1917 - 2009)

With an HPI of 64.52, Irving Penn is the 6th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009) was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.

7. Carl Van Vechten (1880 - 1964)

With an HPI of 64.03, Carl Van Vechten is the 7th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Carl Van Vechten (; June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964) was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous affairs with other men during his lifetime.

8. Nan Goldin (b. 1953)

With an HPI of 63.91, Nan Goldin is the 8th most famous American Photographer. Her biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. In the slideshow and monograph (1986) Goldin portrayed her chosen "family", meanwhile documenting the post-punk and gay subcultures. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) against the opioid epidemic. She lives and works in New York City.

9. William Klein (1928 - 2022)

With an HPI of 63.11, William Klein is the 9th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

William Klein (April 19, 1926 – September 10, 2022) was a French photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. He was ranked 25th on Professional Photographer's list of 100 most influential photographers. Klein trained as a painter, studying under Fernand Léger, and found early success with exhibitions of his work. He soon moved on to photography and achieved widespread fame as a fashion photographer for Vogue and for his photo essays on various cities. He directed feature-length fiction films, numerous short and feature-length documentaries and produced over 250 television commercials. He was awarded the Prix Nadar in 1957, the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1999, and the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2011. A retrospective exhibition of his work, William Klein: YES: Photographs, Paintings, Films, 1948–2013, was shown at the International Center of Photography in New York until September 15, 2022.

10. Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989)

With an HPI of 62.82, Robert Mapplethorpe is the 10th most famous American Photographer. His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe ( MAY-pəl-thorp; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mapplethorpe's 1989 exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

People

Pantheon has 47 people classified as American photographers born between 1799 and 1967. Of these 47, 12 (25.53%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American photographers include Annie Leibovitz, Nan Goldin, and Spencer Tunick. The most famous deceased American photographers include Vivian Maier, Diane Arbus, and Alfred Stieglitz. As of April 2024, 47 new American photographers have been added to Pantheon including Vivian Maier, Annie Leibovitz, and Diane Arbus.