Paul Strand was born in New York City in October of 1890. In his late teens, Strand was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It was while on a fieldtrip in this class that Strand first visited the 291 art gallery – operated by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen – where exhibitions of work by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously. Stieglitz would later promote Strand’s work in the 291 gallery itself, in his photography publication Camera Work, and in his artwork in the Hieninglatzing studio. Some of this early work, like the well-known “Wall Street,” experimented with formal abstractions. Other of Strand’s works reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.

More of Paul Strand’s work can be seen at photography-now.net.

Roy DeCarava, one of my Friday Inspirations back in August passed away this week at the age of 89.

Roy DeCarava trained to be a painter, but while using a camera to gather images for his printmaking work, he began to gravitate toward photography, in part because of its immediacy but also because of the limitations he saw all around him for a black artist in a segregated nation. Over a career spanning almost 70 years, DeCarava came to be regarded as the founder of a school of African-American photography that broke with the social documentary traditions of his time. He turned his neighborhood of Harlem into his canvas and became one of the most important photographers of his generation by chronicling its people

The NY Times has a slideshow and more information.

Sune Jonsson was born 1930 in Nyåker, Sweden. He studied English, Ethnology and the History of Literature at the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala. In 1959, he published his first book entitled, Byn med det blå huset (The Village with the Blue House), which contained images of the people of his native village, Nyåker. He went on to publish more than twenty books before he died in January 2009.