Well-known documentary photographers
Documentary photography records, even more than street photography, the stories that might otherwise go unnoticed. From social inequality to everyday moments, these photographers have shown the world as it really is. Below, for inspiration, an overview of 25 of the most influential documentary photographers of all time. There are of course more, but I have tried to make a good cross-section.
Do you have a project of your own and are you looking for a documentary photographer with roots in street photography, unpolished and spontaneous, who also thinks along with you? Do get in touch.
Prefer photographers who worked from the street rather than the documentary tradition? I listed 25 well-known street photographers as well.
1. Robert Frank (1924-2019, Switzerland)
Robert Frank chose 83 photos from around 28,000 shots for his best-known photobook. He took them on a journey through the United States, funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship awarded in 1955. The book was published as Les Américains in Paris in 1958 and as The Americans in 1959, with an introduction by Jack Kerouac.
Robert Frank looked at America as an outsider. His photos were raw and personal, with unconventional framing and blur. They broke with the tidy photojournalism of his time. That is what interests me: apparently, a photo doesn't have to be neat to say something. Frank received the Hasselblad Award in 1996. You'll also come across him in the history of street photography.
2. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004, France)
Henri Cartier-Bresson published Images à la sauvette in 1952, with 126 photos and a cover by Henri Matisse. The English title, The Decisive Moment, came from the American publisher. The book made the idea of ‘the decisive moment’ famous. I wrote about this book in my article on telling stories with photos. Cartier-Bresson had already founded Magnum Photos in 1947, alongside Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert.
Henri Cartier-Bresson used a 35mm Leica, worked without flash and never cropped his photos. So the framing was fixed when he took the shot. That appeals to me at least as much as that famous moment. He received the Hasselblad Award in 1982. The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris followed in 2003.
3. Sebastião Salgado (1944-2025, Brazil)
Sebastião Salgado photographed the Serra Pelada gold mine, among other subjects, for Workers (1993). The Brazilian documentary photographer later worked on Migrations (2000) and Genesis (2013). His projects took years. Alongside his photography, he founded Instituto Terra with his wife Lélia in 1998. The organisation works on reforestation.
Sebastião Salgado made dramatic, monumental black-and-white photographs. The time he spent on his projects was part of that approach: he gave a subject years. His work was recognised with the Hasselblad Award in 1989 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2021. The documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) is about his work. Big photos, with a lot of time behind them.
4. Walker Evans (1903-1975, the US)
Walker Evans worked for the Farm Security Administration from 1935, during the Great Depression. In 1938, American Photographs became MoMA's first major exhibition devoted to a single photographer. For Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), he worked with writer James Agee on a portrait of tenant farming families in Alabama.
Walker Evans called his approach ‘lyric documentary’. His photos are restrained, frontal and precise. I like that combination: a straightforward account can apparently have something poetic about it too. Many Are Called (1966) contains the portraits he took secretly on the New York subway. MoMA devoted a retrospective to Evans in 1971.
5. Don McCullin (1935-present, the UK)
Don McCullin made his name with The Guvnors (1958), a photo of a London youth gang. The British photographer documented wars for The Sunday Times Magazine between 1966 and 1984. His book Hearts of Darkness appeared in 1980. His work from Cyprus won the World Press Photo of the Year in 1964.
Don McCullin's dark, grainy black-and-white photography extends beyond his war work. He later photographed landscapes in Somerset too. A different subject, then, with that dark black and white in common. McCullin was knighted in 2017. His career has included both recognition for his photojournalism and work on landscapes.
6. Bruce Davidson (1933-present, the US)
Bruce Davidson spent two years on a single street in East Harlem for East 100th Street (1970). The American photographer had been a Magnum member since 1958. His photos for Brooklyn Gang date from 1959 and were published as a book in 1998. For Subway (1986), he photographed the New York subway in colour between 1980 and 1985.
Bruce Davidson takes time to earn people's trust. Staying a long time and photographing with empathy are the basis of his approach. Two years on one street: that tells you what it means in practice. His documentary photography was recognised in 2018 with the ICP Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement. For Davidson, photography starts with making time for people.
7. Diane Arbus (1923-1971, the US)
Diane Arbus made Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. in 1967, the same year she took part in New Documents at MoMA alongside Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Another well-known photo is Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park (1962). Her work includes people on the margins of society and ordinary people who seem strange.
Diane Arbus photographed her subjects head-on, in a square format, and used flash even in daylight. That approach suits her portraits, in which the ordinary sometimes looks strange. Arbus received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1963. After her death, a MoMA retrospective and an Aperture monograph followed in 1972. The recognition continued.
8. David Goldblatt (1930-2018, South Africa)
David Goldblatt documented South Africa in books such as On the Mines (1973) and Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975). In The Transported of KwaNdebele (1989), he photographed commuters who spent hours on buses. He also founded the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 1989. His contribution to photography included both his own projects and a photography school.
David Goldblatt showed apartheid through everyday life, the landscape and buildings. Violence was not his starting point. For me, those hours on a bus make it clear how a political system reaches into ordinary lives. In 1998, Goldblatt became the first South African to have a solo exhibition at MoMA. He received the Hasselblad Award in 2006.
9. Jill Freedman (1939-2019, the US)
Jill Freedman photographed the Poor People's Campaign protest camp in Washington for Old News: Resurrection City (1970). In Firehouse (1977), she followed firefighters in New York. Street Cops (1982), about the police in the same city, came next. Freedman went along with the people she photographed, an approach that suited these subjects.
Jill Freedman worked in black and white, using Tri-X and available light. Her documentary approach was straightforward: being there as people went about their lives. Freedman received the Leica Medal of Excellence for her photography in 1982.
10. Susan Meiselas (1948-present, the US)
Susan Meiselas photographed striptease performers at travelling fairs in New England for Carnival Strippers (1976). Her colour photobook Nicaragua, June 1978-July 1979 appeared in 1981 and includes the photo that became known as ‘Molotov Man’. Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History followed in 1997. Meiselas became a Magnum nominee in 1976 and a member in 1980.
Susan Meiselas brings together quite different subjects in her work: fairground performers in New England, Nicaragua and Kurdistan. That is what interests me about her documentary photography. One subject clearly cannot sum up her career. Meiselas received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2019.
11. Philip Jones Griffiths (1936-2008, the UK)
Philip Jones Griffiths published Vietnam Inc. in 1971, a photobook critical of the war in Vietnam. The Welsh photographer became a full member of Magnum that same year, having been an associate since 1966. He served as the agency's president for five years from 1980. His book Dark Odyssey appeared in 1996.
Philip Jones Griffiths worked in more than 120 countries. Yet the sharply defined subject of Vietnam Inc. is a useful starting point for looking at his work: a critical view of one war. For me, that book shows that documentary photography can take a position too. His presidency of Magnum was another important milestone.
12. Raghu Rai (1942-2026, India)
Raghu Rai started as a photographer at The Statesman in 1966. He photographed Mother Teresa from 1970 and documented the war in Bangladesh in 1971. In 1984, he photographed the Bhopal gas disaster. Rai was born in Jhang, now in Pakistan, and died on 26 April 2026 in Delhi.
Raghu Rai became Magnum's first Indian member in 1977, following a nomination by Henri Cartier-Bresson. He had already received the Padma Shri in 1972. That recognition, alongside his work on Bangladesh and Bhopal, gives a clear sense of his importance to photojournalism. His career included following Mother Teresa as well as documenting war and disaster.
13. LaToya Ruby Frazier (1982-present, the US)
LaToya Ruby Frazier turned the camera on her own family and her hometown of Braddock, a run-down steel town in Pennsylvania, for The Notion of Family (2014). Her mother and grandmother are part of the work. With Flint Is Family (2016-2017), she addressed the water crisis in Flint. Her own surroundings were her starting point.
LaToya Ruby Frazier combines self-portraits with social documentary photography. She addresses race and class, as well as health and the environment. The personal has a very specific place in her work: her family and Braddock belong to the same story. Frazier received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. It is that closeness to her subjects that particularly interests me.
14. Gabriele Basilico (1944-2013, Italy)
Gabriele Basilico studied architecture and photographed factories in Milan between 1978 and 1980 for Ritratti di fabbriche. The book appeared in 1981. He was the only Italian in the French DATAR mission, which documented the French landscape in 1984-1985. In Beirut (1991), he photographed the ruined city after the civil war, again taking the built environment as his subject.
Gabriele Basilico made the city and its architecture his subject, with no people in his photos. Bernd and Hilla Becher influenced his work. That makes him an interesting figure in documentary photography: buildings can be documentary subjects too. Basilico received the Osella d'Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1996.
15. Claude Dityvon (1937-2008, France)
Claude Dityvon photographed Paris in May 1968. He walked along the boulevard Saint-Michel, among other streets, without an assignment from a newspaper. He sold no photos to the press at the time and sometimes waited a long time for a picture to emerge. His black-and-white photos have strong contrasts between light and dark, with room for blur and movement. People are sometimes barely visible in a patiently composed frame.
Claude Dityvon was commissioned by the Maison de la Culture in Chalon-sur-Saône in 1970 to photograph the city and its residents. That work earned him the Prix Niépce. In 1972, he co-founded the photo agency Viva with Martine Franck, Guy Le Querrec, Richard Kalvar and others. His book Humeurs de la ville was published in 1986.
16. Paolo Pellegrin (1964-present, Italy)
Paolo Pellegrin photographs war, conflict and their aftermath. The Italian photographer published Kosovo in 2002, followed by As I Was Dying (2007) and Dies Irae (2011). Magnum made him a nominee in 2001 and a member in 2005. Pellegrin received the W. Eugene Smith Grant for his work in 2006.
Paolo Pellegrin works in dark black and white, with a sense of movement. That style runs through his photos of conflict and what remains afterwards. That last part matters most to me: the aftermath is a subject too. Pellegrin won ten World Press Photo awards, the first in 1995. His work has been recognised repeatedly within photojournalism.
17. Joan Colom (1921-2017, Spain)
Joan Colom photographed Barri Xino, Barcelona's red-light district, also known as El Raval, between 1958 and 1961. His exhibition El carrer was shown at Sala Aixelà in 1961. Izas, rabizas y colipoterras appeared in 1964, with text by Camilo José Cela. A lawsuit followed the book, and Colom stopped taking photographs.
Joan Colom often shot from the hip without people noticing. That is a specific feature of his street photography, in a career that came to a halt after the lawsuit. His work was later rediscovered, with an exhibition at the MNAC in 1999. Colom received the Premio Nacional de Fotografía in 2002.
18. Christer Strömholm (1918-2002, Sweden)
Christer Strömholm photographed trans women around Place Blanche and Pigalle in Paris between 1958 and 1968. The photos appeared in Les Amies de Place Blanche (1983). The Swedish photographer had previously published Poste Restante (1967). From 1962, he also led the Fotoskolan in Stockholm, where he became an important figure for generations of Swedish photographers.
Christer Strömholm spent ten years working on his subject around Place Blanche and Pigalle. I keep that time in mind when looking at Les Amies de Place Blanche. His influence also spread through his teaching at the Fotoskolan. Strömholm received the Hasselblad Award in the late 1990s.
19. Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992, Italy)
Luigi Ghirri published Kodachrome in 1978, a photobook by a pioneer of colour photography. In 1984, he put together Viaggio in Italia: an exhibition and book in which twenty photographers looked at the Italian landscape. His own book Paesaggio italiano followed in 1989. The landscape recurs in both his photos and his work bringing projects together.
Luigi Ghirri played with reality and imagination. Signs, maps and pictures in the landscape became part of his photos, often with an ironic eye. I like that thought: a landscape also contains pictures of the world. His work gives colour and those everyday details a place in documentary photography.
20. Josef Koudelka (1938-present, the Czech Republic)
Josef Koudelka photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague in August 1968. The photos appeared anonymously under ‘P.P.’, short for ‘Prague Photographer’, and received the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1969. The book Invasion 68: Prague appeared in 2008. He had previously published Gypsies (1975), about Roma in Eastern Europe, and Exiles (1988), two other important books in his body of work.
Josef Koudelka used panoramic photographs for Chaos (1999). That book adds another format to a body of work that also includes the invasion of Prague and Roma in Eastern Europe. His work received the Hasselblad Award in 1992. Koudelka was associated with Magnum from 1971 and became a full member in 1974.
21. Jean Gaumy (1948-present, France)
Jean Gaumy became the first photojournalist allowed to work in French prisons in 1976. The book Les Incarcérés (1983) came out of that work. He also photographed in a hospital for L'Hôpital. For Pleine mer (2001), he focused on fishermen aboard trawlers. That book received the Prix Nadar in the year it was published.
Jean Gaumy chose very specific working environments and living conditions as his subjects: prisons, a hospital and trawlers. They give you several starting points for looking at his documentary photography. D'après nature (2010) also received the Prix Nadar. Gaumy became a Magnum member in 1986 and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2016, with his formal induction following in 2018.
22. Zanele Muholi (1972-present, South Africa)
Zanele Muholi describes themself as a ‘visual activist’. They began Faces and Phases in 2006, a series of portraits of black lesbians, trans and non-binary people in South Africa. In Somnyama Ngonyama, Muholi makes self-portraits. Their work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and has also been the subject of a survey exhibition at Tate Modern.
Zanele Muholi uses ‘visual activist’ to explain how they see their work. The people in Faces and Phases and the self-portraits in Somnyama Ngonyama show what that choice means in practice. For me, it is a clear starting point for looking at their photography. Muholi received the Prince Claus Award in 2013 and the Hasselblad Award in 2026.
23. Latif Al Ani (1932-2021, Iraq)
Latif Al Ani photographed the modern, emerging Iraq of the 1950s and 1960s. From 1954, he worked for Ahl al-Naft, the Iraq Petroleum Company's magazine, and later for the Iraqi news agency. He stopped taking photographs in 1979. A large part of his archive was lost in 2003.
Latif Al Ani is known as ‘the father of Iraqi photography’. His photos document a specific period: the emerging Iraq of the 1950s and 1960s. For me, the loss of so much of his archive makes the view that survives all the more important. His work was shown in the Iraqi pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
24. Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015, the US)
Mary Ellen Mark photographed the women's ward at Oregon State Hospital for Ward 81 (1979). In Falkland Road (1981), she portrayed sex workers in Mumbai, in colour. Streetwise began in 1983 as a feature about street children in Seattle for Life. It was followed by the Oscar-nominated film with Martin Bell in 1984 and the book in 1988.
Mary Ellen Mark spent long periods with people on the margins of society and photographed them with empathy. She continued to follow Tiny, the girl from Streetwise, for decades. That makes her approach tangible: her involvement did not end with that one feature. For me, much of her importance as a documentary photographer lies in continuing to follow people's lives. You'll also find her in my overview of famous portrait photographers.
25. Lewis Hine (1874-1940, the US)
Lewis Hine photographed the construction of the Empire State Building in 1930-1931 and published Men at Work in 1932. Earlier, he documented immigrants on Ellis Island between 1904 and 1909. From 1908, he worked for the National Child Labor Committee, photographing child labour in factories, mines and fields.
Lewis Hine was a sociologist and teacher who saw photography as a tool for social change. His photos helped bring about laws against child labour. That is a concrete reason why his work matters beyond photography too. The Library of Congress holds more than 5,000 of Hine's photos. With Hine, a photo's importance extends beyond what it shows.
