Spinning roulette wheel photographed by Conor Ogle from London, UK.

How do you make a name for yourself in an over-subscribed profession like photography, where perfection is often just a minimum criterion for entry?

Well — as much as who you know, who and what you photograph — luck and accident seem to play a large part. Photography writer Simon Towler takes a look at the lucky strokes that have helped some photographers make their names.

Let death lend a hand

Annie Liebovitz was already the top photographer on Rolling Stone by the time she photographed John and Yoko for the magazine — just hours before Lennon was shot dead. One of those photographs was used on the cover of the next issue, and it became iconic. Liebovitz has been one of the world’s most famous photographers ever since.

Mario Testino was already an established London photographer when Diana, Princess of Wales sat to him — shortly before her death in a car crash. Afterwards, Testino’s portraits of Diana were widely published, and he became a top name in world photography.

The prolific Irish photographer, Fr. Browne, launched his career after he realized some photographs he had taken on a ship might be of interest to the public. The Titanic Album of Fr. Browne included portraits of many people that were to be their last. They perished soon after in the notorious ship wreck.

The public profile of a relatively little-known photographer, J.H. Lartigue, who had been discovered only recently, was raised when images from his first MoMA exhibition were published in Time magazine’s best-selling issue ever: the one that reported the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Lartigue had landed the MoMA exhibition through a chance meeting with an agent.)

Jones Griffith’s work was relatively little-published till he managed to capture paparazzi shots of Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, on holiday with a male friend in Cambodia.

Philip Jones Griffiths had already been accepted into the prestigious Magnum agency when he started covering the Vietnam War in 1966. But his work was relatively little-published until he managed to capture paparazzi shots of Jackie Kennedy on holiday with a male friend in Cambodia. With his earnings from these he was able to support his war photography, and went on to publish his photo book Vietnam Inc.

Alberto Korda‘s iconic image of Che Guevara was taken in 1960, but at that time his paper rejected it. It remained unknown until Guevara’s death in 1967, when a journalist Korda had given the print to published it as a poster. Being the author of that Che shot helped gain Korda worldwide recognition for the rest of his worthy archive.

(Interestingly, the names of photographers who captured images of Guevara’s corpse are not well remembered. Those pictures were taken at a photo opportunity layed on by his killers. In them, the executed guerilla revolutionary looks reminiscent of Christ taken down from the cross.)

Get discovered (dead or alive)

Eugène Atget died in relative obscurity in 1927. He had earned his living from his little business of taking reference photographs for artists and illustrators to base their work on. His studio had been in Montparnasse in Paris, not far from that of his contemporary, Man Ray. Berenice Abbott became aware of Atget while she was working as Man Ray’s assistant. When Atget died, she bought much of his work. And by 1968 she had promoted it sufficiently to get the Museum of Modern Art in New York to start exhibiting and publicizing it. Since then Atget’s work-a-day reference photographs have been recognized as great art, and Atget as a master of photography.

Seydou Keita had been one of Mali’s most successful social photographers. He was retired and had no reputation, either outside Mali or as an art photographer, when a French art dealer traced him in 1991. The dealer had seen anonymous portraits from Keita’s studio shown by chance in an exhibition of African art in New York. After he identified and located Keita, solo exhibitions were organized around the world. A handful of dealers ably created a market for the work. The old photographer received a great boost to his wealth before he died, as well as recognition for his talent.

Shock tactics

Shock is trickier to contrive than you might expect. Many images intended to shock have gone unnoticed. On the other hand, some of the most successful shock-shots have been intended as pretty innocent fireworks, but went off like suitcase nukes.

Who would have expected Avedon‘s Natasia Kinski and the snake to have such an effect? Or Annie Liebovitz’s Demi Moore pregnant or Cindy Crawford shaving KD Lang? How about Patrick Demarchelier’s Janet Jackson topless with her husband’s hands covering her breasts? Or Toscani‘s Black woman breast-feeding a white baby for Benetton? The key to why these images had as much effect as they did is that they were published in the mainstream, as mainstream images.

“Turned out she was 14 at the time. Her photographer was arrested”

Also in the mainstream was the 1980 album cover for Malcolm McLaren’s newly manufactured band Bow Wow Wow. The cover was a clever, competent and innocent reshoot of Manet’s Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe, with the band’s lead singer standing in for Manet’s nude. When she turned out to have been just fourteen at the time of the shoot the young unknown who made the image was arrested. British music photographer Andy Earl has never looked back since.

Beautiful people

It can help to know, meet or be the right people. Anton Corbijn’s early career as a music photographer included photographing obscure Irish indie band U2. Astrid Kirchherr’s archive includes a portfolio of work of an unknown British rock group called The Beatles. Patrick Lichfield was a first cousin once removed of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. And Anthony Armstrong Jones married the Queen’s sister and became Snowdon. Mary McCartney is the daughter of Paul and Linda, and sister of fashion designer Stella McCartney. Photographers Bunny Yeager, Lee Miller, Corinne Day, Ellen von Unwerth, Helena Christensen, Rie Rasmussen, Zoe Wiseman and Nigel Barker were all photo models.

Heinrich Hoffmann was one of Germany’s highest earning photographers. He had started as an assistant in his father’s humble photographic shop but went on to earn royalties from reproductions of his images on postage stamps and state portraits. This came about largely through his friendship with then head of state, Adolf Hitler. (Hitler also had a relationship with, and ultimately married, Hoffmann’s studio assistant, Eva Braun.)

But it doesn’t always work. Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton has become a celebrated style icon, but her reported desire to emerge as an art photographer hasn’t been fulfilled. She’s been introduced to the family snapper, Mario Testino, but rumours that she’s assisted or taken lessons from him have been denied. So far, some of the most widely seen work by the lady tipped as the future Queen of the United Kingdom has been product photography for her family’s Internet business.

Buy your own work

Why not by-pass the whole starting-out, up-and-coming-new-young-photographer phase? Become horizontally integrated: start your own fashion magazine and commission photography from yourself! British fashion and advertising photographer, Rankin, kicked off his career by dropping out of his photography course at the London College of Communications and co-founding Dazed and Confused magazine.

Exceptional Success

What we’re examining here is exceptional success. Success itself is exceptional; exceptional success, even more so. It must have exceptional causes. Luck and accident play their part. But, to some extent, you make your own luck. Most of the photographers we’ve looked at had some success before they got their big lucky break. They were already lucky. They were exceptionally good at the art and craft of photography. They had habits that tended to put them in the right place at the right time, connected to the right people. It paid off.

“Man Ray developed a few simple rules. He set the lighting before the clients arrived, to reduce session times to a minimum. He recommended that clients shouldn’t smile. He asked them to close their eyes, and then open them suddenly. Sometimes, to relax his ‘patients’ — as he called them — he would give them a prop to hold, so that their expression became serene and profound. The background was usually sober: hessian, chequer-board designs, plain white or grey background paper, on which he played with shadows. Sometimes he featured an object too. He took only a few shots, never more than twelve. He set up his camera at least three metres from the subject, to avoid distorting the face. He cropped his prints carefully. If necessary, he retouched the photos to correct any defects, adding a few pencil strokes to refine a face, or a hip. He didn’t like taking his equipment out of the studio, but he did so sometimes. He knew how to capture in the setting for his subjects some significant details of their personality. Even in his early New York portraits Man Ray understood that what makes a good photograph is the play of contrasts. It could be two faces, or even three; a silhouette and it’s shadow; the light and dark of an outfit; a face and a mask. It’s a lesson drawn from chess. As he put it, ‘The opposition between a white and a black square is fundamentally beautiful’. There are always two, almost equal, parts in a Man Ray portrait. Hands and faces are distributed symettrically. His fashion photos demonstrate his mastery of such contrasts.

Another type of contrast is called ‘solarization’. Man Ray said he discovered this technique by chance, accidentally switching on a light while developing a film. Maybe. In any case, it’s an effect that fitted wonderfully with the development of his aesthetic. Solarization accentuates the contours and intensifies the whites by inverting the values between the whites and the blacks. With this method photography becomes like drawing. The bodies appear to be outlined with a pencil, a sublime pencil which transforms matter, while a mysterious inner light radiates from the subjects. ‘The Primacy of Matter Over Thought’: this title is a manifesto proclaiming solarization as a sort of photo-chemical miracle.” –Jean-Paul Fargier

Documentary on Man Ray by Jean-Paul Fargier. YouTube video in seven parts. This documentary includes treatment of Man Ray’s commercial and editorial portraits, and fashion photography, and the techniques he brought to these.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

“Man Ray’s commercial success was due to the fact that he put as much care and research into commissioned work as he did into his so-called art photography. Whatever the objective of a commission he took the opportunity to explore his effects. In fact, he used fashion to further his art. Every material has its own lighting; each model is modeled in her own shadow. Although most of the sumptuous decors were dictated by clients, he took great liberties in how he used them. Every line has its own staging. The sophistication of the lighting emphasises the opulence of the clothes. He understood how one shape rhymes with another. He used friend’s artwork — here a Brancusi, here a Giacometti — or his own work, to introduce subtle harmonics. The decor amplifies the sophistication of the poses, which flatter the gowns: straight lines against curves; Chinese ink on rough paper. The painter’s hand guides the hand of the photographer: these touch-ups are the touch of Man Ray. Thanks to income from his fashion work, his portraits of rich Americans and his photos for advertising, Man Ray was never short of money.” –Jean-Paul Fargier