• Born 1924 in Zürich, Switzerland
• Became knowledgeable toward photography without any official schooling.
• Being Jewish and living in the times of World War 2, Robert had to deal with the pressures of what is happening around him. Although, he was protected from the danger because he was living in Switzerland.
• He became apprenticed to Hermann Segesser as a commercial photographer. This helped him to become the photographer he became.
• His work is very much inspired by American Ironies, as his most famous work is based in this idea.

• Born 1868 in Whitewater, Wisconsin
• He learned his photography skills from an apprenticeship he experienced at the age of 17.
• He was largely forgotten at the time of his death. Only to later resurface as an important photographer much later.
• Became a photographer shortly after his apprenticeship. He was once given $75,000 to produce a series on Native Americans. This made him a large player in the photography world.
• His work is inspired by the Native Americans. His most famous work being that on The North American Indian, A series where he explores the lives of Native Americans.

Robert Frank

Edward Curtis

Compositional Techniques

• Robert takes photos in black and white. The photos are taken with a variety of angles and viewpoints. Some are portraits, others are angle down or angle up, and some are taken as different distances. His photos are usually different from his others and he has many different reasons for this in his subjects and themes.

Subject

• Robert has photos of people in America as the main focus of his series. He has politicians and regular people alike in their normal lives.

Theme

• Robert has the idea of American ironies as the driving force of his work. He examines what it means to be American through showing the ironies that occur in our lives. His work has politics and social life being explored.

Compositional Techniques

• Edward tends to use portraiture in his photographs. Many of his photos are of other people and these techniques are used to show that. He used both black and white, and sepia in his photographs.

Subject

• Edward has a very famous work involving Native Americans. In this series of photos, he captures moments of the natives lives that not many people would otherwise see. His subject is not necessarily happy or sad, but shows the daily lives of the Native Americans. His work can be seen as serious as it is very important, especially for the time, in showing the ways of life of another culture.

Theme

• Edward has themes of everyday life in his works. He captures the ways of life that people experience. His photos have themes that can show both happy and sad situations, but doesn't have the meaning of the photos be those emotions.

• I like that Robert uses his photography to express an ironic viewpoint of the world around him. I also like his work because it can seem to be boring from an outside perspective but it has significant meaning when looking closely at them.
• I don't like that he has just one type of photography, when he has a lot of skill in photography it would be cool to see other works of his that aren't of previous mentioned works.
• I can relate to his work by the fact that he sees the world differently. This is something that I want to incorporate into my photography. I want the viewer to see the world through my eyes; like what Robert does.

• I like that Edward explains, with pictures, the lives of other people. Something that we have to appreciate because during his time, not many people would be able to see the lives of Native Americans.
• I don't like that in his work, he doesn't have much variety in camera angles or photo skills. His work seems boring when all photos are of similar style. If there was more variety then I would like his work more than Robert's.
• I can relate with Edward's work because he likes to show his viewers the everyday lives of people who his viewers may not see. This is the type of photography I hope to create one day.