Conceptual Art Photography

Bernd and Hilla Becher turned industrial structures into one of the central subjects of postwar conceptual photography.

Jeff Wall turned photography toward large-scale staged images that behave like encounters with cinema, painting, and urban modernity all at once.

Born in Leipzig in 1955, Andreas Gursky grew up in a family of photographers, studied first with Otto Steinert at the Folkwang School, and then with Bernd Becher at the Dusseldorf Academy.

Eve Sussman extends art-historical tableaux and photographic composition into film and installation, exploring how still images become unstable through duration, gesture, and performance.

Belgian artist born in 1963, working across photography, text, projection, installation, and moving image.

French artist born in 1963, active across websites, publishing, drawing, collage, photography, installation, and video.

Vietnamese American photographer, born in Saigon in 1960 and based in the United States.

German artist and photographer, born in 1964.

Dutch photographer, born in 1972 in Alkmaar; studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.

French artist born in 1955 in Reims, based in Paris; works across photography, objects, sculpture, and installations, though photography was central to his emergence on the contemporary art scene.

German photographer, born in 1958 in Moers and based in Hamburg; originally trained as a biologist.

Dutch artist and photographer, born in 1963 and based in Rotterdam.

Spanish artist, born in Madrid in 1966; works across installation, photography, video, and performance.

Santos R. Vasquez is documented mainly through exhibition records while detailed sources on the work remain scarce.

German photographer, born in 1962, associated with the Düsseldorf / Becher-school context while developing a distinct body of large-format color landscape work.

Wangechi Mutu reworks fragments of ethnographic photography, fashion imagery, medical illustration, and photomontage to challenge colonial and gendered histories of the body.

Albanian artist born in 1974, working across video, sound, installation, and photography-related image practices.

Pieter Hugo (born 1976 in Johannesburg) is a South African photographic artist based in Cape Town.

Austrian-born photographer and artist, born in 1960 in Salzburg and long based in Brussels.

Swedish artist born in 1962, working across film, photography, sculpture, installation, and text.

Swedish artist and photographer born in 1967 in Gothenburg.

German photographer born in 1970 in Mainz.

French photographer born in 1968.

British artist born in 1971, based in London, working across print, digital media, collage, video, and text-based image practices.

Swiss/German photographer who has lived and worked across Zürich, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, and Austin.

Belgian photographer born in 1958 in Eeklo, based in Ghent.

Finnish photographer and video artist born in 1972 in Helsinki.

German photographer born in 1973 in Stuttgart, later based between Los Angeles and Cologne.

Dutch photographer and artist born in 1964 in Delft, based in Rotterdam.

Artist and photographer with Mexican background, trained in Zurich and later working in Geneva and internationally.

Hungarian-born photographer and artist, born in 1962, living and working in the Netherlands.

German photographer born in 1962.

Romanian artist, architect, and photographer born in 1957 in Timișoara.

French photographer born in 1946, working closely with birds and their habitats over several decades.

French artist born in Paris in 1968, working with photography, video, and performance.

Czech-born photographer, born in 1958, who left Czechoslovakia in 1982 and later settled in Essen, Germany.

Danish artist born in 1962, working with photography, film, sound, and installation.

British photographer born in 1959.

American photographer born in 1969 in Warsaw, New York.

Dutch artist and photographer born in 1970, based in Amsterdam.

Japanese photographer born in 1965.

Italian artist born in 1969 in Como, working primarily with photography and occasionally film.

French and British artist born in 1969, working across film, photography, installation, and artist books.

Dutch photographer born in 1967 in Leeuwarden.

German photographer associated with staged photography since the early 1990s.

German photographer born in 1963, known internationally for extremely long exposure photographs.

Japanese photographer born in 1958 in Rikuzentakata, Iwate.

Italian photographer and artist born in 1954 in Carpi.

Finnish photographer born in 1965, associated with the Helsinki School.

German artist born in 1968, working with photography, found images, artist books, and archival systems.

German photographer born in 1972 in Dresden.

Japanese photographer born in 1972 in Shiga Prefecture.

Brazilian artist born in 1962, working with photography, found images, archives, books, and installation.

German-born, London-based photographer born in 1967.

Finnish photographer born in 1974.

Iranian-born artist and photographer born in 1974 in Tehran, later based in Zurich.

Nigerian-born British photographer born in 1963; his own CV lists him as living in Hove and Kabul and identifies him as a landscape photographer concerned with expanding the meaning of the “battlefield.

British artist born in 1965, working across film, photography, drawing, and writing.

Japanese photographer born in 1962 in Tokyo.

Japanese photographer born in 1972 in Shiga and based in Tokyo.

Norwegian photographer born in 1970.

Chinese artist born in 1966, originally trained as a painter and later becoming widely known for staged large-scale photography.

Spanish photographer born in Barcelona in 1960, with studies in social anthropology and documentary photography.

Chinese artist born in 1971, working across film, video, photography, installation, and painting.

Polish artist born in 1959, working across photography, film, installation, and objects.

South African photographer and painter born in 1960 in Durban.

G. R.

The Atlas Group / Walid Raad uses a fictional or quasi-fictional archive of the Lebanese wars to question how photographs, videos, documents, and lectures become evidence for history.

Collaborative artists and photographers who worked together for more than two decades, becoming central figures in contemporary photography’s critique of documentary and institutional image systems.

Polish artist born in 1974, working across photography, film, sculpture, and staged self-representation.

Cuban-American artist born in 1971, active across photography, drawing, sculpture, film, and installation, but first widely recognized through staged photographic tableaux.

Dutch photography duo, both born in 1969, who began working together shortly after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in the mid-1990s.

Dutch artist born in 1964, working with photography, video, books, archive material, and installation.

French photographer born in 1975, known for serial portrait projects on uniforms, ritual groups, masquerades, and collective identity.

Dutch photographer born in 1977, known for portrait-like images of animals and, at times, vulnerable human subjects linked to labor, service, or mourning.

German artist born in 1963, working across photography, sculpture, text, installation, and conceptual formats.

Irish artist born in 1969, known for work across film, photography, and installation.

Spanish artist born in 1950, working across photography, video, and installation.

Swedish photographer born in 1969, known for diaristic, unstable, and emotionally charged bodies of work often published in book form.

German-Brazilian artist born in 1973, working across photography, video, performance, sculpture, drawing, and painting.

German artist born in 1972, working with photography, sculpture, collage, and installation.

Venezuelan artist born in 1964, active internationally in sculpture, photography, video, and installation.

Swiss artist, photographer, editor, and lecturer born in 1964; trained in documentary photography at ICP in New York in 1994 before moving into long-term conceptual projects.

French photographer born in 1962, first known as a photojournalist and later as a maker of large-scale museum photographs of war, politics, and historical crisis.

German photographer and visual artist born in 1963, working with photography, video, text, and research-based projects.

Swiss artist born in 1962, working with photography, video, installation, and research-based narrative forms.

Jasansky & Polak is a Berlin-based artist duo associated with photography and installation, known for long-term work on ordinary architecture, interiors, and objects.

Multiplicity is an Italian research collective using photography, maps, testimony, video, and installation to investigate migration, borders, infrastructure, and the politics of mobility.

American artist born in 1979, known primarily for image-based work spanning painting, installation, editions, and photography-related appropriation.

Macedonian visual artist born in 1971 in Skopje, working across photography, video, and visual storytelling.

Austrian photographer born in 1957, active since the 1980s and closely associated with Austria’s author-photography tradition and with obsessive collecting, archiving, and artist’s books.

French artist born in 1970, working with photography, film, video, and installation.

British artist born in 1970, first widely known for the photographic series *Ray’s a Laugh*.

American photographer born in 1969, known for mixing commercial, vernacular, and art-photographic image languages.

Canadian artist born in 1957, associated with the Vancouver context often described as photo-conceptualism, though he has resisted that label.

Dutch artist born in 1958, known for digitally composed photographic works that appear hyperreal while being entirely constructed from multiple source photographs.

Austrian artist duo working together since 1993, closely associated with photography, architecture, and urban representation.

Ukrainian artist and photographer born in 1960, associated with the Kharkiv/Kharkov School of Photography and active across photography, video, sculpture, and installation.

South Korean artist born in 1973, known for photographic series that examine simulation, ideology, and the politics of representation.

German artist born in 1968, working with staged or fabricated photographic environments.

German-born Swiss-based artist born in 1977, trained in photography in Zurich and active across photography, sculpture, installation, and action.

British photographer born in 1971, known for books and series that reinvent documentary photography through material experiment.

Artist and photographer born in 1970, working with landscape, horizon, and urban form at large scale.

French artist born in 1964, known for photography that stages encounters between hyperreal description and artifice.

French-Moroccan artist born in 1971 whose work spans photography, film, installation, publishing, and archival practice.

OHIO is a German photomagazine and art project that treats publication as an exhibition space, reframing everyday and reproducible photographs through editing, sequencing, and circulation.

collectif_fact is a Swiss artist collective using photography, video, 3D scanning, and architectural modeling to test how urban space, media images, and fiction condition perception.

Kelli Connell (born 1974) is an American photographer known for Double Life, in which one model is photographed in multiple roles and digitally composited as two figures.

Mika Ninagawa (born 1972 in Tokyo) is a photographer and film director whose work crosses photography, cinema, and installation through saturated color, flowers, goldfish, and portraiture.

Natalie Czech (born 1976, based in Berlin) is a German conceptual photographer known for Hidden Poems, in which she finds existing poems within magazines, newspapers, packaging, and other printed matter, marking words and photographing the page as a field where reading and seeing overlap.

Taiji Matsue (born 1963 in Tokyo) is a Japanese photographer who photographs the earth’s surface while excluding the horizon and sky and using frontal light to suppress shadow.

Useful Photography collects and edits practical, anonymous, and vernacular images, shifting attention from authored art photographs to the social uses and afterlives of photographic images.

Viviane Sassen (born 1972 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch photographer whose work crosses fine art and fashion through saturated color, deep shadow, fragmented bodies, and concealed faces.