Barye Phillips was a prolific cover artist perhaps best known for his work on Fawcett’s Gold Medal Book. Phillips was known as ‘The King of Paperbacks’ due to the speed and the variety of his work–he typically produced four cover paintings per week.
A few examples of his work can be found below:
Bob Peak was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Kansas. Following a stint in the U.S. Army, Peak enrolled in the Art Center College of Design. After graduating in 1951, Peak moved to New York City and found work as a commercial artist. In the 1960s, Peak was hired by Universal Studios where he designed film posters and frequently collaborated with the artist Bill Gold. As a result of the film posters that he designed in the 1970s and 1980s, Peak has been called “the father of the modern motion picture poster.” Along with his film work, Peak also drew several covers for TV Guide and Time Magazine and was commissioned to create 30 stamps for the 1984 Summer Olympics.
Below are a few examples of Peak’s work.
British film poster artist Tom Chantrell was the son of a trapeze artist. He attended Manchester Art College before entering the world of advertising. He designed his first film poster, for The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, in 1938. He would go on to design over 7,000 different film poster and would be best remembered for his poster for Star Wars. Some other examples of his work can be found below.
Bill Edwards was born in New Jersey and grew up on a farm in Wyoming. He started out his career as a championship rodeo rider but, after several broken bones, he moved to New York and pursued a career as a model. He appeared as an actor in several Westerns during the 1940s before pursuing a second career as a painter and commercial illustrator. Along with painting scenes inspired by the Old West, Edwards illustrated over 100 paperback covers. In the 1960s, he started another career as a certified SCUBA diver and instructor. He died of pneumonia at the age of 81 in Newport Beach, California.
Artist Howard Terpning was born in Illinois and grew up in the midwest. He first started drawing at the age of seven and, after serving with the U.S. Marines, he enrolled in Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After art school, Terpning found employment as a commercial illustrator. Along with doing magazine illustrations, Terpning designed the posters of over 80 films. In 1967, he went to Vietnam as a civilian combat artist. His six Vietnam paintings hang in the National Museum of the Marine Corps. In 1974, Terpning retired from doing commercial work and devoted his time to paintings inspired by Native American history and culture. Terpning’s paintings hang in galleries around the world and he has collected over 42 awards for his work.
The photographer William Klein was born in New York but has lived in France since his late teens. He studied at the Sorbonne and began his career as an abstract painter and sculptor before moving into photography. He is best known for using unusual photographic techniques like natural light, wide-angle and telephoto lenses, and motion blur in the context of fashion photography and photojournalism. Klein has also directed several documentary and three features films. His first film, 1966’s Who Are You Polly Magoo? was one of the first films ever made about the fashion industry. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has called Klein’s second film, 1968’s Mr. Freedom, “conceivably the most anti-American movie ever made.” Professional Photographer Magazine has listed Klein as the 25th most influential photographer of all time.
The artist Robert Bonfils was born in Kansas City and attended the Kansas City Art Institute where one of his teachers was the painter Thomas Hart Benton. He then served a stint in the Army before continuing his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. Bonfils was eventually hired by the prestigious advertising firm Stevens, Hall, Biondi. Here he did illustrations for children’s books, covers for Mercury record albums, and advertisements for Miller High Life Beer. In the 1960s, Bonfils started to paint the paperback book covers that he’s best remembered for. At the height of his career, he was painting 50 covers a month.
A sampling of his work can be found below:
The artist Isaac Paul Rader was born and lived in Brooklyn. He studied art in Europe and had his first museum exhibition at the age of 16. Rader is best known for being a prolific illustrator of pulp paperback covers. His work is distinguished by both an attention to detail and an emphasis on strong, seductive women. Rader was so prolific and respected that he was one of the few cover artists allowed to retain his signature on his work.
A sampling of his work can be found below.
“Design is thinking made visual.” — Bill Gold
Bill Gold has been designing film posters for over 70 years and, together, his work includes the promotional campaigns for some of the most important American films since the 1940s. Gold’s posters are each designed to give their films a unique identity and, over the span of his long career, Gold’s work has reflected a wide range of trends, tastes, and approaches. In 2011, Gold came out of retirement to design the poster for Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar.
Gold has designed hundreds of posters. Below is just a sampling of his prolific career.
This artist profile is an important one to me because Carol M. Highsmith and her work are the biggest influences on my photography. If not for Carol Highsmith, I probably never would have picked up a camera.
Carol Highsmith is known as “America’s photographer” and it’s easy to see why. For the past 30 years, Highsmith has devoted her life to taking pictures in every corner of the United States and she has captured everything from small town life to the monuments of Washington D.C. Her work has inspired countless other photographers and I’m one of them.
Highsmith has donated her entire life’s work (over 100,000 images!) to the Library of Congress and has also released them into the public domain. For this reason, Highsmith has been called “the most generous artist of our time.”
Through the Shattered Lens