What Would Jack Bauer Do

Diana Thorneycroft is a Winnipeg-based contemporary artist, born in 1956, in Claresholm, Alberta, Canada. She has exhibited various bodies of work across Canada, the United States and Europe, as well as in Moscow, Tokyo and Sydney. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2016 Manitoba Arts Award of Distinction, assistance to visual arts long-term grant from the Canada Council, several senior arts grants from the Manitoba Arts Council and a fleck fellowship from the Banff Center for the Arts. Her early work was the subject of national radio documentaries and a CBC national documentary for television. From 2000-02, Diana's photo-based exhibition, “The Body, its Lesson and Camouflage” toured to eight venues. Several images from this show were included in the 2002 Phaidon Press publication, Blink, which presents the work of 100 rising stars in photography. Diana is best known for her photographic work depicting facets of Canadian identity. Some of the work is humorous, sometimes dark, frequently both. From 2007-14, she completed four photography series, “The Canadiana Martyrdom Series," “Group of Seven Awkward Moments," “A People's History” and “Canadians and Americans (best friends forever... it's complicated).” Canadian Art Magazine selected the “Group of Seven Awkward Moments” as one of The Top 10 Exhibitions of 2008. Equally as dark, is her drawing series, “There Must Be 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover,” which is divided into three categories, Foul Play, Desperate Housewives and Failed Relationships. In 2013, Diana began working on a complex installation, entitled “Black Forest (dark waters).” The exhibition, which had its inaugural opening in 2018, is composed of three interconnected bodies of work and two sculptural installations that are presented as physical evidence of the cryptic narrative that unfolds in the suite of 19 photographs.

Find a broad range of photography on 1stDibs today.

The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later. 

Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. 

What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?

Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.

Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.

Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.