Burk Uzzle

Burk Uzzle was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1938. His career received its first major impetus in 1962, when Life magazine hired him as the youngest ever photographer to work for them. For many years, Uzzle continued to produce work for Life as well as other publications worldwide. Some of his most notable work during this time included coverage of the Martin Luther King funeral in 1968 (Newsweek used one of his images as their cover photo that week), as well as his Woodstock work. But his photographic work went beyond photojournalism. His first book in 1971 featured his American landscape work. Later in the 70s, he began experimenting with still-life photography. In 1984, another monograph, All American, was published. Museum shows followed, including solo shows at the Chicago Art Institute in 1971, the Philadelphia Museum in 1984 and the Chrysler Museum in 1992. In 2016, Uzzle’s work was featured in triple-venue exhibitions in his home state of North Carolina, at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh at the Ackland Museum of Art, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham. Uzzle’s work is included in the holdings of many prominent museum and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the private Margulies collection in Miami and Bidwell Projects in Ohio.

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.