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Through his lens, Melvin Sokolsky built a world of surreal mystery. His most iconic series, depicting a woman in a plexiglass bubble, remains one of the most recognizable works of fine art photography today.

Born in New York City in 1933, he had no formal photography training. Instead, he learned by experimenting with his father’s box camera and analyzing photographs his father had developed. 

At 21, he joined the staff at Harper's Bazaar. Soon after, Sokolsky landed projects for many other notable magazines, including Esquire and McCall’s. He went on to teach at the School of Visual Arts.

In 1969, Sokolsky became a television commercial director. He won several Clio Awards, as well as numerous other major commercial awards. Many of his commercials are in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collections. Sokolsky developed a computerized zoom lens, which he presented at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972; he went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for the technology. 

Across his career, Sokolsky photographed or directed a number of celebrities, including American actors Ben Affleck and Dustin Hoffman, as well as American singing and acting legend Barbara Streisand.

Sokolsky received an abundance of recognition for his work, including being named an Explorer of Light by the Canon camera company in 1995. He received the first annual Lucie Award for outstanding achievement in fashion photography in 2003, and the Louvre in Paris held a celebration for his work that same year.

Sokolsky exhibited at many world-class galleries, including at Staley-Wise in New York in 1997, Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles 2008 and Galerie Acte 2 in Paris in 2010 and 2011.

Towards the end of his life, Sokolsky worked for Canon, lecturing internationally and serving as one of its global company ambassadors. He died in 2022. His body of work spanning several decades is in numerous prestigious collections, including the Getty in Los Angeles and Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

On 1stDibs, enter the wondrous world of Melvin Sokolsky’s photography. 

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.