Tyler Shields Champagne

Born in Jacksonville, Florida, and now recognized as “Hollywood’s favorite photographer,” L.A.–based contemporary artist and filmmaker Tyler Shields has evolved from the “bad boy of photography” with his controversial blood-stained photographic series featuring Lindsay Lohan to the more subtle color-explosive poesy of his “Chromatic” series, and his work featuring Francesca Eastwood (Clint’s daughter) to the fire-starting, bag-sawing antics of a $100,00 Hermès Birkin bag, to the stoic magic Surrealism of “Suspense,” a project shot in the New Mexico desert featuring Franseca Eastwood, Emma Roberts and Lydia Hearst — Shield’s art captures the emergence of an artist and his medium into a more mature overture and output. He is an American image-maker.

Born in 1982, Shields’ work derives from a unique history directing music videos and working with the legendary skateboarding icon Tony Hawk. Mr. Shields has produced images that play with notions of the gaze, power structures, hyper-realism, iconoclastic tendencies and cinematographic practice. He has worked with a roster of ranking members of Hollywood including Mischa Barton, Emma Roberts, Aaron Paul, Demi Lovato, Juno Temple, Shiloh Fernandez and more. Tyler’s output involves various mediums from book publishing The Dirty Side of Glamour in 2011, to a novel entitled Smartest Man, and a cluster of solo shows.

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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.