Top of the phots

LIP's Questionnaire analysed by Roger Estop

Anyone who has read High Fidelity or recently watched Music of the Millennium will understand the fascination of lists and rankings. Some of us base our philosophy of life on our top five books, politicians, records and photographs.

Not everyone answered all the questions in the LIP members questionnaire, but everyone responded to the questions on the back page. Forget the business of subs and policy, this was the important bit: our most inspiring photographers.

We were invited to confess our three all time favourite photographers, our favourite living photographers, and our favourite writer/critic on photography.

This was a list of favourites not a vote for the best, which may have produced a different outcome. Although the LIP membership does not produce a huge statistical base, everyone had the chance to name three or four people, so allowing a reasonable analysis. The range of names was impressive, the combinations surprising.

The all-time favourite photographers with the most votes seems reassuringly right, these are the favourites that would crop up in any survey of serious photographers. However, perhaps LIP members would love Weston just that little bit more than Brandt or Cartier-Bresson. The other feature betraying LIP is the presence in the top list of Blakemore, Caponigro and Cooper, all long-standing LIP influences, rather than say Strand, Callahan or Ray Moore. These all received only one or two mentions each as did Doisneau, Frank and Arbus for example.

If the list is comfortably right, it lacks a radical edge. Man Ray, Rodchenko and Moholy Nagy were not mentioned by anyone in their list of three all time favourites. However it was reassuring to find that Ansel Adams was nobody's favourite either.

In the favourite living photographers countdown Blakemore and Cooper go straight in at numbers one and two with other big workshop hits Godwin, Caponigro and Hill all figuring in the chart. Salgado and Friedlander are the worthy representatives of harsh reality in our list.

It seems extraordinary, given the above, that Sherman is in the list considering the complete difference of her work from the others and the scarcity of any other post modern photographers in the survey such as Duane Michals or Jo Spence (who, like the Norwegians, got nil points), or Mari Mahr or Nan Goldin (who got a couple of mentions each). Consider also the other photographers who did not get a single mention in anyone's list. None of the Towards a Bigger Picture Brits: Chris Killip, Brian Griffin, John Davies; no Lewis Baltz; no Germans. Martin Parr and Anna Fox were each mentioned once.

But then hit parades are never more than a bit of fluff, and they obscure the real interest of the individual choices. After all, James Alinder, Javier Vallhonrat and Avati Notuyoshi are all somebody's favourites. Perhaps the real insights from this survey were revealed by the combinations of photographers named by members. The photographers in each personal selection say something about each other, and as a group, provide clues to what people find inspiring in their work. There were a number of stimulating combinations of personal favourites in both the 'all time' and 'living' lists, for example:

Eugene Atget, Jane Bown, FSA photographers.
Ray Moore, Tony-Ray Jones, Edward Weston.
Jerry Uelsman, Bill Brandt, Ralph Gibson.
Mari Mahr, Catherine Yass, Barbara Ess.
Robert Frank, Ralph Eugene Meatyard ,Richard Misrach.
Josef Sudek, John Blakemore, Imogen Cunningham.
Diane Arbus, Peter Lindberg, Nan Goldin.

All time favourite photographers

1 Edward Weston
2 André Kertesz
3= Bill Brandt
3= Henri Cartier-Bresson
4= Eugene Atget
4= John Blakemore
5= Walker Evans
5= Thomas Joshua Cooper
5= Paul Caponigro

Favourite living photographers

1 John Blakemore
2 Thomas Joshua Cooper
3= Sebastio Salgado
3= Henri Cartier-Bresson
4= Fay Godwin
4= Paul Caponigro
4= Lee Friedlander
4= Paul Hill
4= Cindy Sherman

Favourite writers/critics on photography

1 A. D. Coleman
2= John Berger
2= Roland Barthes
3 Bill Bishop
4= Bill Jay
4= Susan Sontag

Fewer respondents to the questionnaire named a favourite writer or critic on photography but the resultant list contains the international great and good with a spectacular intervention from Crouch End. All are challenging, theoretical writers contributing hugely to our appreciation of the medium and the art. Other writers mentioned by members were Andy Grundberg, Ian Jeffrey, Beaumont Newhall, Peter Galassi, Rosalind Krauss, Julian Rodrigues, and Peter Marshall. [I didn't vote - Ed] Clearly, Inscape has a greater influence than LIP Service.

As well as being an entertaining diversion, this highly unreliable survey does give some further insight into the kind of people that make up LIP. We now need a nationwide poll, perhaps Photographers of the Millennium?

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