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Arts & Letters
Novelists, poets, musicians, actors, directors and designers who made the country's culture.
Role:
Any
Actor 58
Novelist 46
Singer 39
Songwriter 31
Musician 30
Filmmaker 26
Painter 26
Composer 18
Poet 14
Author 11
Photographer 11
Comedian 10
Activist 9
Founder 8
Playwright 8
Sculptor 8
Educator 7
Broadcaster 6
Journalist 6
Rapper 6
Designer 5
Illustrator 5
Producer 5
Choreographer 4
Executive 4
11 people
Ansel Adams 1902–1984Visual Arts & DesignLandscape photographer whose Western images and zone system shaped American photographic practice.
Dorothea Lange 1895–1965Visual Arts & DesignDocumentary photographer whose Depression-era images defined the visual record of the 1930s.Robert Mapplethorpe 1946–1989Visual Arts & DesignPhotographer whose retrospective set off the 1989 fight over public arts funding
Walker Evans 1903–1975Visual Arts & DesignPhotographer of the Depression-era American SouthDiane Arbus 1923–1971Visual Arts & DesignPhotographer whose square-format portraits remade American documentary photography
Richard Avedon 1923–2004Visual Arts & DesignPut movement into fashion photography, then stripped his subjects bare against white paper.
Annie Leibovitz b. 1949Visual Arts & DesignPortrait photographer whose Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair work defined American celebrity imagery.
Gordon Parks 1912–2006Visual Arts & DesignPhotographer for Life magazine and first Black director of a major Hollywood studio film.Barbara Kruger b. 1945Visual Arts & DesignText-over-photograph art that addresses the viewer directly
Cindy Sherman b. 1954Visual Arts & DesignPhotographed herself as hundreds of other women and insisted that none of it was a self-portrait.
Alfred Stieglitz 1864–1946Visual Arts & DesignPhotographer and gallerist who established photography as fine art and promoted American modernists.