Three photographers recently passed away, and I don’t think any one of them was a household name. But they were provocative, extraordinary, and celebrated in their individual niches.

David Hamilton was first established as a British photographer, who gained fame by posing young women in various forms of dehabille, and in a style that became known as the Hamilton blur. Critics condemned him as a pornographer, referring to his images as “soft-core artsploitation”. He often found his models on the beaches of Southern France. And because of his renown, parents permitted him to photograph their children. His admirers compared his work to the French painters of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Watteau and Fragonard. He studied architecture prior to a career in fashion photography, and later became art director at the Printemps department store in Paris.

William Christenberry was known for his photographs of poor, rural Alabama. His photographs made him one of the most respected and influential artists of the modern South, often depicting ruined buildings, rusted cars and unruly vegetation. He did not include people. What distinguishes his work is that he used a 3-by-5 inch Kodak Brownie camera, a Christmas gift he received when he was 8 years old! (Although he used a large format camera for some photos, he always returned to his Brownie.) And he took his film to a drugstore to be developed!  His work was influenced by Walker Evans and James Agee, whose collaboration produced “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” based on their trip to Hale County, Alabama.  He eventually became close friends with Evans. In later years, he taught at the Corcoran School in Washington, D.C. His images have been published in several books, and are featured in the Corcoran Gallery (now part of the National Gallery of Art), the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of Art. A new exhibition of his photographs will open on December 9 at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

Rodney Smith is described as a “whimsical photographer.” You must Google his name and scroll though his Magritte-like images.  His subjects are posed in imaginative ways, using props such as umbrellas, bowler hats, and binoculars. Or they are poised ready to leap from tall buildings or an airplane wing. One of his iconic photographs shows an elegantly dressed couple kissing on top of a taxicab stopped in an Upper Manhattan traffic jam.  Another anomaly, attributed to his photographic style, is that he did not use artificial light and refused to ask his subjects to smile.

These photographers, perhaps not well-known, captured their images skillfully and with ingenuity, exhibiting a style unique to their personal interests and artistry.  It is worth a stroll through their galleries.