Ask HN: Who are your favorite photography and generative coding artists?

Frank Force for generative coding. He has made lots of clever and nice things. Includes game engine (https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/LittleJS), a procedural audio lib (https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/ZzFX) lots of stuff on dwitter.net (https://www.dwitter.net/u/KilledByAPixel/top)

Twitter: https://x.com/KilledByAPixel

portfolio in form of webdesktop: https://generative.3d2k.com/

Website: https://frankforce.com/

Photography and algorithmic art are exactly my thing. In the past few years, I’ve been deeply exploring generative art, though I prefer calling it "Algorithmic Art" since "generative" is often linked to AI now.

Some of my works can even be drawn with a pen plotter.

Take a look: https://monokai.com

My favourite code based generative artists, in no particular order:

- William Mapan - https://x.com/williamapan/

- Harvey Rayner - https://rayner.art

- Emily Xie - https://emilyxie.art

- Matt DesLauriers - https://www.mattdesl.com

- Ben Kovach - https://bendotk.com

- Piter Pasma - https://x.com/piterpasma

- Zach Lieberman - https://x.com/zachlieberman

BSP, but you may also like my work:

Anthony Hiley-Mann - https://www.mountvitruvius.art / https://x.com/mountvitruvius

I really like the pen plotting art made by Adam Fuhrer. It was posted here a while back. https://adamfuhrer.com/pen-plotting

My favorite is Fahad Karim, his generative art has a very cool style: https://www.fahadkarim.com/

Objkt.com has a lot of great curated collections, and it's a rabbit hole.

https://objkt.com/

Similar with Highlight:

https://highlight.xyz/explore/curated?period=30d

Here's a guy I found recently that I like:

https://x.com/perfectl00p https://www.reddit.com/user/PERFECTLO0P/?sort=top https://objkt.com/@perfectloop

NFTs are interesting. When they were originally hyped up, I didn't see the point when you could just save the work. But, I've learned to understand them more as 'signed' copies. Also, there's pride in knowing that you sponsored someone before they became known.

Finally, I love generative art. I'm a huge fan. But, too few works appeal to the human condition, and they're often just algorithmic designs.

Tyler Hobbs is one of my favorite generative artists. I recently enjoyed his talk "How to Hack a Painting" from Strange Loop 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R9eywArFTE

Great resource to explore new fine art photography projects and artists is LENSCRATCH https://lenscratch.com/photographers/

But have you explored all of the old ones yet? Magnum has excellent courses, each is a rabbit hole of references and inspiration: https://www.magnumphotos.com/learn/ (personally working through the Alec Soth one atm)

Regarding photobooks, the best way by far is to visit your local brick and mortar book store for a photography section, or find local community place / coffee shop that has these available. Just pick whatever catches your eye! I know some libraries also provide access to photobooks, should be a good resource if you have one nearby.

May I piggyback here?

What software tools are used for this sort of work?

I'm aware of/have tried:

- Processing (as well as processing.py)

- Nodebox

- OpenSCAD (and its derivative PythonSCAD which allows using Python in it)

EDIT: and METAPOST/Asymptote/TikZ which I forgot to mention

What other tools would folks recommend?

Zach Lieberman https://x.com/zachlieberman does his work in C++ with https://openframeworks.cc/

I am always inspired by the work of Carol Highsmith[0] who has had the dedication to go through the world and simply document what she sees in everyday life and donate all of her work to the LoC. A personal favorite of mine is her photo of the Seattle skyline [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_M._Highsmith [1] https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.14327/?co=highs...

Anthony Wood https://www.houseofgai.com/ the blog is really great: https://www.houseofgai.com/blog

Huge fan of Matt Deslauriers- meridian in particular is very beautiful. Recommend checking it out.

https://www.mattdesl.com/

I really like the work Kenny Vaden has done (mostly written in R of all things). His website is https://vadenart.com/ and instagram https://www.instagram.com/kenny.vaden

He also posts on the r/generative reddit and is really responsive to questions/feedback.

favorite generative artist: vera molnar (http://www.veramolnar.com/)

websites: https://thecodingtrain.com/, https://www.holo.mg/, https://www.rightclicksave.com/about

my list of generative artists: https://github.com/rethread-studio/algorithmic-art-course/is...

I was an artist before I was a coder. Now I do both fulltime. https://lucidbeaming.com/

Check out Emily: https://emilyxie.art/

for photography, I really enjoy Benjamin Beech from Japan. he does a lot of work for tourism associations there, for instance: https://www.beechphotography.tokyo/visit-mie

There’s also Adrien Sanguinetti. He’s also based in Japan but honestly I really just enjoy his street photography videos. He does an excellent job narrating while wearing an action cam how he composes his photos. What types of compositional elements he uses. etc. His youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adriensanguinetti

I don’t think my street photography would’ve really taken as much form as it has if not for watching his videos.

For very niche-y photography: Allison Pollack

https://linktr.ee/AlisonPollack

Ironically, iNaturalist is the better source than instagram for browsing her pictures (at least if you don't want to open an account).

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=alison_poll...

https://www.instagram.com/marin_mushrooms/

Does demoscene counts as generative coding? Farbrausch was my favorite for a while https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=322

I'm going to add a bit of a left-field contribution since his work is less generative coding more mathematics and geometry in general, but it has inspired me when it comes to generative coding. I'm assuming the works he's done which are printed rather than painted were created in such a way not too dissimilar from creating coding.

Anyway, Clark Richert (https://www.clarkrichert.com/, see also MCA's page on him as well https://octopus.mcadenver.org/artists/clark-richert).

Absolutely check out Refik Anadol, amazing contemporary work.

https://refikanadol.com https://refikanadolstudio.com

On photography, in no real order, and probably overweight on street photography.

- Henri Cartier Bresson - Joseph Koudelka - Gordon Parks - Phil Penman - Alan Schiller - Annie Leibovitz - Micha bar Am - Bruce Gilden - Steve McCurry - Constantine Manos - Dorothea Lange

Photography:

- William Klein

- Helen Levitt

- Sergio Larrain

- Jane English

- Josef Koudelka

Generative coding:

- Inigo Quilez - https://iquilezles.org/

- Shelby Wilson - https://shelby.cool/

- David OReilly - https://www.davidoreilly.com/

- Rekka and Devine - https://esoteric.codes/blog/100-rabbits

- David Whiting - https://www.vitling.xyz/

Generative art - I produced a collaboration with Gee’s Bend, Anna Lucia, and the Artist Rights Society.

It’s called “generations.”

It was a pretty crazy project that took 2+ years to produce.

Anna is really talented. The Gee’s Bend quilters are some of the finest artists in America.

Big fan of Roni Kaufman https://bsky.app/profile/ronikaufman.bsky.social

I love the early generative artists:

- Frieder Nake

- Vera Molnar

- Manfred Mohr

More recently people like Casey Reas, who developed the language Processing, Jared Tarbell (https://complexification.net), and Anders Hoff (https://inconvergent.net) are the people I'd look at. Hoff works in Lisp if that's your thing.

For a place to look at the history of generative art, the best resource is still http://dada.compart-bremen.de/

For anyone interested in learning more about generative art and getting started creating it, here’s Sudhan Chitgopkar’s TED talk and free online lecture series on Generative Art:

https://youtu.be/la8MevQxLZw?si=m1KwdHB0kTScSXj6

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtHrXQsUhv82Iqqdx9y5r3qA9...

Yuanchuan[0] and his project css-doodle[1].

[0]: https://yuanchuan.dev/ [1]: https://github.com/css-doodle/css-doodle

Shameless plug: https://www.curtiswmoore.com/

This is my goto guy for such things: https://www.artstation.com/greenindian8

Henri Prestes https://henriprestesp.com/

Elsa Bleda https://www.collater.al/en/elsa-bleda-photography/

But does it float used to feature generative art sometimes https://butdoesitfloat.com/

The artist that springs to mind right now is Amy Goodchild.

www.amygoodchild.com

Mark Knol is a great generative coding artist: https://github.com/markknol/

Chris Randall is pretty awesome too: https://www.instagram.com/chris.randall.art/

William Latham https://doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01whl/index.html

and lots of the people featured on https://executable.graphics/

Daidō Moriyama is a great Japanese photographer who exemplified the Provoke movement in the 1970s. I find his work inspiring and liberating.

He pioneered a style that combined gritty black and white street photography with an avant garde approach.

Shameless self plug.. but my favorite artist is myself. My photography journey is documented here - https://vaidhys.world

Most of the photographs are around Seattle and focused on wildlife and landscapes.

https://bleuje.com/

Shameless plug: I do algorithmic art with Python (no AI) at https://gods.art. Recently I've been focusing on lenticular holograms.

Joshua Davis https://joshuadavis.com/

You might like this combination of photography and computation: https://www.instagram.com/dirkkoy/

For generative coding, I'm a big fan of Raven Kwok https://ravenkwok.com/

Photography: Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand, Sebastiao Saldago. Taschen Publishing has the best art books of all.

Julien Gachadoat: https://www.instagram.com/julienv3ga

Etienne Jacob: https://www.instagram.com/etinjcb/

Matt DesLauriers: https://www.instagram.com/mattdesl_art/

Yann Le Gall: https://www.instagram.com/ylegall/

Check out The Poet Engineer – Amazing work in Touchdesigner

Ix hun (anything Visualized Math)

Shout out to cabbibo and mrdoob

https://cabbi.bo/me/

https://mrdoob.com/

It’s generative art, made with Houdini from what I gather—so not technically coding—but davidope is making amazing things all the time and I personally find him a very inspiring visual artist. You can see his art on IG @dvdp or check his very Hackernewsy about page davidope.com for more info.

By far my favorite photographer to study and learn from is Ansel Adams. Part of why is not just that I like his photographic works, but that he approached photography in a technical way that was unusual at the time and invested significant effort in documenting and writing about his approaches.

The entire Photography Series is worth reading (but the edited books re-released in the 80s, not the originals), but book 2, "The Negative" that focuses on the Zone System Ansel codified based on prior work by Fred Archer is really crucial reading for a strong technical understanding of how camera exposure works in a scene with a wide dynamic range. This is critical when working with film, especially medium format and large format films, but is also helpful to produce much better images even with modern digital cameras. While things have consistently gotten more forgiving and thus easier for photographers, having a really strong technical understanding of the principles of light and how cameras expose film/sensor is still one of the most useful things you can learn as a photographer, even as an amateur.

Going in a completely different direction, I also think Simon d'Entremont is a photographer worth paying attention to. He's a professional wildlife photographer and Youtuber who has invested a lot of effort into simplifying the techniques and technicalities that come with using digital cameras. He has an understandable approach, a high level of technical competence (e.g. what he says is correct and opinions are clearly stated as opinions). By learning the core technical principles of photography and then adding onto it the specifics of digital photography, it can make any photographer better, both from the perspective of the images they capture and from the perspective of how they get there (e.g. learning a "feel" for exposure settings for a given scene).

Completely separate from the technical aspect, I think Annie Leibovitz might be one of the most important photographers to pay attention to in the last 50 years. She has a deep understanding around the art of storytelling through photography, and ultimately a strong photo is not just one that is exposed perfectly for the scene and captures the full dynamic range and makes the best use of light. It's one that captures something interesting and tells a story about it. Nobody does this better than Annie. Both in her portraiture and her photojournalistic work, she captures subjects in a way that truly emphasizes the meaning behind "a picture is worth a thousand words."

I have no opinions around generative coding, but I consider myself a "good" amateur photographer, and these are three photographers I've studied in depth to try to understand and build my own style and increase my technical competence and the quality of my outcomes. Also, not for nothing, both Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz preferred a Contax rangefinder for much of their work (although Ansel is most famous for his large format work done with a view camera). It's sad Contax doesn't exist anymore, I'd loved to have seen how they would have come into the digital/mirrorless age.

Here's are a few you might enjoy! Living artists only to give them a little boost

Photography:

- Hideaki Hamada https://hideakihamada.com/works/?tab=grid

- Henri Prestes https://www.instagram.com/henrifilm/

- Liam Wong https://www.instagram.com/liamwong/

- lllonilll https://www.instagram.com/lllonilll/

- Trung Bao https://www.instagram.com/trungbaotr/

- Clémentine Ecobichon https://www.instagram.com/clementine_art_gallery/

Digital / generative art:

- Slap Comp https://www.instagram.com/slapcomp/

- Oprisco https://www.instagram.com/oprisco/

- michael murdock https://www.instagram.com/mjmurdoc/

Bonus, artists & illustrators:

- seongryul https://www.instagram.com/sseongryul/

- huihuabiji https://www.instagram.com/yaozh.i/

- Kris Ancog https://www.instagram.com/krisancog/

- August Sandström https://www.instagram.com/august.artwork/

- daisukerichard https://www.instagram.com/daisukerichard/

- Viktoria Prischedko https://www.instagram.com/viktoriaprischedko/

- Thomas Wells Schaller https://www.instagram.com/thomaswschaller/

- Little Thunder https://www.instagram.com/littlethunder/

Gregory Crewdson

Benoit Paille

Anders Hoff

Davide Quayola

Robbie Barrat

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