Photographer

Jack Carnell was practically weaned on color photography, having begun using it as his specialty in graduate school at Temple's Tyler School of Art in 1975, and he now teaches it at Philadelphia University. In his current digital show at Haverford College's Atrium Gallery, "Jack Carnell: Authentic America," subtitled "Color photos from my travels in the South 2000-08," the sharpest impression a viewer receives is that these are photos about places, not people - steeples, ornaments, trees, yards.

The flying fox, collected on a 1937 expedition to the South Pacific, seems to gaze pensively from inside a jar of alcohol. Jumbled in a box are the bones of an Eskimo dog collected by members of an 1892 Greenland expedition to search for explorer Robert Edwin Peary Sr. Ghostly ratfish, their translucent bodies stained blue, intertwine in their liquid realm. They're all just dead things, really. But in them, Rosamond Purcell has found meaning, artistic expression, and a certain beauty.

ZOE STRAUSS is known as Philadelphia's pre-eminent street photographer, complete with a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that runs through April 22. But she's also a major Bruce Springsteen fan. In fact, on March 4, Strauss will discuss the influence of Springsteen's music on her own work and life at the museum. The connection between Strauss and Springsteen makes sense. Both (especially early Springsteen) champion the working class, shining a light on communities that are not in the forefront of the American conscience.

Lillian Bassman, 94, a magazine art director and fashion photographer who achieved renown in the 1940s and '50s with high-contrast, dreamy portraits of sylphlike models, then reemerged in the '90s as a fine-art photographer after a cache of lost negatives resurfaced, died Monday at her home in New York. Ms. Bassman entered the world of magazine editing and fashion photography as a protégé of Alexey Brodovitch, the renowned art director of Harper's Bazaar. In addition to providing innovative graphic design, she gave prominent display to future photographic stars like Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, and Louis Faurer, whose work whetted her appetite to become a photographer herself.

PITTSBURGH - Charles "Teenie" Harris had a photographic mission: going beyond the obvious or sensational to capture the essence of daily African American life in the 20th century For more than 40 years, Harris - as lead photographer for the influential Pittsburgh Courier newspaper - took almost 80,000 pictures of people from all walks of life: presidents, housewives, sports stars, babies, civil rights leaders, cross-dressing drag queens....

Zoe Strauss is a genius - not at photography, at which she's merely talented, but at marketing. She developed one brilliant concept, an annual outdoor exhibition of her work under the I-95 elevated expressway in South Philadelphia, then parlayed that into inclusion in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and now into a mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This level of professional success would take most artists far longer,...

H OW THE HELL does she do it? Looking at one of Zoe Strauss' photographs, it's an easy question to ask. Strauss' great talent is being able to capture the intimate moments of total strangers - stark images mostly of working-class life, people and places rarely in the spotlight. Take "Victoria's Hysterectomy Scar," a photo shot in Philly in 2004 that's part of "Zoe Strauss: 10 years," a midcareer retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art beginning tomorrow.

When Zoe Strauss was growing up, she was on the move. There were stops in Mayfair and the Northeast. Queen Village. Point Breeze. Logan Circle. But now, after 15 years on Dickinson Street in South Philly - the longest she's lived anywhere as an adult - the photographer, who has a huge show of work about to open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, feels home. The rowhouses, the neighbors, everything on top of everything else. Even the urinary activities of New Year's Day Mummery hold a kind of charm.

Joseph Nettis, 83, of Spring Garden, who celebrated people in his hometown and all over the world in his photos, died Wednesday, Nov. 2, at Hahnemann University Hospital from complications of a fall at home. Mr. Nettis discovered the magic of creating photographic images when he was 12 and visited a friend who had a darkroom in his home in West Philadelphia. The next day, he purchased $2 worth of equipment for his own darkroom. Mr. Nettis graduated from Overbrook High School, where he was the photographer for the newspaper and the yearbook.

The smiles were extraordinary. They outshone even the flashing cameras of a dozen volunteer photographers who on Saturday turned Inglis House into a giant studio - offering the severely disabled a holiday gift: the simple dignity of a formal portrait. "It was my first time getting my picture taken," said Shadia Dixon, 22, struggling to speak from her wheelchair. The shoot at the Philadelphia long-term-care facility was part of Help-Portrait, a national project whose concept is both elegant and powerful: Photographers lend their talent to take portraits of people in need - homeless men, single mothers, Army vets, sick kids, the poor, the disabled, the old and the lonely - and then give them the framed picture.