You may have found yourself with some spare time (thanks COVID-19) recently. Or maybe you want to catch up on some of the best movies about photography!
Either way, we have a list for you, inspired by NJspots community member Mert Celik (@amc17photo).
In no particular order, here are some TV shows, movies, and documentaries to watch that are all about photographers and photography. Let us know if we missed any!
TV SHOWS
Check out these shows for quick viewing about our favorite subject — photography!
‘Through The Lens’ is a web series presented by ADORAMA. TTL looks at the evolving aesthetic of photography as seen through this generation’s creator class.
A profile of renowned photographer, Platon, is presented in episode 7. His photos have captured the souls of the average person on the street and many of our infamous world leaders.
Behind every powerful image is a powerful story. Uniting exploration, photography and the natural world, Tales By Light follows photographers from Australia and around the world as they push the limits of their craft.
Follow the story of photography in BBC Four’s six-part series The Genius of Photography. See some of the most famous photographs ever taken and find out more about what made them so very special.
MOVIES
All our fiction favorites!
Set during the final days of the admired photo development system known as Kodachrome, a father and son hit the road in order to reach the Kansas photo lab before it closes its doors for good.
A drama based on the true-life experiences of four combat photographers capturing the final days of apartheid in South Africa.
A mentally unstable photo developer targets a middle-class family after his obsession with them becomes more sick and disturbing than any of them could imagine. Starring Robin Williams.
A mod London photographer finds something very suspicious in the shots he has taken of a mysterious beauty in a desolate park.
A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
The longest of the three lists, but there is so much diversity here! Check out short films, documentaries, and old favorites here.
Sit in the grass alongside Belgian wildlife photographer Michel d’Oultremont as he waits and waits and waits some more for the perfect shot. A dreamily filmed exercise in patience.
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.
Emmy-winning filmmaker Jon Alpert chronicles the fortunes of three Cuban families over the course of four tumultuous decades in the nation’s history.
The life and work of photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has spent forty years documenting deprived societies in hidden corners of the world.
EVERYBODY STREET, directed by Cheryl Dunn, illuminates the lives and work of New York’s iconic street photographers – including Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Elliott Erwitt, Ricky Powell and Jamel Shabazz – and the incomparable city that has inspired them for decades.
Follow National Geographic photographer James Balog across the Arctic as he deploys time-lapse cameras designed for one purpose: to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers.
A film centering on the life and work of Ron Galella that examines the nature and effect of paparazzi.
A profile of the noted and extraordinarily cheerful veteran New York City fashion photographer.
A documentary film on photographer Murray Fredericks’ extreme journey’s to capture the heart of the world’s most featureless landscape on Lake Eyre, South Australia.
This film traces the artistic self-realization of Annie Leibovitz, from childhood through the death of her beloved friend, Susan Sontag, and includes snippets of Leibovitz’s last visual memories of Sontag.
The fascinating journey to find the mysterious “Afghan Girl” whose haunting gaze captivated the world in a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine cover.
Heinz Bütler interviews Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) late in life. Cartier-Bresson pulls out photographs, comments briefly, and holds them up to Bütler’s camera.
For more than forty years, Ralph Gibson has served as one of the few truly independent forces within photography.
