Inspire me!

I was having a great very (late) night chat to a friend photographer Paul Hoelen a while back about photographers that inspire, educate and challenge us. It may well have been at the end of a slightly boozy night and I may only have just remembered the conversation, but I thought that it would be great to start a list of photographers that I personally admire. It would be great if you feel like leaving a comment with any of your favourites.
I love being interoduced to new talent. So here goes, by no means exhaustive but at least I've finally come good on my word to get a list out there.

Australian

Trent Parke   Stills Gallery     Magnum
Trent is a photographer, not just any photographer and not just one who works as one. He lives it, his life seems to me to be the true meaning of 'living life through a lens'. He documents Australia, people, sydney, his life and everything inbetween. Fantastic black and white work in "Dream Life" and Beautiful Art/Doco interpretations in "The Christmas Tree Bucket"

Narelle Autio Stills Gallery
 Australian as an Australian Photographer gets. She is Trent Parkes partner and together they created the series "Seventh Wave" but her images have a grtit and realness that I will always shy away from in my own image making.

Alice Springs - Yes that is her real name (well changed from June Browne) She married fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Her images of people uncover a side of people that they don't want to show. Especially dramatic are her double portraits where she often used a straight/profil formula to create an amazing movement through the frame, (which includes the viewer).

Bill Henson - Created a lot of controversy a couple of years ago. All I can say is that standing in front of one of his prints will hit the mute button on most critics. They are beautiful, deep, provocative and extremely soulful. His images are where we should be in contemporary fine art photography.

Many of the Oculi Photographers

International

Ewrin Olaf - An amazing commercial photographer from the Netherlands who does a lot of personal work. His series of "Hope" and "Grief" ask more questions than they answer and his series "Royal Blood" has a wonderful tounge in cheek aproach. His high production values put a lot of contemoporary fine art photographer to shame.

Andreas Gursky - You really need to see these images in real life to fully appreciate them, they prove how scale can be used so effectively to create different reactions. He photographs the real word but creates hyper real images which are just that little bit unbelievable. I especially like his image of the Formula 1, a composite from something like 30 separate images.



Sebastiao Salgado - The most amazing, tragic and beautiful photo journalists ever. Check out his images from his book "Workers" which documented manual labour in the early 90's.  I especially like his image of a confruntation in the gold mines. This image to me captures what Henri Cartier Bresson coined "The decisive moment" (another good one to look up). If you look carefully you can see that moment when a oppressed magority finally cracks and one man decides that hes had enough and makes a stand. The energy in the image is stunning. To quoate another founder of Magnum "f11 and be there"

There are so many more. Ansel has to get a mention, as does Steichen, HCB, Kertesz, Man Ray, Blumenfeld, Chase Jarvis, Leibowitz and definatly Seliger... (below)

Now, any suggestions, who have I missed??