Hannes Wallrafen is a highly acclaimed Dutch/German photographer who lost his eyesight 10 years ago at the height of his career. Wallrafen is famous for his staged photography through which he seeks to translate time into engineered images. His work can be regarded as personal interpretations of local history: storytelling at its core. In the seventies and eighties Wallrafen used his camera to denounce injustice.

Luigi Colani was a pioneering German industrial designer whose varied oeuvre includes objects from sunglasses to trucks and furniture. “We should look to the superiority of nature for the solutions,” the artist said when describing the influence of nature on his designs. “If we want to tackle a new task in the studio, then it’s best to go outside first and look at what millennia-old answers there may already be to the problem.” The designer’s works are in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, among others.

Martin Lewis died in obscurity in 1962; a retired art teacher who had found some success in his early career, but was largely forgotten after the Great Depression took away the demand for his craft, leaving Lewis to spend his last three decades teaching other people how to etch. History chose Edward Hopper, but Martin Lewis was his mentor.

Today's social media landscape can make anonymity hard to come by. And yet, Banksy, the British graffiti artist whose works have caught the eye of average viewers and critics alike for decades has managed to maintain his. The elusive figure has succeeded in rising to great fame and navigating the art world without ever revealing his true identity. His art is sharply critical, putting modern societal ills on display with a unique brand of satire and stenciling.

Vivian Maier was an American street photographer whose body of work was only discovered after her death. Maier took over 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, capturing the people and architecture of Chicago on a Rolleiflex camera as she walked the city on her days off. Born on February 1, 1926 in New York, she moved to Chicago in 1956, working as a nanny for wealthy families in the North Shore neighborhood. Her work has been compared to Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Weegee, both for her spontaneous shooting style and for her fascination with human behavior.

Wim Crouwel (Dutch, 1928–2019) was a giant figure in the history of graphic design. Crouwel produced an astonishing body of work that is at once functional and experimental, objective and personal. He designed some of the iconic typefaces such as New Alphabet and Gridnik, following an extraordinary career from designer to teacher to curator to museum director.

Jean Giraud, better known by his pen name Moebius, remains one of the most influential cartoonists of all time whose signature blend of psychedelic fantasy and surrealism formed the aesthetic blueprint of modern sci-fi. Working in the Franco-Belgian style of bandes dessinées, popularised by The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix, Giraud’s seminal contributions ushered in a new age for comics and the visual arts generally.

Guy Bourdin was a preeminent French fashion photographer. Best known for his commercial work, often featuring glossy, boldly colored compositions of sensual women in meticulously posed, staged scenes laced with sardonic humor. He was among the first to produce distinctly narrative fashion editorials, creating images that challenged mainstream notions of beauty while celebrating popular fashions. He produced countless iconic images for high-profile magazines and clients that included Vogue, Chanel, Gianni Versace, and Bloomingdale's, launching his artistic career after befriending the Surrealist artist Man Ray in 1950, who would serve as a mentor and influence throughout Bourdin’s life. Credited with changing fashion photography in the latter half of the 20th century, Bourdin's legacy is extensive, with several exhibitions at institutions such as at Whitechapel Gallery in London, The Jeu de Paume in Paris, the National Art Museum of China, and the Venice Biennale in 1957. Born in Paris, France on December 2, 1928, he died on March 29, 1991 in the city of his birth.