Seventeen years ago, when digital photography and the Internet were still very much in their infancy, Michael Reichmann and Chris Sanderson started The Luminous Landscape. With his no-nonsense approach, vast experience and technical knowledge, and objective, even-handed approach, Reichmann shaped how we write and think about photography in the modern age.
In addition to The Luminous Landscape, Reichmann was a highly accomplished photographer. He owned a fine art gallery in Toronto, gave his first of many exhibitions in 1963, and even had several documentaries produced about his work as early as 1964. He taught photography at the college level, gave workshops worldwide, authored hundreds of articles and reviews, and was a contributing editor at Photo Techniques Magazine and a columnist for American Photo magazine. He served as a consultant to photography companies for product design and marketing, held six U.S. patents for communications technology, and was the head of product development for two software companies. He also founded two publicly listed technology companies. He was an incredibly accomplished and widely respected figure in the photography industry.
He also founded The Luminous Endowment, which gives grants to photographers worldwide. Chris Sanderson and Kevin Raber intend to continue both The Luminous Landscape and The Luminous Endowment. You can donate to the endowment here. We all owe Michael a debt of gratitude for his knowledge, hard work, and kindness.
[via The Luminous Landscape]
Luminous Landscape was one of the sites I used to visit when I first started out in digital photography over a decade ago, the wealth of information available was second to none back then. Strangely HP used to recommend their engineers visit his site to learn about user problems when using wide carriage printers alongside official documentation at least when I was a service engineer I was advised to.
It's a sad loss indeed to the community and he will be missed.
I never met Michael, but about 12 years ago, I emailed him, thinking I would never hear from him. To my surprise, he wrote me right back! We ended up corresponding a dozen or so times over the years and he always wrote me as if we were peers and friends. This also extended to the authors he chose to contribute to the site and to the civility of the forum on LL. He contributed as much or more to the transition from film to digital as anyone else and never asked for so much as a thank you from all of us.
RIP Michael.
RIP Michael Reichmann