Let me add Joel-Peter Witkin. He spends months preparing each photograph, often combining references to, say, 17th-century European art, with sounds-gross-but-actually-beautiful dead body parts he finds in morgues. Often he’ll spends months AFTER taking the photo, burnishing or scratching its surface in creative ways.
I also recommend an inexpensive book: The Photograph as Contemporary Art, by Charlotte Cotton (Thames and Hudson, 2004). Pithy descriptions, with well-reproduced samples, of hundreds of living photographers and their aestjetic and thematic contexts.
Philippe Halsman. He did the photo Dali Atomicus (you’ve probably seen it; the one where Salvador Dali is floating in the air painting while cats and water are being tossed at him). He has some pretty interesting photos to his name.
BTW, a great reference to obscure and not-so-obscure photos and photographers is The Photo Book by Phaidon. It’s a small, thick book with hundreds of great photos from the 1800s to present day, with explanations of the pictures and photographers. I highly recommend it.
Did anyone mention Cindy Sherman? All (?) of her photos are self-portraits, except that she spends a lot of time beforehand preparing herself to assume a fictional role in the photo – sometimes historical, sometimes ironically referential, sometimes just plain bizarre.
Plus, she was romantically involved with Steve Martin for a while.
Her most recognized work are the self-portraits (Untitled Film Stills and the such). However, she also has quite a body of work with dolls, masks, and clowns.
A second vote for Karsh. Also see work of young talented black photographer Charlie T (may be listed as Charzette Torrence.) Especially good for students whose background is not “white bread.” I think they have a collection of her work at the Schomburg Center in Harlem, possibly also at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies.