It seems that my family finds it difficult to decide what to get me for Christmas. For many years now I have made an Amazon.com wish list, which they then choose from. Typically it contains books, CDs, DVDs, the occasional electronic gadget; maybe something to assist with my cooking.
This year I got, among other things, a number of photography-related books, specifically:
Why People Photograph by Robert Adams
Aperture Magazine Anthology – The Minor White Years 1952-1976. Edited by Peter C. Bunnell.
A History of the Photgraphic Lens by Rudolf Kingslake.
The Photographer’s Eye by John Szarkowski.
Annie Leibovitz at Work by Annie Leibovitz.
I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but even just browsing through them they seem very interesting.
The Adams book is a collection of essays on selected topics e.g. colleagues, humor, collections, writing, teaching, money, dogs followed by sketches of a number of famous photographers including Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Laura Gilpin, Judith Joy Ross, Susan Meiselas, Michael Schmidt, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Eugene Atget. The collection closes with three chapters on ‘working conditions’.
The Aperture anthology is quite a thick book. The preface says: “It is not a comprehensive reprint of the issues, but rather a highly selective anthology of texts that were published in the magazine. While a selection of photographs has been chosen from those illustrating the original articles, and several spreads from two image-drive issues consisting mainly of images are reproduced to give a sense of sequence, the focus here is on words….The goal is to give the reader a sense of ‘Aperture’ and the range of subjects that White and his colleagues addressed during his editorship, and to reflect on the development of serious art photography during the period 1952-1976”
The Kingslake volume. Absolutely fascinating. Couldn’t understand a word. Actually that’s not true. I could understand quite a bit, but there’s still a lot that’s beyond me at the moment. I’ll keep plugging away at it until I can understand more.
The Photographer’s Eye. Divided into an introductory essay and five sections (The thing itself; The Detail; The Frame; Time; and Vantage Point. Each section begins with a couple of paragraphs of text followed by a series of photographs. Very easy to ready and the photos are lovely.
They Leibovitz book will appeal to anyone interested in how a real life photographer actually works. The fact the Leibovitz’s takes pictures of some of the world’s most famous celebrities gives this a sort of ‘voyeuristic’ appeal.
