One photography book I certainly won’t be reading

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It’s An Introduction to Camera Game: How to Seduce Women Through Photography and it’s described on Amazon.com as follows:

Photography is an art that is as enriching as it is seductive. It can open up new ways of looking at the world, train you to become more social, and create opportunities to meet an endless amount of attractive women. This guide will: Suggest the proper equipment needed to get started. Teach you techniques to become proficient using a camera. Explain different ‘projects’ that will make it easy for you to approach girls on the street and get them excited to be involved in your photos. Include tips on how to easily set up dates and seduce the women you meet. And much more… If you are interested at all in photography and meeting women, An Introduction to Camera Game is the best place to get started.

Thankfully the reviews are, with a couple of exceptions, universally bad. Even though I’m not a professional photgrapher, nor am I female, one of the comments pretty much sums up my own views:

As a professional (female) photographer, this makes my blood boil. There are already too many predatory photographers in this world who coax girls into “modeling” for them, when their intentions are simply to get a girl in an isolated setting and (usually) semi-undressed. This book encourages sexual harassment between “photographers” and models, and damages the reputation of the rest of the professionals in our industry. DO NOT purchase this book and support someone who thinks that photography is a means to “seduce” women.

Robert Capa – The Definitive Collection

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Almost a year ago (Novemeber 14, 2016 to be precise) I came across Robert Capa’s Grave in a nearby cemetery (See: Amawalk Hill Cemetery – The Big Surprise). Capa was, of course, a photographic “great”, possibly the best known of all war photographers. I was familiar with some of his work (e.g. the Normandy pictures, an example of which appears above; Falling Soldier etc.), but beyond that didn’t know much other than that he was killed in Vietnam in 1954 after stepping on a land mine.

So I decided to find out more, and after looking around for a bit came across this book, which I promptly ordered. It arrived and seems to have been promptly moved downstairs (I suspect tidied away at the request of my wife when we had visitors). So “out of sight, out of mind” I forgot that I had it until the other day when some reference to Capa made me think of it. I pulled it out and read through it.

The book is the brainchild of Cornell Capa (himself a renowned photographer and founder of the International Center of Photography and Richard Whelan – interestingly they are both buried next to Robert Capa in Amawalk Hill Cemetery).

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Robert Capa grave site in Amalwalk Hill Cemetery. From left to right: David Richard Whelan (biographer); Edith Capa (wife of Cornell Capa); Cornell Capa; Julia Friedman Capa (mother of Robert and Cornell); Robert Capa).

In a section entitled “About the Photographs” Cornell Capa says the following:

Between 1990 and 1992, Richard Whelan and I rexamined all of Robert Capa’s contact sheets. From the approximately 70,000 negative frames that my brother exposed during his lifetime, we chose 937 images to constitute an in-depth – though certainly not exhaustive – survey of his finest work over the entire course of his career, from 1932 to 1954. The images are arranged here by photographic story and in chronological order, tracing the trajectory of his life. Nearly half of the 937 images have never been widely published or exhibited. Our principal goal was to identify images whose emotions and graphic impact measures up to, or at least comes close to, the impact of Capa’s classic photographs. In a very few cases, however, we included less powerful photographs in order to give coherence to a group of pictures that work together as a story, but which would not necessarily hold up as individual images.

Whelan provides an interesting, illustrated 11 page introduction and the rest of the book is devoted to the photographs, each with a usually short, quite dry caption. I much preferred the longer, more descriptive captions in Karsh. A Biography in Images. The photographs are, for the most part, wonderful, but there are so many that it’s all a bit overwhelming. This has had a few negative consequences: many of the photographs are quite small; and the book is rather large and heavy. As I usually read while sitting in a chair or on the sofa I found it quite difficult to hold comfortably. It’s more suited to reading on a stand on a table. I also found the typeface used to be hard to read. It’s a typewriter style font, and at times, when a lighter text is used, it tends to blend into the background.

I’d also take exception to Cornell Capa when he says “In a very few cases, however, we included less powerful photographs…”. I’d say that quite a few “less powerful photographs” have been included. Of course I’d have been proud to have produced any of them, but a lot of the photographs are not close to his best (just goes to show that even the greatest photographers don’t always produce winners).

I’m sure that there are books on Capa out there that include fewer photographs and consequently are more focused and easier to hold and to read. For potential readers who just want to know a bit more about Capa, I’d recommend one of those (maybe even his own memoir Slightly Out of Focus – although this seems to focus on the WWII period and so might leave out some of the wonderful Spanish Civil War pictures.). Since this volume is mostly about Capa’s pictures it might also be worth reading a biography, such as the one written by Richard Whelan: Robert Capa: A Biography.

Despite the issues noted above, I very much enjoyed this book. I feel sure that I’ll return to it from time to time to look again and again at the photographs, each time getting new insights and a better understanding.

Karsh. A Biography in Images

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I recently purchased this book: Karsh. A Biography in Images. Of course I was familiar with his famous picture of Winston Churchill, but other than than I really didn’t know much about Yousuf Karsh’s work.

Now I do, and I’m really impressed. I’m somewhat in awe of the great portrait photographers. They make it look so easy, when in reality it isn’t at all. And I suspect that Karsh may well have been the best of them. He seems to have the knack for getting inside his subjects and understanding them very well indeed.

The book is titled: “a biography” and indeed there’s a foreword by Malcolm Rogers (Ann and Graham Gund, Director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and a commentary by Jerry Fiedler (Yousuf Karsh curator), which takes the form of a short introduction to each of the three major sections: The Early Years; On Assignment; and Portraits. Other than that everything is by Karsh. There’s a 16 page introductory section entitled “Reminiscences” written by Karsh himself, and each of the photographs has a, sometimes lengthy, caption – also written by Karsh. As an example this is what he had to say about the Picasso portrait above:

Pablo Picasso. 1954. The maestro’s villa was a photographer’s nightmare, with his boisterous children bicycling through vast rooms already crowded with canvases. I eagerly accepted Picasso’s alternate suggestion to meet later in Vallauris at his ceramic gallery. “He will never be here”, the gallery owner commented, when my assistant and two hundred pounds of equipment arrived. “He says the same thing to every photographer”. To everyone’s amazement, the “old lion” not only kept his photographic appointment with me but was prompt and wore a new shirt. He could partially view himself in my large format lens and intuitively moved to complete the composition.

With so much written by Karsh himself, it feels much more like an autobiography than a biography.

And then there are the photographs: more than 100 of them. Amazing! Apart from the Churchill and Picasso pictures my personal favorites are Turban (Betty Low); Fidel Castro; Audrey Hepburn; George Bernard Shaw; Ernest Hemingway; and Albert Einstein.

Best money I’ve spent in some time. Now if only I could take portraits like these.

Leica An Illustrated History by James Lager

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I just came across this post by James Tocchio on the Casual Photofhile site.

In his first paragraph the author writes:

There are lots of books covering the famous red dot from Germany, and most Leica fans are dedicated enough that their shelves hold more than a few of these, but there’s just one set that every real Leicaphile (and any true photo geek) needs to own. It’s James Lager’s three-volume Leica An Illustrated History, and the collected volumes are without a doubt the prettiest, most exhaustive, and best-researched books on Leica you can buy today.

It consists of three volumes: Vol 1: The Cameras; Vol 2: The Lenses; Vol 3: The Accessories.

From the pictures and description in the post it certainly seems impressive. Unfortunately the price is similarly impressive: after a quick look on Amazon.com I’ve discovered that each volume seems to fetch about around $125 and up – too much for me I’m afraid. But then I can’t afford to buy modern Leica cameras either. I imagine that if you have the money to buy a typical Leica a few hundred dollars is peanuts.

Focus

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Although I do most of my reading on my Amazon Kindle, I tend to prefer reading photography books in hard copy. I feel that the Kindle does not do justice to the photographs. I was in Barnes and Noble one day and felt like reading something photography related. They didn’t have very much and most of what little they had I had already read.

I’d looked at this book in the past, but since I’m not much interested in fashion photography I hadn’t bought it. I think the cover image and the title: Focus. The secret, sexy, sometimes sordid world of fashion photographers had put me off it a bit too.

But I really wanted to read something photography related, and this was the only option available, so I bought it. I didn’t expect to like it very much and was pleasantly surprised when I did.

Of course I was already familiar with some of the names: Richard Avedon (although I hadn’t realized that he was such a colossus in photography), Irving Penn (who of all the people in the book I was most familiar with), Terry Richardson (whose name I’d heard because of the controversies but whose work I was not familiar with), Helmut Newton, maybe David Bailey but most of the other names (e.g. Melvin Sokolsky, Jerry Schatzberg, Terence Donovan, Brian Duffy, Bert Stern, Bill King, Patrick Demarchelier, Pierre Houlès, Gilles Bensimon, Mike Reinhardt, Arthur Elgort, Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, Bob Richardson) I’d barely heard of.

Of course the “sexy”, “sordid” aspects of the field come through (e.g. the author mentions the apparently enormous size of Gilles Bensimon’s penis several times). And I found the rather sad lives of some of the photographers (e.g. Ben Stern, Bill King, Bob Richardson) to be rather touching.

For the first time I know a bit about Vogue, Harpers Bazaar (e.g. did you know that until 1929 the magazine was called ‘Harpers Bazar’?), Elle etc. I know who Diana Vreeland and Anna Wintour are/were. And I’m more aware of the important role of the Art Director (e.g. Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman). I’m also rather more familiar with how fashion magazines have evolved over the years.

An interview with the author can be found at: Michael Gross Discusses His Provocative New Book on Legendary Fashion Photographers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.