It's a form of foolishness to compile little lists of "bests." (Why limit yourself? Could you really look at ten movies over and over again? Eat only ten meals?) But here's one practical advantage of a "Desert Island" (DI) book list: it will probably reveal what's most important to you personally.
Most of my DI book list is small format B&W film photography. And as I was mulling over the list, more great books kept coming to mind. Where is James Ravilious? Elliott Erwitt? Eisenstadt? Salgado? Minor masters like Dan Weiner and Charles Harbutt? Larry Towell and Eugene Richards? Leonard Freed? The names kept coming. But they were all, or mostly, small format B&W film photographers. That's what I did; it's what I liked. I did it because I liked it and I liked it because I did it.
Ken Tanaka just told us that he is "thoroughly devoted to color photography" and color in photography, and that he has a "special shelf" where the most frequently viewed selections of his 750+ volume photo book library live. So what do you think the chances are that his special shelf does not contain mostly great examples of color photography? Whereas color was mostly missing from my list.
I have a friend who is devoted to esoteric fine art and avant-guarde photography. He has (or had, I don't know) a famous collection of 5,500 photobooks—and not a single volume of Ansel Adams or Joel Meyerowitz. Many of his books are extremely scarce and rare. And he likes books that are authored, as cohesive, self-contained artistic creations in themselves, as opposed to collections and compilations. I don't know which books he would save first in a house fire, but I'd bet heavily that the best-selling and quite common trade book Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer, a greatest-hits collection, which was on my list, wouldn't be in his arms as he exited.
John-Paul Caponigro was an early convert to digital imaging and is a master of Photoshop. Wouldn't you think his DI list would reflect his passion for those things?
My friend Andy Moursund, book dealer par excellence, has a photobook collection extracted from the many thousands of books that filtered through his bookshops over many years. He's always had a special feeling for books about New York City. When I asked him what he specialized in, he listed a number of things, then added, "...and books about New York City, of course." That "of course" seemed to imply that it was just natural that anyone would be interested in those. We could ask him, but I'll bet his DI list would contain several NYC books.
Geoff Wittig is a hardworking family doctor in nearby Dansville who has a passionate, longtime interest in landscape. He both paints and photographs, in color as far as I know. I've only heard stories of his book collection, which exceeds the space he has to contain it (it's definitely on my list to rectify that as soon as this COVID thing leaves us alone), but I'll bet money his personal DI list would contain mostly, or all, books of color landscape photography, and maybe painting too. And that he'd be left thinking of the landscape-in-color books he had to leave off.
Reveal
So such a list is only a reflection in a mirror. But, of course, our reflection in a mirror can reveal ourselves to ourselves. Because with only ten or twelve to choose, the things that really "get us where we live," the things that are really most important to us, the things we love best, will tend to crowd out the things were merely approve of, or admire because we think we ought to, or that we think others would enjoy.
So think about a DI list, if only because you'll see yourself reflected in it. Don't be shy—go for the gut. Include only the things you love the most. Maybe it will help clarify what you're actually most interested in, when push comes to shove.
Mike
Book o' the Week:
Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
James Weekes: "I am glad that you made it clear that these were your favorite books for a desert island and not the 'best' books. Best varies from person to person, favorite remains."
Geoff Wittig: "Thanks for the shout-out, Mike! I do indeed have a fairly extensive collection of color landscape photography monographs, including 'greatest hits' like Art Wolfe, Galen Rowell, and Christopher Burkett. But I also have lots of black and white landscape volumes. Ansel Adams, of course, but also Michael Kenna, Don Kirby and other contemporary masters. I just added a summary volume of Robert Adams' work, though now monographs on paintings are my main obsession. If the house was on fire, though...I'd be grabbing the Chris Burkett books and the exquisite Arion Press letterpress version of Ansel Adams' Sierra Nevada."
robert e: "Mike, you're also making a great case for the value of other peoples' 'desert island' lists, as a kind of specialist curation. I may not know much about niche 'X,' but that list by somebody who has been deep into it for decades is going to be a great place for me to start. All the better if said connoisseur is known to us."
Animesh Ray: "This necessarily will be a rather personal choice, which must be colored, subconsciously or otherwise, by personal experiences. I grew up by the banks of the Ganges. My connection with the big brown big-hearted river of my childhood must impose heavily on my choice if I am to be stranded on a desert island. I will take with me Raghubir Singh's The Ganges, if only to dream of those lost days."
Dave_lumb: "Strictly speaking a Desert Island list should number eight if you follow the format of the BBC radio programme. ;-) I compiled my list a while back, and it does reflect my interest in British, primarily rural, life."
Patrick Medd: "The definitive treatise on the male need to make lists is perhaps High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, which should certainly be in the list of top ten books about lists."
I hope this is not inappropriate as a comment here, but just wanted to share a recent discovery of a London-based indie publisher called Hoxton Mini Press. Noticed a few titles in my local Waterstones (equivalent to Barnes & Noble), so even though they're boutique, they seem to be doing quite well. I was particularly blown away by the print quality of a book called "Parklife" (see https://www.hoxtonminipress.com/collections/books/products/pre-order-parklife). Highly recommended to anyone based in the UK.
I did a bit of searching and really like the philosophy of the company, they're going for "an unashamed attempt to make books that draw on the best of the tradition of photobooks: niche, collectable, beautiful, sniffable books – but which don’t alienate the average reader. That means we want quality that is popular – a hard mix to find."
https://loupemag.com/photographers-in-publishing-an-interview-with-martin-usborne/
Posted by: Richard T | Tuesday, 12 April 2022 at 11:32 AM
Well, I started to make a DI list but it's a funny thing: it turned out to be mostly either books I don't own or books of paintings, and I can't be sure of the titles of the ones I don't own and I'm not at all a painter.
So, I very much want to see the lists that others come up with, especially the landscapists. There are lots of holes in my knowledge. I hope you get lots you can post here.
The "books I don't own" conundrum is this. I just finished a career as a librarian and the last 10 years or so were spent in a large central public library that had a very good art and photography collection. I didn't work anywhere near that collection so I didn't have any professional attachment to it; I could just wander up to those stacks on my coffee break and pick things off the shelf. I discovered Mark Ruwedel, Robert Adams, and Charles Harbutt that way, among many others. There was very little "competition" from other borrowers for this collection, amazingly, so I could renew these for weeks at a time, and then go back and get them again months or years later. It was awesome.
The books of painters are because I find lots of inspiration for my landscape and scenic photography from paintings. I own a few books of the painters I admire but also, of course, that same big library had lots of art books I could also borrow. Although there was more competition for the painters than for the photographers, it seemed.
Posted by: Phil | Tuesday, 12 April 2022 at 09:04 PM
The comments on photobooks are having an impact on me. Just ordered three books of David Plowden's work. Thanks for the push :)
Posted by: William A Lewis | Tuesday, 12 April 2022 at 11:08 PM
Apropos my previous comment, in which I spoke about only one book...Raghubir Singh's The Ganges...yes, that will be my only book of photographs. But upon re-reading, I see that you had asked a different question...you wanted a mirror that reflects the persona in 10 books. For me the other nine would be: 3 volumes of Feynman's Lectures in Physics, Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, Tagore's 'Gitabitan' (a collection of 2,232 songs composed by him), T. S. Eliot's collected poems, War and Peace, Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, and a copy of the Mahabharata edited in Bengali by Kashiram Das. I suppose few of your readers would connect to some of those in my list, but that's my list.
Posted by: Animesh Ray | Wednesday, 13 April 2022 at 02:33 AM