The 10 to 25 Books

The other day, in a post about The Americans, a reader named Paul asked:

"Mike, any chance perhaps of giving us your opinion on the 10 or 25 most important and influential photography books in the last fifty or more years? Those books any kid new to photography could use to educate his eye and not with the idea of making a monetary investment."

I did answer his question in the comments to the post. However, as I've mulled it over since then (I love books, I love lists, and I have an essentially schoolteacherish cast of mind, so you can understand how Paul's request would appeal to me), I've come around to realizing just how impossible compiling such a list would be.

I certainly see the appeal of a "teaching set" of books that could serve as a sort of basic encylopædia of the medium's accomplishments. But as I proceed to imagine it in its particulars, the obstacles seem more and more multi-dimensional and profound. The two limitations I mentioned in my answer in the comments were 1) limitations of availability and 2) the limitations of my (or any list-compiler's) taste and critical judgment. In truth the problems extend much further than that.

The Americans happens to be a very neat-and-clean package for the photo book library builder, for many reasons. For one thing, it's one coherent body of work, and book form was its original and entire form. Secondly, it's clearly a major work of the 20th century. Third, it's essentially its author's only major work, or at least his only work that had anywhere near so much impact (that is to say, if your library contains just The Americans and no other Robert Frank, you wouldn't be impoverished by missing large and necessary parts of his contributions). And finally, it's available right now in essentially a "perfected" form (the current Steidl reprint, which I gather is not shipping quite yet despite all the hoopla. Grrr).

Unfortunately, very few photographers or movements can be summed up anywhere near so neatly. Let's take a couple of counterexamples one by one:

Limitations of availability: Just consider Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1952 book The Decisive Moment. Beautifully printed with gorgeous gravure printing that is almost a lost art today, it's never been reprinted. That's "never" as in never. Not only that, but the original book was incredibly fragile: the binding practically falls apart if you look at it wrong, and the dust jacket has a high lignin content and has usually become foxed and browned and gotten dry and brittle with age—some dust jackets you see have such large chunks missing they look like maps of the world. A great many copies are in extremely poor condition—despite which, you'll never find one for less than about $1,200 in anywhere near acceptable condition. A few years ago, for a small commission, I sold one for a reader. It was in middling condition for a TDM, poor condition for a photo book generally, and we got $1,800+ for it.

Constrictions of taste and critical judgment: One of the better book collections I know about belongs to a photographer friend who split his time between the U.S. and Berlin in the '80s and '90s. He amassed a 5,500+ volume collection of leading-edge art photography books, many of them European. In the whole collection, there was not one single volume of Ansel Adams or Joel Meyerowitz, much less any more populist photographer than they. If I were to compile even a much shorter list of books as a recommendation for readers, it would include Meyerowitz's perennial bestseller Cape Light and at least one decent volume of Adams (whose catalogue raisonné 400 Photographs is so far the all-time TOP-linked best-seller). Neither of us is right or wrong: Adams and Meyerowitz are easy to enjoy and have been popular and influential, so they'd be good for any student or generalist to know about. But just as surely, they would never fit in my friend's much more esoteric collection, despite its size.

Photographers with no single coherent body of work: Many photographers who worked partially as professionals, or who were what you might call "aesthetically peripatetic," are difficult to distill into one book. The example of this I used to use was David Douglas Duncan, whose superb book War Without Heroes (Harper and Row, undated—c. 1970) is one of the greatest books of war photography ever made (and a gorgeous example of bookmaking, too—sheet-fed gravure). Duncan, who was lionized in the popular photography magazines of his day, also did a book of color multiple exposures of flowers, and was one of the best documenters of his friend Pablo Picasso.

I suppose, however, that he's not the best example, because you just don't need his Picasso pictures unless Picasso is a particular passion of yours, and no collection needs his "prismatics" (the color multiple exposures).  So I suppose a better example would be someone like Philipe Halsman or Andreas Feininger. Important figures of their times, both of them, but all over the place in terms of their work; Feininger is cited in Photographic Artists & Innovators for close-up work, street scenes, nature studies, and architecture—in black-and-white and color! I don't have anything by either of them.

Photographers whose work was not originally in book form: Look no further than Eugene Atget for an example. Wonderful photographer with an extensive body of work of one great subject, rescued at the very last minute from oblivion by Berenice Abbot, later championed as a major figure by a major curator. In Atget's case we do at least have a definitive retrospective: John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg's four-volume The Work of Atget (Museum of Modern Art, 1981–85). Except for those with a special interest in France, French photographers, or street scenes, however, four volumes might be a bit too much Atget. Even then there's a good choice: Szarkowski, whose curatorial attention elevated Atget to the highest rank, published a single volume, called simply Atget (Museum of Modern Art, 2004) which has superb reproductions and essays to go with every picture—definitely the book to have for the generalist, given that Szarkowski is such an outstanding writer and was so closely connected to the history of the work. That's my opinion; there are of course numerous other choices and other collectors might feel differently. 

Photographers who have more than one major work: Lee Friedlander (who, like Robert Adams, might be said to work with books as virtually his medium) has two books available right now that illustrate this point. One's a reprint of the early (1970) Self-Portrait, an important period-piece of iconoclastic 1960s introspection and self-revelation, and the beautifully-made Lee Friedlander Photographs Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes—entirely different subject matter made with a very different kind of camera, and his most recent title. Both solid, well-made books. So if you would like one title of his in your collection, which should you choose? And if you buy both, how to do you reconcile not having his factory workers, his musicians, his public monuments, his nudes? You could buy a retrospective, but the one currently available is in my opinion not a good way to see Friedlander: the reproductions are poor and the layout much too busy. Some of the pictures are so small you can't even really "see" them. Much better is the 1989 retrospective Like a One-Eyed Cat (Harry N. Abrams), which is one of my personal all-time favorite photobooks. But it's not available any more.

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Or consider Emmet Gowin. I treasure Gowin's early work of his wife and her family, collected in his 1976 Knopf book Photographs (Sally Mann named her son Emmet in honor of Gowin), but his later work, consisting of Frederick-Sommer- esque landscapes, leaves me, if not cold, then unconcerned. I know where I come down on such a decision: get the 1976 book and pass on the later ones. But that's just me. Is that decision really defensible overall? A pure landscape photographer could well decide to do just the opposite.

Emmet Gowin, Nancy, Danville, Virginia, 1969, from the 1976 classic Emmet Gowin: Photographs. Sally Mann has this picture framed and hanging in her kitchen.

Photographers whose work isn't major: One of my particular treasures is a signed copy of Charles Harbutt's Travelog (1973, MIT Press). A couple of other titles I have that I wouldn't want to be without: Heinrich Zille Photographien Berlin 1890–1910 (1975, Schirmer-Mosel), and Leonard Freed: Photographs 1954–1990 (W. W. Norton, 1992). (I have a particular interest in Magnum photographers.) Another book that comes to mind is of the work of Paul Martin, an early English printmaker-turned-snapshooter (I'd tell you more about it but I, um, can't find it at the moment. It's in the "it's around here someplace" collection, which in my house is a large repository). Harbutt, Zille, Freed, Martin: probably not household names, and probably wouldn't make the short list of the greatest or most significant figures in photography's history. But the books are gems, and in my case will be pried, as they say, from my cold, dead hands.

A question of balance
As a matter of balance, I've always felt that the really major names deserve inclusion in my collection, whether or not I really like them or not, but, as I go deeper into history's list of more minor figures, I'm justified in indulging my own particular tastes more and more. That in itself is a personal "principle of collection" that anyone else is free to agree or disagree with, adopt or ignore.

But there's more to it even than that. In constructing a coherent collection covering all of photography, a sense of balance is crucial. Do you draw the line at individual artists? That might be foolish. My collection, for example, contains numerous volumes of Daguerreotypes and also of snapshots. How important are those two genres of photographs to a broader understanding? And if you wanted only one volume of each, what title is good enough to serve as an overview while also being a beautiful, cohesive, and well-made book in and of itself?

Do you include histories? I have many, perhaps understandably given my activities as a teacher and a writer on the subject. A general library, however, might reasonably include only one or two. But which?

And what about photography from other countries? As I was researching this post, I came across a list of the 53 greatest books of Japanese photography. As I was mulling over the implications of a list of 53 Japanese titles to Paul's proposed "10 or 25 most important and influential photography books in the last fifty or more years," I was amused to note that the blogger who had posted the list then added several more titles which he considered essential but that had been left off the main list by the original compiler. You can see how dicey this gets, and how quickly.

What about biographies of photographers? I wouldn't want to be without Jim Hughes' W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance, to name just one.

We haven't even broached the subject of technical books and criticism.

Finally, there are areas of specialty. The critic A. D. Coleman is greatly preoccupied with surreal and constructed photographs, extending to works of art made with photographic components. As more of a "purist," this is not a big concern of mine, and the whole category is reduced, on my shelves, to a mere single title: Joshua Smith and Merry Foresta's The Photography of Invention (1989, MIT Press), which, incredibly, is still in print, despite being a show catalog from a show I saw nearly two decades ago.

I'm sure you can name other areas of specialization, extending into the distance: color photography; portraiture; architectural photography; large format; 19th century; Czech photographers; show catalogs; the list could go on and on and on.

Principles of collection
Finally, there's the matter of personal "principles of collection," which every book collector should set for him- or herself. The term refers to your own self-defined parameters and guiding principles you decide to follow as you build up your library. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool generalist, but many collectors love to specialize narrowly, sometimes extremely narrowly. It would be possible to build a collection just of books from one publisher; just of books from one decade; just the photography of one nation; just of a particular kind of book (self-published and POD titles would be one good idea right now). You might limit yourself to just one photographer—I'm sure some collectors do.

Any highly specialized collection doesn't speak to Paul's original question, but it's an important aspect of collecting.

I'm also not a "completist." I seldom want every book by any one photographer, and I never look for the best way to get all of a photographer's pictures, or the most I can get. I'd rather have a well-chosen sampling of their best and most characteristic work. To take just two examples, the evergreen Aperture Arbus monograph and Patricia Bosworth's biography of Arbus are together enough to "cover" Arbus in my library, since her work isn't particularly important to me personally. (A bigger fan of Arbus will have a rich lode to mine.) I have much more Walker Evans, but, similarly, for someone to whom Evans wasn't all that important, the beautiful 50th Anniversary edition of American Photographs, the ubiquitous MoMA retrospective catalog, and James Mellows' biography would "cover" him.

Strike while the iron...
Still, the absolute key point that overrides all others is availability. It's all well and good for a major survey like Andrew Roth's The Book of 101 Books to name, say, Edward Curtis's 1907 masterpiece The North American Indian as one of the greatest photographic books ever; but original copies of that book are now museum pieces, and will elude all but the richest or luckiest collector. I don't happen to know if that particular book has ever been reprinted entire, but the work of Curtis has been endlessly reprised in collection after collection, ranging in quality from reverent and excellent to opportunistic and deplorable. The problem then becomes—assuming you want some—how do you get some Curtis into your own library in a sensible and efficient way? As is the case when collecting work by a great many photographers, my biggest concern is reproduction quality. For this reason, my choice with Curtis is the excellent Native Nations: First Americans as Seen by Edward Curtis (Bulfinch, 1993). It's a very well-made book, with an essay by the leading Curtis scholar, Christopher Cardozo, and a leading Plains Indians scholar, George P. Horse Capture. And the reproductions, if a trifle goosed-up in contrast and gloss compared to Curtis's sedate originals, are glorious. Native Nations is not in itself a particularly valuable or rare book, and it's certainly not the only way to represent Curtis in a book collection. It's just where I happened to land when I was coping with that particular problem.

Edward S. Curtis, Mosa, Mojave, 1903

A similar case I haven't yet been able to solve is August Sander. There's a 7-volume complete set out, but I haven't seen it and I haven't heard good things about the repro quality. No general photography book collection should leave Sander unrepresented, but unfortunately I've seen his original prints, which are absolutely wonderful: very long-scaled in the shadows with deep, charcoal blacks. Most book reproductions, unfortunately, even those that aren't half bad, look like they were printed on newsprint by comparison. So the place-holder in my collection is the little pocket book from Schirmer's Visuelle Bibliothek. Why? Adequate reproductions. Not like the originals, but pleasing to look at.

These days, it's more important than ever to buy what you want when you can get it. Good luck finding the 50th Anniversary edition of American Photographs I just mentioned now—it's out of print and scarce. It's far from guaranteed to happen, but many times a book will go out of print and then shoot up in value so fast that it quickly gets out of reach. I can't emphasize it enough: if you want to collect a decent library, buy reprints of the great books when they come out. If I can get around to it, I'll try to put together a short list of obvious buys that are readily available right now.

Otherwise, your opportunities just pass by, and evaporate. An ironic case in point is Andrew Roth's magnificent The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago (and which I am lugubriously sad to say I don't own). It's a book about great photobooks, published in 2001. Not only did his listing instantly raise the value of all the books it mentions, but just take a look at this page, which lists a few copies of the now-out-of-print tome for sale. See what I mean?

______________________

Mike

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Comments

[Joe Reifer]

The Photobook: A History v.1 and 2 by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger are both quite fascinating, and in-print.

Here's an interesting photo book desert island exercise: Without planning or rules, go to your bookshelves and spend under 10 minutes pulling out your 10 desert island books. No putting stuff back. Just a quick pull until you have 10.

Cheers,

Joe

[andres]

Two most influented authors for me was two Chech photographers:
first Josef Sudek, second Jan Saudek. Probably because of they were available in Soviet times in my country (Estonia), but they are worth of looking at anyway. I cant find exact books online, for Sudek I found one, what is pretty steep in price, and thread in Leica forum, links posted below. For Saudek there is online gallery at least, but almost every book about their works are worth of every penny spent.

http://www.amazon.com/Josef-Sudek-Anna-Farova/dp/3929078554
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Fh4B

http://www.saudek.com/en/jan/fotografie.html
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/01378/facts.saudek.htm

[mcananeya]

Mike,

It has always seemed to me that the point of creating a list of the "best" or "most important" books/movies/albums/operas/etc. isn't really for the list to be RIGHT. Whether the list is right or not (in the absolute sense) is almost entirely beside the point, provided the list isn't so off-base that it isn't credible. Instead, the point is to (i) encourage discussion and debate among the intended audience as to whether the choices and rankings are right - thereby increasing interest in the subject matter, and (ii) give novices a place to get started.

By these criteria, it would be worthwhile to put up a list of books currently available new on Amazon and then sit back and let us all tell you why you're wrong!

Best,
Adam

[Scott Kirkpatrick]

I have the Sander 7 volumes (it's in another co,untry right now, but I don't remember that many separate volumes). I have no complaints about the reproduction quality. The set looks very much like the MIT Press editions of the Bechers' work ( of which I only have a few) and those are clean, well-presented and nice.

On the new "perfected" version of "The Americans," I'd really love to hear some comparison of this with the previous editions, as I am not sure how much of the hype about recropping, choosing new negatives, and the whole "Project Frank" will really make a difference to me. I have the 1970s Grossmann edition -- I like it, but is it considered a dog, one of the ones they didn't consult the author about...? Aahh, the demands of connoisseurship!

scott

[Jim Weekes]

Mike,

I hate to add to your toils; but the idea of an ongoing list of important books/reprints currently available and affordable would be a real asset that your readers could and would use. I cannot tell you how many books I have added to my collection since I started reading T.O.P. but I would put it north of 30. All have been and are enjoyed. I currently have The Americans and Helen Levitt's monograph on order through Amazon.

I love photo books and have collected them for 40 years. I have no idea of their worth in dollars but they are priceless for me in two ways, as collections of photos and as inspiration. I recently added Lee Friedlander's Sticks and Stones to my sagging Friedlander shelf and have been energized once again to photograph in black and white.

Consider an ongoing list of your current favorites with additions by readers and contributors. I believe that Geoff Wittig recommended the Helen Levitt.

Thanks,
Jim Weekes

[Stevez4]

The early editions of Aperture are a great resource IMHO as well as the books you list above. The reproduction quality was very good indeed.

[Sergey Botvin]

"If I can get around to it, I'll try to put together a short list of obvious buys that are readily available right now."

Dear Michael,
I sincerely hope that you'll find time to compile such a list.

Thank you.

[David Bennett]

Larry Burrows
Werner Bischof

[tompappas]

my personal favorite is Minor White's "Mirrors Messages Manifestations"

This is the first book of photographic book that is a work of art in and of itself - in my opinion.

[Carl Dahlke]

I think the world of photographic publishing is so immense that there is no possibility of covering it comprehensively with a personal collection unless you are wealthy and are willing to house a library sized collection.

Consider, for example, what we know of international photography. I have one book by an Italian photograper (the great Giacomelli). I have one book by an African photographer - that's a whole continent with one representative. I have books by only four Latin American photographers. And yet I've collected hundreds of monographs.

So I think there are a few keys to building a satisfying personal collection.

1. If you like it, buy it - it usually won't be available long, and you can always give up eating out a few times if you need to.

2. Don't insist on a photographer having a "body of work" in book form - as Mike said, someone like Robert Frank is well represented by one book. I have dozens of books by photographers who seem to have produced one excellent book, but who don't have an extended body of work publically available.

3. Don't insist on the photogher having fame - or even on their being modestly well known. For many of the "one book" photographers I love, I've never heard of them except for their one book. Even inside the photography community there are probably less than 200 photographers who would be considered famous. I think the American classical photography canon (Weston, Adams, Steiglitz, Evens, etc.) is closer to 20 than 200.

4. Buy outside your comfort zone from time to time. In many cases you have to live for awhile with work that's outside your comfort zone before it speaks to you. And if you finally decide that it was outside your comfort zone because it's crap - then it was just a book. I've bought a number of books that I finally decided were clinkers - so I just discarded them. There is another whole essay on how to intelligently buy outside your comfort zone.

5. Photography is happening now - don't believe that you have to collect monographs on the historical canon before you start collecting current work. The unobtainable classics of 2060 may be available right now.

6. America is not the universe - you can find great delights in photographers from other cultures.

[Geoffrey Wittig]

Excellent advice all around. It just makes sense to build a book collection based on what resonates with you personally, even if you're aiming to cover all the bases. For instance, I was vaguely aware of Emmet Gowin's highly regarded photographs of friends and family. But my tastes run more to landscapes, and I find his "Changing the Earth" a beautifully printed, solemn take on the post-human landscape, sort of like Robert Adams with implied sarcasm. It just fits my library better than his more typical work.

Edward S. Curtis's iconic Native American images warrant a spot in most libraries, at least those of American photography. A more recent volume with text by Chris Cardoza is "Sacred Legacy" (Simon & Schuster, 2000), still widely available. But Curtis's photographs were printed as photogravures in his landmark 1907 - 1930 multi-volume work, and as platinum prints for exhibition. Both those print forms are characterized by a long, delicate tonal scale rather than sparkling contrast. Most reproductions are overly dramatic. The best fidelity to Curtis's original version can be found in "Edward Curtis: The Master Prints" (Arena Editions, 2001). This was the catalog to an exhibition of platinum prints originally mounted in 1906 by Curtis himself, purchased as a set by an admirer, then forgotten in storage at the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA for 70 years. I've seen the original prints, and this book faithfully reproduces them. The thoughtful accompanying text locates Curtis firmly in the mainstream of pictorialism for his romanticized images of the Native Americans.

[Mike Fewster]

Somewhere up near the top of the list has to be any (all) of the Biil Brandt books. The English at Home. A Night in London. Camera in London. Literary London. Perspective of Nudes.
Or the Collection : Shadow of Light.
In a completely different photographic genre, Sam Haskins "Cowboy Kate" should get a mention somewhere on the list.

[Joseph Vavak]

I think it would be good if there was a monthly post or so highlighting a half-dozen or so photobooks that are coming out that month plus a list of release dates for the future.

It would be nice to find information like that all in one place, and it would make it easier to discover books that a person might not notice otherwise. TOP already does a great job of highlighting books from time to time so it would be a logical next step.

Andres mentioned Josef Sudek above. There's an Aperture monograph that's currently available that is a pretty good overview of his life and work. I think he deserves a spot in any collection.

[yunfat]

Mike,

You have really done great work recently with your essays, thanks for chipping away at this impossible task... great food for thought. Thanks also to the commentators and their contributions, I plan to reference this post frequently.

[dyathink]

Ohhh, a place of importance awarded in your post to the book i hold dearest to my heart, David Douglas Duncan's 'War Without Heroes'..i would like to share how i managed to own this extraordinary book. I happened to wander into a second-hand book store here in Costa Rica, owned by a real piece of crap Gringo (trust me). I browsed the shelves a bit and found this book. I had never heard of it or Duncan and, being very much a peace-nik i had no interest in war photography whatsoever. But as i turned the pages i became curiously very emotional and the Viet Nam war became as real and vivid as if i was standing in some rice paddy right alongside these marines. These could have been the guys i grew up with in NJ, the guys who got the low lottery numbers, the ones who couldn't beat the draft. My heart was pounding and tears were in my eyes as i asked the P.O.C. Gringo the price of the book. He told me some outrageous dollar amount and laughed at my dismay. He smugly informed me that the book was worth a lot of money on the internet and take it or leave it. I left it sadly behind.

A few months later i went back to visit "my marines"..i turned every single page, touching carefully the faces, the filthy hands, the artillery and once again asked the price and once again was informed that the asking price hadn't budged and wasn't about to. I argued, i implored, i reasoned, i did everything but stomp my feet and have a tantrum. The P.O.C. Gringo wouldn't budge. Again i left my book behind.

Fast forward about a year or so later and i was writing an e-mail to a friend who had been a Photojournalist in Viet Nam and suddenly in the middle of the e-mail i decided i could not live without this book. I never finished the e-mail, just drove as fast as i could to the book store. The book wasn't there. I searched. No 'War Without Heroes'. I asked for it and the P.O.C. Gringo pulled it out from under a counter, it's dust jacket showing a greater degree of wear then before but i didn't care. i got him down $25 and forked over the blood money. The book was mine, it was something like destiny. I felt like i had acquired a precious jewel and i revere the contents today as much as i did the first time i saw it. Good thing i acted when i did because a few weeks later the store was shuttered, the P.O.C. Gringo gone.

Another year or so later i happened to be in another book store owned by yet another Gringo but this time a good guy. I mentioned the P.O.C. guy and the good guy snarled and practically spit on the ground at the mention of the name. I told him the story of 'War Without Heroes' and he said "YOU'RE the one who bought that book?" That guy brags all over Costa Rica about how he took you for everything you were worth. I just laughed and shook my head..."No, I said, that book is priceless. It was Duncan's labor of love and respect for these soldiers and i consider it an honor to have liberated it from the wrong hands."

Thanks for the mention of this treasure and overall a fascinating read. I love photo books and really appreciate all the great reviews and recommendations in this blog.

[Roger Whitehead]

Michael,

An interesting post, as ever, but you seem to have veered off into concentrating on books on, about, or by individual photographers. Surely there are collections and conspectuses worth considering? For instance, I look through John Szarkowski's "The Photographer's Eye" every few months, just to refresh my mind and my eye.

Regards,

Roger

[Ken White]

I'm still on my journey to the East and not qualified to comment on the makings of a teaching or reference collection of photographic books.

Last weekend I picked up a copy of Portraits by Steve McCurry. I have never seen a body of color portraits with greater power and impact. I find myself looking the the images over and over. For some reason these images really speak to me.

[Gil Maker]

Mike:

I would like to add to your list: Any book by Wright Morris, an underappreciated photographer and writer.

[Dennis]

You can also find concise recommendations in a 1992 essay on building a photography library called "Building a Library of Photographic Books" by none other than Mike Johnston, printed in "The Empirical Photographer". I imagine the availability of some of the recommendations may have changed :)

I've had good luck with a couple of Mike's recommendations to date, including "The Photographers Eye" and Plowden's "Vanishing Point".

[Geoff Smith]

Re: Emmet Gowin -- not to diminish the importance and goodness of the 1976 book, but the 1990 book that accompanied the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition (also simply called Photographs) is a treasure in my opinion. It's out of print but still can be found for reasonable prices in either soft or hard cover. Though it's a "greatest hits" type of book (spanning the time from Virginia through his more Sommer-esque stuff and Petra and Changing the Earth), it's exquisitely sequenced and the repro is beautiful. A real gem.

[Will Sadler]

Does everyone here know about http://5b4.blogspot.com/? It is a blog dedicated exclusively to discussion of photobooks, run by the erudite Mr. Whiskets.

Thanks,

Will

[Christopher Lane]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the thoughtful and educational response. I had a query similar to Paul’s as well. You might be interested to note that a scanned version of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment is available online at http://www.e-photobooks.com/cartier-bresson/decisive-moment.html Not great, but at least you can look at it anytime you want for free. I, for one, would appreciate that “short list of obvious buys that are readily available right now”.

Chris

[David Bennett]

To Will Sadler's post -

Great link.

I followed the link to http://5b4.blogspot.com/ and then on to Mr Whiskets' book exchange and started running down the list of book titles and more and more it became clear that most had a haiku poetic obscure romantic evocative title, as though they had to or they just wouldn't cut it as a book of photographs.

Where did they pick up on the idea that this is the way to name a photograph book? Is it them, is it the publishers? Is it something they are lost in?

Because once I know that such and such a book is called "Lone Meadow Closing Far" or some such title, then I think - boy! is this person wrapped up in what they are doing and boy am I less than likely to want to step out on a gangplank with them into their personal vision.

It makes me think they all wanted to write stories or poems, but couldn't, so they wrote photographs.

Anyone feel likewise, or am I just in a grouchy mood?

[Paul McEvoy]

I think a list of books that are readily available might be a better idea than 25 books that you probably can't find.

On my list would definitely be
Irving Penn-Platinum Prints
John Cohen-There Is No Eye
Danny Lyons-The Bike Riders
Richard Avedon-The American West

Two less well known and a bit harder to find:
Albert Watson-Maroc
Linda Butler-Yangtzee Remembered

I think lists like this are important because I've met a lot of photographers who don't have a basic idea who some major touchstones of photography are. That's fine, I suppose, but I think your basic photographic education should include knowing Irving Penn backwards and forwards, and quite a few others, just like you know f-stops and shutter speeds and photoshop.

[Paul]

Mike;
Thank you so much for all the effort you have put into my request. This is the best online photography website without any utter doubt.Thanks to you Mike firstly with your monthly articles in BW photography, then your marvelous posts on the Sunday Photographer and finally your TOP blog I have managed through the years to get a pretty solid and educated knowledge on photography. Something which would have been virtually impossible where I currently live. Once again, cheers Mike
Paul

[robert e]

re Christopher Lane's post re The Decisive Moment on line:

Every time I revisit that site, I get a kick out of the fact that Mr. Cherpitel photographed the entire book, two pages at a time; and on good old Ilford FP4, no less.

[Bill Poole]

Note: In Chris's link to the Cartier-Bresson book, above, the period has gotten trapped in the hyperlink, breaking it. Copy and paste, without the period, of course, and it works fine, Great discussion.

Bill

[Rick Keir]

In a bizarre coincidence, the same day I read this post, I found a copy of David Douglas Duncan's War Without Heroes at a local used bookstore. I stop there fairly often, and I always watch for Duncan when I'm browsing the photo book section in any store, but this is the first time I've ever seen it anywhere.

I bought it, of course, and had a pleasant time last night browsing through it. Thanks for the article - it gave me some ideas for other photographers to watch out for.

[Carl Root]

If this topic generates another related one, I'd like to see the compiled list presented as a syllabus for a series of photography courses, actual or hypothetical.

I had an hour to kill yesterday between appointments. Dropped in to the local library and there it was - The Book of 101 Books. Checked that out, along with an HCB DVD.

[Chris Norris]

Someone above mentioned Jan Saudek. I stopped in at the Saudek museum in Prague because I was familiar with the photograph of his that was used for the cover of Soul Asylum's album Grave Dancer's Union. There is a large retrospective book of his work that is fairly easy to find in the states. It's utterly gigantic, available at big chain bookstores, and can be obtained cheaply. Mine was about $30.

[Ashton Lee]

Just a few that have influenced me greatly:

1) Edward Weston's Daybooks
2) Mark Klett "Revealing Territories"
3) David Douglas Duncan's "Yankee Nomad" (the book that made me a photographer when I first saw it in 1967)
4)Mary Ellen Mark's compiled work

[Thiago Silva]

"These days, it's more important than ever to buy what you want when you can get it. Good luck finding the 50th Anniversary edition of American Photographs I just mentioned now—it's out of print and scarce."

Add here the "blog" effect. Just by having an influential blogger like you mentioning a title, it is almost guaranteed that it will go out-of stock in a matter of weeks, or even days.

[Victor]

A book that is well worth the time to study is Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing - Pictures on a Page by Harry Evans

One key difference is that this book is about how to use photographs, more than just creating them!

[1250710388]

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