Books that shaped your photographic vision

Interesting to see mention of Andreas Feininger a few times above.

His book, Feininger on Photography, and his B&W photos of NYC were a big influence on me.
 
A few books I bought early on that really called to me, and that I've continued to go through many times over the years: Cape Light by Joel Meyerowitz, the Paul Caponigro monograph, Unknown Territories by Ray Metzger, Pictures From The New World by Danny Lyon. They kind of opened my eyes up to the possibilities and magic of photography and seeing things in a new way.
 
Cape Light by Joel Meyerowitz (1979) was pivotal for me. Recently graduated with a BFA in Photography, I was still struggling with my indoctrination into the One True Path of photography: the Zone System, the f/64 school of seeing, and, of course, the notion that real photography is in black and white, period. Insecure about shooting color, and not drawn to the overblown heroics of classic landscape photography, I found Cape Light to be a revelation, and, more importantly, permission. Meyerowitz was photographing a place I knew and loved, and seeing it in a way that aligned with the sort of vision I was hesitant to allow myself until then.
Cape Light is a masterpiece in its own right, of course. But I'm grateful that it came into my life when it did, and influenced me as it did.
 
Not on the same level as my other books but the first photo book I ever bought was "The Amateur Photographer" by Aaron Sussman. It gave me a lot of info in the same place for a newbie to photography.
 
I was in college just after the end of the Vietnam War era, very much into photojournalism and incisive technique and the decisive moment and letting truth be the prejudice and all that other stuff the photography education system sold college kids on back then, when -- looking around in the college library for something else -- I stumbled across a book called Photographs and Anti-Photographs, by Elliott Erwitt. At first I had a lot of WTF moments while looking through it, until I realized that Erwitt had been making those photos during his own WTF moments and that he was totally okay with that. As I gradually absorbed the viewpoint that seeing things only shows you what they look like, I lost my reverence for Great Photographs and Great Photographers and in general the idea that photography actually does anything culturally useful beyond providing a reference point while you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on. This realization hasn't made me particularly happy and it certainly hasn't made me rich or popular or celebrated, but at least I'm not still fooling myself. So thanks, Erwitt... you're not my hero but I appreciate your waking me up.
 
Out to Lunch said:
Very interesting. I found this reference on YT:

Click to expand...

He did have a resurgence in interest in his work in his later years, but I don't think it was initially the result of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as the video suggests. I think it was the Howard Greenberg Gellery in NYC, Steve Bulger's gallery in Toronto, and Michael Torosian goading Dave to let him reprint A Dialogue with Solitude in 2000.

In the 1970's and 1980's Dave kinda got out of shooting black and white photojournalism and was more into Polaroids and multi-media slide show presentations. Like Robert Frank, Dave also had a Guggenheim Fellowship but I think since he came along just a bit later than Frank, Gene Smith etc, I think there was a perception of 'been there, done that' by the photo community and Dave was just a bit late to the dance. And that specific book of his was a bit more 'inward', and it was published by a small publisher out of Culpeper, Virginia, so I don't think at the time it got quite the coverage that other more widely-known books did. So lots of reasons why I think Dave moved on from that kind of work and then he eventually got into teaching at Ryerson. He could definitely be a 'difficult' person to deal with and he certainly made many a photo student cry in his critique classes, but I'm so thankful that he was part of my life. Huge impact, to say the least.

One of the many Polaroids I have that Dave took of me during our countless coffees. And I never got him to sign any of them -- ah well.

Coffee With Dave Heath by Vince Lupo, on Flickr
 
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