latest additions to your library

"Santa" (in various guises) brought me several more treasures this year:

- Nakki Goranin, American Photobooth : part history of the "photomaton" and successors (i.e., automatic photo booths), part selection of vintage images made in photobooths, and part the artist's own photos. An interesting, intriguing book that looks at, and takes seriously, a type of photography usually relegated to the basement in terms of "artistry" (and often literally as well: Goranin has been collecting photobooth images on ebay, fleamarkets, etc. for years ... buying our forgotten and forlorn photographic ephemera).

- Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer : a standard collection of HCB's images.

- Berenice Abbott : a gorgeous two-volume retrospective. The printing is quite lovely in this; one image to a page, with generous white borders. Delicious book of portraits and urban landscape images, all with a richness of tone and studied presence that comes only from large negatives. :)

Pieter Hugo, Nollywood : few people know that the third largest film industry in the world is in Nigeria. (Hollywood is #1, India's Bollywood is, of course, #2.) Hugo went and made images of Nigerian actors in costume. They are mostly set in their filming locations. Many of the images are disturbing: with a good number of the actors made up as zombies, corpses, soldiers, witch-doctors -- bloody, impaled, rotting away, with false eye contacts -- for scenes that deal with horror stories, both supernatural or the ethnic/religious violence of Nigeria's civil war(s). Hard to say how representative the images are of the type of movies that are popular in Nigeria, but the photographs are thought-provoking about the traumas of (and psychological responses to) recent colonial and post-colonial Africa.
 
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I just picked up a copy of Dennis Hopper's new book at the Taschen store. One of the nicest of the XL series. (My favorite still the Peter Beard, but this is a close 2nd.)

Also, this year, I finally scored a 1st French copy of "Les Americans." Robert Frank never gets old for me!

ciao,
Rich
 
Picked up Danny Lyon's Bikeriders. It includes some previously unseen images. I got it in paperback. The hardcover copy at the store was $150!!

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"Grandads Grandmas Nanas & Poppas"
A Celebration of New Zealand Familes
Photography by Terry Winn

Very nice photos of Grandparents with their grandchildren and the connection between them...
I found it at my local library's used bookstore for 75 cents...I got it to look at the photos but the stories are just as good...
 
RayPA said:
Picked up Danny Lyon's Bikeriders. It includes some previously unseen images. I got it in paperback. The hardcover copy at the store was $150!!

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Have the same. That's a great book!!!

Recently picked up the Gene Smith Jazz Loft Book. I can't say there was anything new to me in terms of the photography, but it was an interesting record of an fascinating period in his life.

Hope it means some new re-issues and reprints of Smith's work will start coming out.
 
I'm One - 21st Century Mods by Leica photog Horst Friedrichs arrived in the mail yesterday. Anyone who is or was a mod will absolutely love this book as it will both remind you of the beginnings in the late sixties and bring you up to date with what's happening today. No rockers allowed - awesome book!! :D
 
bressoniac said:
Also, this year, I finally scored a 1st French copy of "Les Americans." Robert Frank never gets old for me!

ciao,
Rich
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Whoa! These are not hard to find for sale, but the prices!?!
Is there a story about stumbling across some great deal?

Cheers,
Gary
 
peter_n said:
I was lucky enough to see the exhibition in NYC. It was really interesting to see HCB stuff that wasn't perfect.

Josef Koudelka had some interesting things to say to David Allen Harvey on the topic of Scrapbook (how you must control your work even after your death):

http://davidalanharvey.typepad.com/road_trip/2007/03/a_place_in_hist.html

Enjoy the book Michael!
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Peter

Yes I found that aspect a revalation too. Not so much the decisive moment more like the indecisive moment. Likewise the cropping.

Michael
Ps Manchester is much as you remember it at present ...cold and damp :)
 
Linda Connor, Odyssey -- large format (8x10) images primarily of places where the sacred and the natural intersect -- many are shot in India, Nepal, Tibet, etc. Connor's technique is wonderful. Often shooting in high altitudes or in the tropics, the light Connor finds, rendered subtly and delicately, becomes a powerful, even dominating presence: she over-exposes her negatives to the point where they are 'bulletproof' and then makes contact prints on POP (print out paper), with sunlight exposures lasting several days. Truly luminous and beautiful.
 
Papercut said:
Linda Connor, Odyssey -- large format (8x10) images primarily of places where the sacred and the natural intersect -- many are shot in India, Nepal, Tibet, etc. Connor's technique is wonderful. Often shooting in high altitudes or in the tropics, the light Connor finds, rendered subtly and delicately, becomes a powerful, even dominating presence: she over-exposes her negatives to the point where they are 'bulletproof' and then makes contact prints on POP (print out paper), with sunlight exposures lasting several days. Truly luminous and beautiful.
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I just shoot digital now, but if ever I were to go back to film, 8 x 10 (maybe 5 x 7) and POP. If you don't like the darkroom OR sitting in front of a computer, how about hanging around the back yard all day with a cooler full of beer and a bunch of contact frames.

You can check out a few of her prints right now at SFMOMA.

Cheers,
Gary
 
gary,

i'll have to take a look for her prints at SFMOMA next time i'm in the city.

Sadly, I think the last manufacturer of POP, the Chicago Albumen Works, stopped producing their paper last year. (The parent company, Harmen, decided it was no longer worthwhile.) Of course, there's always various alt-proc alternatives (I've toyed with some salt printing myself), but that's an extra degree of work and a lot more variable.
 
Prolific book producers...

Robert Adams seems to be on a tear (book-wise). It seems like every time I turn around, I'm coming across yet another title by him. I tried to count up all the books (that I know of) and there must be close to 30.

Friedlander probably has even more. Anyone else been this productive?

Cheers,
Gary
 
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