latest additions to your library

gns said:
Comparisons...How about Summer Nights and Henry Wessel's Night Walk? (Ray and Mike should know this one, being in the bay area).

Cheers,
Gary
Click to expand...

Gary, I don't remember the Wessel Nigh Walk, but I'll check out what i can. I have the Wessel that Kevin just got.


/
 
Eskenazi, "Wonderland" - wow! Thanks for the heads up, guys (see posts a few pages back).

An amazing book, beautifully produced.

Signed copies are still available for £25 - but neither these nor the rest of the short print run of this second printing will be around for long...
 
sepiareverb said:
I recently got the 'New Topographics' book by Salvesen but I'm still waiting for 'On Landscape' by Golke to get released in hardcover.

New Topographics is excellent, a fantastic essay at the start plus a good group of images.
Click to expand...

New Topographics...Not just excellent, but somewhat of a milestone in the history of photography. "Seminal" is a word that gets used a lot.

Is the Gohlke book you mentioned, "Thoughts on Landscape", the yet-to-be-released book of essays and interviews?

Cheers,
Gary
 
RayPA said:
Gary, I don't remember the Wessel Nigh Walk, but I'll check out what i can. I have the Wessel that Kevin just got.


/
Click to expand...

Night walk (in either of its versions) can be found, but prices may be high.
A few of the pictures are included in the book you and Kevin have, I think.

Cheers,
Gary
 
RichC said:
Eskenazi, "Wonderland" - wow! Thanks for the heads up, guys (see posts a few pages back).

An amazing book, beautifully produced.

Signed copies are still available for £25 - but neither these nor the rest of the short print run of this second printing will be around for long...
Click to expand...

I think I will have to get this sight-unseen, just because so many people have raved about it. Hope I am not too late.

Cheers,
Gary
 
gns said:
I think I will have to get [Eskenazi] sight-unseen, just because so many people have raved about it. Hope I am not too late.
Click to expand...
I bought a second copy for a friend today, so you'll be fine.

It's quite a small-format book, about 6 x 4 inches, but quite thick (200 pp?).
 
Saw 'Subway Love' still in shrink wrap and at a good price at Green Apple today, so I picked it up, along with the reprint edition of Winogrand's 'Public Relations' and Tacita Dean's "Floh" (which I never would have known about except for Parr and Badger). Good day at the bookstore! 🙂

RayPA said:
That's a good one. Pair it with Araki's 'Subway Love'.

/
Click to expand...
 
In January I read Blood and Champagne, I just finished After Photography last week. Kershaw's biog of Robert Capa was rocking good - even if it may have been embellished, and seems to use kid gloves at times. I read it all the way through, nearly non-stop!

On the other hand, it took me a whole month to read Fred Ritchin's overview of the digital revolution. It plodded along, hopelessly dated. It appears that he read Ted Nelson's 1974 classic, Dream Machines and tried to write an update. Computer imaging however is already in progress, and so the book looks back, not forward. While reading the book, I had the feeling the the author (NYU photography professor, founding member of the International Center of Photography, NYTimes Magazine and Camera Arts picture editor, and director of PixelPress, as well as authoring half a dozen other books on photography - this guy is no lightweight!) was just about to make his point. But then he always ended the chapter just a few sentences shy of the goal. I'll be watching for the sequel.
 
With all the recommendations in this thread for Eskenazi's Wonderland I just had to order a copy as well. And it is indeed wonderful. It pairs very well, imho, with Mark Leong's China Obscura, which is in many ways quite similar. Both were made by outsiders or semi-insiders who travelled to and spent time in countries who were going through post-communist reforms. And while the cultural traditions are different, and the specific issues of reform are unique to each country, it struck me how many common themes the two books share: the place/fate of socialist iconography (statues, posters, etc.) and the rise of a new marketized iconography that overlays the old; persistence of hard rural labor and conditions; the growth of private life (leisure, consumerism; decadence); emergence of new market-based social types; rise of youth culture; environmental costs; growing economic disparity between rich and poor; the place of "authority" and the forces of law and order in an increasingly disordered society; etc., etc. And underneath all those hard-hitting themes there's a whiff of nostalgia in both books too.

I'm thrilled to place Eskanzi on my shelf right alongside Leong -- thanks for the recommendation all! 🙂
 
Last edited:
Ha! Kevin. I just logged in to do the same thing. I got my signed copy of Eskenazi's Wonderland yesterday, and I can't put the book down. It's just full-on gorgeous. There's such an incredible sensitivity in every image, and the compositions are so alive and unique. Every image is so strong—right up there with the best of Koudelka and Winogrand (actually reminds me a bit of the former). Great arrangement. Wonderful layout, printing, and binding. I'm completely blown away.

Thanks for the tip!

Great thread!


/
 
Recent purchases:
The Edge of Vision - The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, by Lyle Rexer
Saul Leiter
Looking at Photographs, Stephen Shore (been meaning to add this book to my library for years)
The Polaroid Book

another favourite:
That's The Way I See It, by David Hockney
 
I don't have the Leiter retrospective, only his Early Color book, but I have to say that man used his camera to PAINT! Every time I look at "Early Color" I am blown away by his vision, use of color, blur, and near-far elements. Sometimes photography is characterized as "description", but Leiter doesn't describe, he suggests, subtly and powerfully.


lynnb said:
Recent purchases:
The Edge of Vision - The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, by Lyle Rexer
Saul Leiter
Looking at Photographs, Stephen Shore (been meaning to add this book to my library for years)
The Polaroid Book

another favourite:
That's The Way I See It, by David Hockney
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom