Hammerklavier
Member
Thanks to the recommendations on this thread and also reviews from Amazon, I have the bought:
William Eggleston - Guide
Lee Friedlander - Museum of Modern Art
Robert Frank - Looking In
Henri Cartier-Bresson - The Man, The Image and The World
Bruce Davidson - Outside Inside
Steve McCurry - The Unguarded Moment
Now, can somebody close this thread?
It certainly is causing a lot of financial distress!
Early Christmas present from my wife:
Henri Cartier-Bresson - The Modern Century
jky
Well-known
Istanbul.
American Color 2
Bill Allard's 5 decades.
American Color 2
Bill Allard's 5 decades.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
Haven't bought a photo book in a while, but just picked up a book called "The Decline of the Soviet Military" from the history section of Half Price Books that is a very interesting history book.
Haigh
Gary Haigh
Suginami by James Luckett.
RFluhver
Well-known
Yes. You got his books?
keytarjunkie
no longer addicted
I just got "Annie Leibovitz: At Work" as a student with internet access, I can't typically justify a lot of books but I thought this one was worth adding to my very small collection. It was basically a story of her photographic life with pictures accompanying the major events. I finished it in a day, it was very good. I love her older work.
Gordon Coale
Well-known
Ansel Adams - An American Place, 1936
Alec Soth - From Here to There: Alec Soth's America
Josef Sudek - Poet of Prague
Mildred Constantine - Tina Modotti A Fragile Life
Ann Thomas - Lisette Model
Frederick Sommer - Photography, Drawing, Collage
Alec Soth - From Here to There: Alec Soth's America
Josef Sudek - Poet of Prague
Mildred Constantine - Tina Modotti A Fragile Life
Ann Thomas - Lisette Model
Frederick Sommer - Photography, Drawing, Collage
Wcarpenter
Established
I just recently got:
Revelations - Diane Arbus
The Photographer at Work - Harry Callahan
The Americans - Robert Frank
William Eggleston's Guide - William Eggleston
Personal Best - Elliot Erwitt
I have to rebuild my collection at school. I miss my books dearly when I'm not at home!
Revelations - Diane Arbus
The Photographer at Work - Harry Callahan
The Americans - Robert Frank
William Eggleston's Guide - William Eggleston
Personal Best - Elliot Erwitt
I have to rebuild my collection at school. I miss my books dearly when I'm not at home!
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Tom A
RFF Sponsor
Just picked up a copy of HCB's "The Modern Century". We had plans to go to SF in late January - but medical reasons put a stop to that.
Good book, though some of the pictures are "old hat". Galassi's essay is interesting - fun to read about the Golden Era of Photojournalism (Life,Look, Harper's, Fortune magazine).
Good book, though some of the pictures are "old hat". Galassi's essay is interesting - fun to read about the Golden Era of Photojournalism (Life,Look, Harper's, Fortune magazine).
RayPA
Ignore It (It'll go away)
Well, I know the controversy, and that he came under a lot of criticism for those two books, in particular. I remember seeing the books in the Walden Bookstore at our local mall (of all places!) back in the 70's. I found the books curious (beyond the obvious reasons), because they contained poetry/prose by Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose novels I was reading at the time. He's technically a fine portraitist, who had an instantly identifiable technique (romantic, soft diffuse lighting and soft pastel colors), but the models he used were kind of young and the soft-porn element in those two books is obvious.
/
peter_n
Veteran
Hope everything is OK with you Tom. I did get to see the exhibit at MoMA in New York and yes there were some "well-knowns" in there but it was really interesting to see original prints and some of Pierre Gassman's work, also HCB's work in China. What wasn't interesting was his commercial work in banks and such, I've no clue why that was considered worthy...
antiquark
Derek Ross
julianphotoart
No likey digital-phooey
"Cheesemonger -- My Life on the Wedge"
Tom A
RFF Sponsor
My problem is that I am on what I call a "home chemo" medical scheme right now. If you Google "Revlimid" - travel is not really an option for the next couple of month!!! Well as long as it works (and it seems to be doing its stuff) - I better cycle through it - in spite of some rather rough side-effects.
I think the color stuff was mainly from the Vive La France book - most of the stuff in the book is bl/w and the color looks a bit odd - like "colored bl/w".
The "man and Machine" is better than Galassi thinks. When you see it in context - it makes sense. It is also very "dated" now - almost a historical document with the calculators, adding machines and even ledgers with pens and paper. Obviously pre Wikileaks!!!!
cidereye
Film Freak
Robert Frank - The Americans.
Didn't do a thing for me on first glance if I'm honest, then I'm hardly the first person to say that. But on closer look and taking time out to meditate on the photos it truly is a masterpiece not just in the world of photography but history of a long gone age too.
Didn't do a thing for me on first glance if I'm honest, then I'm hardly the first person to say that. But on closer look and taking time out to meditate on the photos it truly is a masterpiece not just in the world of photography but history of a long gone age too.
Papercut
Well-known
Recent additions:
Sze Tsung Leong, History Images ISBN: 978-3-86521-274-0
gorgeous large format photographs of China's urban centers, often showing the breakneck pace of destruction and construction in the same frame. Almost every shot fades to pure white at the top, testimony to the incredible amount of particulates in the air, but it lends an ethereal quality to the book. Beautiful tipped in images on both front and back covers. (I was tickled that even without any captions, I was able to correctly identify every image -- save one -- from Chongqing where I did my dissertation research in 2006-7.)
Ai Weiwei and Britta Erickson, eds., The Richness of Life: The Personal Photographs of Contemporary Chinese Artist Liu Xiaodong 1984-2006 (Chinese title: 生命的富足：中国当代艺术家刘小东影集1984－2006) ISBN: 978-988-99609-8-8
Liu Xiaodong is one of the most celebrated of China's new avante-garde artists. Associated with the art community in 798 in Beijing, he produces mural-sized paintings that sell for record-breaking prices. The book is a large collection of his personal photographs: his wife, his daughter, friends, people on the street, trips he takes. Yet, these are often the basis for his paintings so there is an intimate connection between his art and his "artless" photos. Bilingual edition with a long interview at the front.
Vincent Yu, Our home, Shek Kip Mei 1954-2006 (Chinese title: 我住石硤尾1954-2006) ISBN: 978-988-9926632
An interesting book on a low-income housing estate (now demolished) in HK. It includes a few artistic photographs of the development's exterior, but historical documents relating to it: postcards, government reports, floor plans, maps, etc. The main body, however, is portraits of the residents -- mostly elderly -- in their cramped small spaces. It oozes a quiet sadness.
Mary Ellen Mark, American Odyssey (aperture monograph) ISBN: 0-89381-880-1
Beautifully printed tritones. Many unforgettable images in this. The boy under the tattered flag ... the chilling photo of the man and wife in Harlan county Kentucky ... Mark is a master and her cast of characters in this book is wide and her rendering pitch perfect.
Chistopher Anderson, Capitolo ISBN: 978-607-7515-24-1
Gritty, blurry, high energy photojournalism from Venezuela between 2004-2008. A little too high-contrast for my (current) taste, but there's no denying the power of Anderson's vision and particularly his sequencing and formatting -- some images are split, interposed with another image, or even continued across a page-turn. Sounds gimmicky, but it works and it made me really LOOK to connect things up.
Robert Frank, Come Again ISBN: 9783865212610
A strange little book. Polaroids taken in the center of Beirut in 1991. They are reproduced in a way that replicates not only the polaroids, but the graph paper that Frank taped them to, and even the tapes he used to stitch them together and stick them on the paper with. All of them are multiple frames stitched together. Small, dark, often partially damaged with scrapes and (what looks like) blood (??) the images do not tell a story but are just fragments of urban destruction.
William Christenberry, Kodachromes ISBN: 9781597111478
Stumbled on this in SFMoMA's bookstore and had to get a copy. Christenberry's "straight" images of rural south American architecture and its cyclical relationship to the vegetation and land around it are really wonderful. I love his sense of color and sensitivity to the process of decay and renewal.
John Gossage, The Pond the new edition (with the reversed color scheme for the front cover). ISBN: 9781597111324
On first flip through I was almost disgusted with this, but after a slower look something started to click and now, I have gone back to it multiple times and each time it grows stronger and more memorable. I'm beginning to understand.
Joseph Sudek: Poet of Prague, A Photographer's Life ISBN: 780893813864
Picked this up for $10 at a used bookstore. I haven't read all the biographical essay yet, but it is good to have such a powerful collection of a photographer with whom I was not too familiar. Romantic (in the best sense of that word) imagery through and through -- the quality of light Sudek finds is tremendous.
Susan Lipper, Trip ISBN: 9781576870518
The enigmatic snippets of text that accompany each photo are by Frederick Barthelme. An American "road trip" but without a beginning, end, or recognizable characters. I've long wanted her Grapevine book, but it is out of print and quite pricey, so when this came up for $1.99 I jumped on it. And it is good, but in many ways, the antithesis of the typical "road trip" books by Frank and Shore, despite the frequency of motel rooms and other 'standard fare' of car-trip travel. The images are fragmentary, strange, and empty of people. But they betray a sly sense of humor and an ability to find that bit of something that is just "off" or out of place and by isolating it, Lipper piques my curiosity.
Yu Feng (渝峰), Chongqing -- The Famous City in the Second World War: Photo Annals of Vanishing Sceneries (Chinese title: 二战名城老重庆：最后的风景艺术影像志) ISBN: 9787536693180
Large book of photographs taken across the city of Chongqing documenting sites that were important during the Second World War, when it was the Temporary Capital of Chiang Kaishek's government from 1939-1946. The earliest images are from 1985, but the bulk from 1994-2003. Most of these places have since been demolished and new, more modern buildings constructed in their place. Yu's artistry is somewhat attenuated by his historical aims: to document the historical traces in the city before they are obliterated completely. But there are plenty of images that show a keen sensitivity to light and place. Quite apart from my professional interest (I am, after all, a historian who writes about this city during the war), this book makes me homesick for Chongqing in the worst way.
798: A Photographic Journal by Zhu Yan ISBN: 9789889726270
Black and white photographs of the world famous art enclave in Beijing. 798 was a factory complex, built in the Bauhaus style, but turned into the base for avante-garde contemporary art in the 1990s, housing studios and (eventually) commercial shops, restaurants, and art galleries in what were once industrial spaces. Zhu Yan photographed not only the space/exterior, but more importantly made portraits of the top artists in their studio spaces. Accompanied by short (bilingual) biographical sketches, these portraits let you glimpse the person and their working/creative space in one frame. The result is fascinating. Most are fairly 'straight', but some just draw me up short: Wang Jing (王菁)*in her nearly bare studio, with her back to a bank of windows just glowing with sunlight, meditates in the full lotus position. And Huang Rui (黄锐), wearing sunglasses and a traditional tunic, flat on his back on a five-pointed star that is painted on the floor -- Huang's long hair is fanned out directly at the camera, and a beer bottle sticks straight up like an erection between his outstretched legs. It's an arresting portrait of one of the key figures (both as a producer and curator) in contemporary Chinese art.
Ivan Vartanian, Akihiro Hatanaka, Yutaka Kambayashi, eds., Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers, with an introduction by Anne Wilkes Tucker ISBN: 9781931788830
A collection of essays, ably translated, from many of the greats in post-war Japanese photography. By letting them speak in their own words the development of the generations and their differing concerns comes through. Unlike so many photographers from other places, Japanese image makers seem to relish and take seriously writing about their aims, processes, and lives. It makes for very interesting reading, for me at least.
Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places: The Complete Works ISBN: 9781931788342
This is the reissued aperture book. I won't say much since it's such a classic. Shore's sense of color and light is fantastic. This book makes me want to try large format again, and it's been decades since I had that urge.
Sze Tsung Leong, History Images ISBN: 978-3-86521-274-0
gorgeous large format photographs of China's urban centers, often showing the breakneck pace of destruction and construction in the same frame. Almost every shot fades to pure white at the top, testimony to the incredible amount of particulates in the air, but it lends an ethereal quality to the book. Beautiful tipped in images on both front and back covers. (I was tickled that even without any captions, I was able to correctly identify every image -- save one -- from Chongqing where I did my dissertation research in 2006-7.)
Ai Weiwei and Britta Erickson, eds., The Richness of Life: The Personal Photographs of Contemporary Chinese Artist Liu Xiaodong 1984-2006 (Chinese title: 生命的富足：中国当代艺术家刘小东影集1984－2006) ISBN: 978-988-99609-8-8
Liu Xiaodong is one of the most celebrated of China's new avante-garde artists. Associated with the art community in 798 in Beijing, he produces mural-sized paintings that sell for record-breaking prices. The book is a large collection of his personal photographs: his wife, his daughter, friends, people on the street, trips he takes. Yet, these are often the basis for his paintings so there is an intimate connection between his art and his "artless" photos. Bilingual edition with a long interview at the front.
Vincent Yu, Our home, Shek Kip Mei 1954-2006 (Chinese title: 我住石硤尾1954-2006) ISBN: 978-988-9926632
An interesting book on a low-income housing estate (now demolished) in HK. It includes a few artistic photographs of the development's exterior, but historical documents relating to it: postcards, government reports, floor plans, maps, etc. The main body, however, is portraits of the residents -- mostly elderly -- in their cramped small spaces. It oozes a quiet sadness.
Mary Ellen Mark, American Odyssey (aperture monograph) ISBN: 0-89381-880-1
Beautifully printed tritones. Many unforgettable images in this. The boy under the tattered flag ... the chilling photo of the man and wife in Harlan county Kentucky ... Mark is a master and her cast of characters in this book is wide and her rendering pitch perfect.
Chistopher Anderson, Capitolo ISBN: 978-607-7515-24-1
Gritty, blurry, high energy photojournalism from Venezuela between 2004-2008. A little too high-contrast for my (current) taste, but there's no denying the power of Anderson's vision and particularly his sequencing and formatting -- some images are split, interposed with another image, or even continued across a page-turn. Sounds gimmicky, but it works and it made me really LOOK to connect things up.
Robert Frank, Come Again ISBN: 9783865212610
A strange little book. Polaroids taken in the center of Beirut in 1991. They are reproduced in a way that replicates not only the polaroids, but the graph paper that Frank taped them to, and even the tapes he used to stitch them together and stick them on the paper with. All of them are multiple frames stitched together. Small, dark, often partially damaged with scrapes and (what looks like) blood (??) the images do not tell a story but are just fragments of urban destruction.
William Christenberry, Kodachromes ISBN: 9781597111478
Stumbled on this in SFMoMA's bookstore and had to get a copy. Christenberry's "straight" images of rural south American architecture and its cyclical relationship to the vegetation and land around it are really wonderful. I love his sense of color and sensitivity to the process of decay and renewal.
John Gossage, The Pond the new edition (with the reversed color scheme for the front cover). ISBN: 9781597111324
On first flip through I was almost disgusted with this, but after a slower look something started to click and now, I have gone back to it multiple times and each time it grows stronger and more memorable. I'm beginning to understand.
Joseph Sudek: Poet of Prague, A Photographer's Life ISBN: 780893813864
Picked this up for $10 at a used bookstore. I haven't read all the biographical essay yet, but it is good to have such a powerful collection of a photographer with whom I was not too familiar. Romantic (in the best sense of that word) imagery through and through -- the quality of light Sudek finds is tremendous.
Susan Lipper, Trip ISBN: 9781576870518
The enigmatic snippets of text that accompany each photo are by Frederick Barthelme. An American "road trip" but without a beginning, end, or recognizable characters. I've long wanted her Grapevine book, but it is out of print and quite pricey, so when this came up for $1.99 I jumped on it. And it is good, but in many ways, the antithesis of the typical "road trip" books by Frank and Shore, despite the frequency of motel rooms and other 'standard fare' of car-trip travel. The images are fragmentary, strange, and empty of people. But they betray a sly sense of humor and an ability to find that bit of something that is just "off" or out of place and by isolating it, Lipper piques my curiosity.
Yu Feng (渝峰), Chongqing -- The Famous City in the Second World War: Photo Annals of Vanishing Sceneries (Chinese title: 二战名城老重庆：最后的风景艺术影像志) ISBN: 9787536693180
Large book of photographs taken across the city of Chongqing documenting sites that were important during the Second World War, when it was the Temporary Capital of Chiang Kaishek's government from 1939-1946. The earliest images are from 1985, but the bulk from 1994-2003. Most of these places have since been demolished and new, more modern buildings constructed in their place. Yu's artistry is somewhat attenuated by his historical aims: to document the historical traces in the city before they are obliterated completely. But there are plenty of images that show a keen sensitivity to light and place. Quite apart from my professional interest (I am, after all, a historian who writes about this city during the war), this book makes me homesick for Chongqing in the worst way.
798: A Photographic Journal by Zhu Yan ISBN: 9789889726270
Black and white photographs of the world famous art enclave in Beijing. 798 was a factory complex, built in the Bauhaus style, but turned into the base for avante-garde contemporary art in the 1990s, housing studios and (eventually) commercial shops, restaurants, and art galleries in what were once industrial spaces. Zhu Yan photographed not only the space/exterior, but more importantly made portraits of the top artists in their studio spaces. Accompanied by short (bilingual) biographical sketches, these portraits let you glimpse the person and their working/creative space in one frame. The result is fascinating. Most are fairly 'straight', but some just draw me up short: Wang Jing (王菁)*in her nearly bare studio, with her back to a bank of windows just glowing with sunlight, meditates in the full lotus position. And Huang Rui (黄锐), wearing sunglasses and a traditional tunic, flat on his back on a five-pointed star that is painted on the floor -- Huang's long hair is fanned out directly at the camera, and a beer bottle sticks straight up like an erection between his outstretched legs. It's an arresting portrait of one of the key figures (both as a producer and curator) in contemporary Chinese art.
Ivan Vartanian, Akihiro Hatanaka, Yutaka Kambayashi, eds., Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers, with an introduction by Anne Wilkes Tucker ISBN: 9781931788830
A collection of essays, ably translated, from many of the greats in post-war Japanese photography. By letting them speak in their own words the development of the generations and their differing concerns comes through. Unlike so many photographers from other places, Japanese image makers seem to relish and take seriously writing about their aims, processes, and lives. It makes for very interesting reading, for me at least.
Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places: The Complete Works ISBN: 9781931788342
This is the reissued aperture book. I won't say much since it's such a classic. Shore's sense of color and light is fantastic. This book makes me want to try large format again, and it's been decades since I had that urge.
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MichaelW
Established
Last week i got a copy of the new Moriyama book 'The world Through My Eyes'. I love it, it's the first book of his work that I have owned and I chose it because it covers so much of his career. The printing, reproductions etc are all very good.
This week I received the 7 vol August Sander set. I should be thrilled but instead I'm pissed off because Amazon's shoddy packaging meant the books arrived damaged. It seems a lot of people are experiencing this recently. Amazon seem to have given up on good packing, they just throw stuff in a box. I'm waiting to find out what can be done about returning it for a replacement. According to their returns page they want me to post it back at my expense, which will be absurd from Sydney.
Otherwise the books are very good although I do feel that some of the images are a bit soft. I'd be interested to know how the prints for reproduction were made, ie by enlargement or as contact prints from the original glass negs.
This week I received the 7 vol August Sander set. I should be thrilled but instead I'm pissed off because Amazon's shoddy packaging meant the books arrived damaged. It seems a lot of people are experiencing this recently. Amazon seem to have given up on good packing, they just throw stuff in a box. I'm waiting to find out what can be done about returning it for a replacement. According to their returns page they want me to post it back at my expense, which will be absurd from Sydney.
Otherwise the books are very good although I do feel that some of the images are a bit soft. I'd be interested to know how the prints for reproduction were made, ie by enlargement or as contact prints from the original glass negs.
peter_n
Veteran
Kevin obviously you purchased yet another new bookshelf again too...
Glad you like the Sudek, I have it and I'm a great admirer. I strongly recommend his panoramics. Sudek was Josef Koudelka's inspiration; lyrical images.
The Mexican Suitcase that I received this week from a small bookshop in SF was very poorly packed. I've had a number of issues with packing like many others. Last year I got a big photo book from Amazon UK that was damaged, and when I inquired about returning it they said not to bother and they just sent me a new one. You might want to try this with Amazon US...
Papercut
Well-known
Peter,
Sadly no bookshelf ... they are in growing stacks on the floor (along with several filing cabinets worth of dissertation materials). I expect to be moving sometime in the next 6-7 months, so they'll get a shelf-home when that happens, I'm sure.
I wasn't aware that Koudelka was directly inspired by Sudek, but like you I really enjoy Sudek's panos very much (Koudelka's too, I might add). The printing in the book is a rich, but rather muted contrast that I like very much -- reminds me a bit of palladium prints. (My tastes lately are moving away from the ultra-high contrast look and toward a softer tonal scale, I guess.)
As for Amazon. I have to agree with Michael. Both big boxed sets I ordered this year (the Sander 7 volume and the Bruce Davidson) came with bumped corners on the external slipcases, purely because of shoddy packing. The books themselves are undamaged, but with collectible volumes like these, I want the whole thing in perfect condition. I left a scathing comment for amazon's customer service both times. No effect, obviously.
Sadly no bookshelf ... they are in growing stacks on the floor (along with several filing cabinets worth of dissertation materials).
I expect to be moving sometime in the next 6-7 months, so they'll get a shelf-home when that happens, I'm sure. I wasn't aware that Koudelka was directly inspired by Sudek, but like you I really enjoy Sudek's panos very much (Koudelka's too, I might add). The printing in the book is a rich, but rather muted contrast that I like very much -- reminds me a bit of palladium prints. (My tastes lately are moving away from the ultra-high contrast look and toward a softer tonal scale, I guess.)
As for Amazon. I have to agree with Michael. Both big boxed sets I ordered this year (the Sander 7 volume and the Bruce Davidson) came with bumped corners on the external slipcases, purely because of shoddy packing. The books themselves are undamaged, but with collectible volumes like these, I want the whole thing in perfect condition. I left a scathing comment for amazon's customer service both times. No effect, obviously.
Kevin obviously you purchased yet another new bookshelf again too...
peter_n
Veteran
Kevin I shouldn't overgeneralize. It was more the panoramics than anything else. Sudek published a beautiful book called Sad Landscape that documented the destruction of the north-west Bohemia landscape by industrialization. He used an antique 1894 Kodak Panorama camera and the work is really a counterpoint to the romanticism he's renowned for. Koudelka's Černý trojúhelník - Podkrušnohoří (The Black Triangle in north Bohemia) is very similar to Dudek's earlier work in the same part of the world but then Koudelka extended the theme brilliantly to western Europe in Chaos.