latest additions to your library

ChrisLivsey said:
"Magnum Contact Sheets" is getting adverse comments for the binding quality, several reports of the weight causing a parting of the ways. Amazon.com have suspended shipping?
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It's a stitched binding and mine arrived miraculously unscathed after a typical crap Amazon packing job. The book was loose in the box and is over 9lbs in weight. I think the binding problem may be the covers becoming detached from the inner spine. That is weak but the binding of the pages into the spine is good, at least on my copy.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
A few days ago, I was browsing a used book store when I came upon an autobiography of Gordon Parks. Parks was one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, and one of the first black photographers to achieve acceptance in the world of art and documentary photography. He was the first black person to work at Life Magazine, at a time when racial discrimination was still both legal and very common in the United States. He died in 2006 at age 93.

The book is called "A Choice of Weapons." I'm only about 1/3 through it, but the poverty, racism, homelessness, and violence that he overcame is incredible. Parks' work is rarely mentioned on RFF, but it is a magnificent record of Black America in the Jim Crow and Civil Rights periods. The edition of the book that I have doesn't have any photographs, but the book is something that I think everyone should read.
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Mr Parks is responsible for one of THE iconic photos that define the U.S.
http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/fsa/8b14000/8b14800/8b14845r.jpg
 
Waikiki, by Henry Wessel. In the seventies and eighties, Wessel made trips to Hawaii to photograph the tourist destination of Waikiki Beach, which seems a natural extension of what he was doing in California. As far as I know, this is the first time that the Waikiki pictures have been presented as a cohesive project, rather that simply as part of his larger body of work. It works. It's a small collection (about 25 photos), smartly edited and sequenced, and nicely printed by Steidl. About half of the photos have been published before, so if you have his other books, you are only going to find about a dozen "New" images here. Maybe not a great value for some, but for a fan like me, a no-brainer.

North South East West, by Richard Benson. Benson is known more for his innovation in (and encyclopedic knowledge of) photographic printing and reproduction than for his photographs. As far as I know, this new book from MoMA is the first of his own photographs. You might call these landscapes (both rural and urban) for lack of a better pigeonhole (people appear in only 1 of the 100 or so photographs). They are all about color, both bold and subtle. He works with pretty pedestrian tools, a dslr and an Epson inkjet printer, but being something of a tinkerer/inventor, ha has rigged his printer with a mechanism which allows the paper to be fed through repeatedly for multiple passes. This, he says, allows him to "Build" the print in layers, evaluating after each pass and making decisions about the next step. For the printing of this book, he apparently adopted the same approach to the offset press.

Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography), by Errol Morris. Documentary film maker extraordinaire (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, Fog of War) questions the nature of truth in photography by examining a variety of documentary photographs. Among them, Roger Fenton's "Valley of the Shadow of Death" images from the Crimean war, depression era FSA photographs and the Abu Ghraib scandal pictures. Just got this and am still reading, but very interesting.

On pre-order...Some Aesthetic Decisions: The Photographs of Judy Fiskin. Los Angeles based photographer and video artist who's work is related to the New Topographics movement (apparently she was considered for that show but not selected). This should be something of a retrospective look at her work from the sixties through the nineties when she switched to making videos.
 
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Northerners (Portrait of a no-nonsense people) ,Sefton Samuels.
Evocative pictures of Manchester and the north of England in the `50`s to the 1980`s.
David Bailey a Phaidon retrospective.
 
Daido Moriyama (55)
Daido Moriyama: Record No. 10 / Kiroku No. 10
Daido Moriyama: Shinjuku 19XX-20XX
Rinko Kawauchi: Illuminance
Diane Arbus - A Chronology
Fred Herzog - Photographs
 
Vivian Maier Street Photographer edited by John Maloof. powerHouse Books, Brooklyn, New York. ISBN 978-1-57686-577-3. She had talent, no question. Most of the pictures in this book are very good, some are truly excellent. There's a good deal of social commentary in the images too, and Maier seems drawn to older people and children. There's one priceless picture of two little girls (p. 19) confiding in something that is just beautiful. Maier seems interested in everything and has a wonderful eye, there is no reason not to buy this book; it's really nicely printed and bound in China by Asia Pacific Offset of Hong Kong, who also produced the stunning Frida Kahlo Her Photos that I wrote about a couple of months ago.

A couple of interesting links about this story:

WTTW CH 11 Chicago | Vivian Maier |

The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier - Chicago Magazine
 
Just received "Northerners , Portrait of a no-nonsence people"

I grew up in Manchester, and find it very interesting - I also get the impression that this little book is not very well known, a shame I think.

Cheers,

Meakin
 
Chromes - William Eggleston

Chromes - William Eggleston

Arrived yesterday. Three large format volumes which makes the price not to bad. The weight of the set is an indicator of the quality. The images are interesting to study, and the subjects are certainly "every day' and not what I would have thought of photographing, but probably now wish I had! Composition is often questionable, and I have yet to work out the value of out of focus images. Be aware that there is not a word of text.
Having said that, fully recommend and there is a wonderful charm to the set.
 
Meakin said:
Just received "Northerners , Portrait of a no-nonsence people"

I grew up in Manchester, and find it very interesting - I also get the impression that this little book is not very well known, a shame I think.
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I also grew up in Manchester and was alerted to the existence of the book by Michael Markey above. Mine is coming from the UK and should be here next week. Really looking forward to it!
 
Title: Vivian Maier: Street Photographer
Author John Maloof
PP: 123 + self portraits
ISBN: 978-1-57686-577-3

There's been a lot of excitement around Vivian Maier's discovered works. I think the book demonstrates that it was justified. Maloof has done a fine job in showing her work to first time audiences and it's an excellent book in all regards. There are interviews along with excellent BW reproductions. The photography shows all her talents well and she takes readers on a visual trip from the 50's up to fairly recent times prior to her passing.

It's a book I'd recommend. Hope those who get a copy enjoy it as much as I did. She's good.
 
Has anyone here received a copy of Edward Weston: One Hundred Twenty Five Photographs? ISBN 978-1934429570.
Expensive, but if the selection and repro quality are first rate it might be worth the asking price of $200.
http://www.amazon.com/Edward-Weston...pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1337199202&pf_rd_i=283155

Jan - if you liked Stephen Shore, you might also enjoy Sam Abell's The Life Of A Photograph. Not as analytical as Shore, but interesting with lots of excellent images.
 
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