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  #1  
Old 18th March 2015, 12:38 AM
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Jakecb Jakecb is offline
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I'm afraid I have an almost insatiable desire to read good books about photography. Any recommendations would be gratefully received. The only ones I do not want to read are about how-to take photographs. I am interested in why people take them, the history & development of processes, the context of photography in society, memoirs of photographers, the intersection with traditional pictorial art and culture. Please let me know of any gems you have found.

Thanks

Jake
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Old 18th March 2015, 09:01 AM
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The book that I have enjoyed most often recently is The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer (Vintage Books division of Random House 2005. ISBN: 978-1-4000-3168-9). A really fascinating, left field and original take on the history of photography.

The only let down with the book is that the copyright owners of many of the photographs that he references would not allow the photos to be published. However, if you read so much and look at lots of images, all of the photographs that he refers to (that are not included as illustrations) are so well known that you will either know them already or can easily find them with Google.

Bests,

David.
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  #3  
Old 18th March 2015, 09:40 AM
JOReynolds JOReynolds is offline
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Bill Brandt's 'Perspective of Nudes' (1951), shot with a very wide-angle lens, is a wonderful example of visual thinking. But I just looked it up on the net and a first edition, with the original jacket, sells for over $1000. I have a beaten-up copy that has been through many students' hands.
Another, in the same vein, is Sam Haskin's 'November Girl'.
In both cases the lighting is as one might use for sculpture. And the printing is exquisite.
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  #4  
Old 18th March 2015, 10:52 AM
TonyMiller TonyMiller is offline
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One book I would highly recommend is Jerry L. Thompson's Why Photography Matters.
Thompson was Walker Evan's assistant and a photographer himself. It's only a short book but covers a lot including Atget, Robert Frank and Fox Talbot to name a few. It's his personal view of the why's of photographing but one I found a lot to like about and agree with.
This is from the blurb on the book's cover:-
Quote:
Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works—not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. It matters because how we understand what photography is and how it works tell us something about how we understand anything. With these provocative observations, Thompson begins a wide-ranging and lucid meditation on why photography is unique among the picture-making arts.

Publishers website: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-photography-matters

Very thought-provoking and worth a read.
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Old 18th March 2015, 12:26 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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Frank Sutcliffe Photographer of Whitby by Michael Hiley is an excellent book. Wonderful photographs, well reproduced. And an excellent text which is biographical, discusses early photographic movements such as Pictorialism, and also deals with the practicalities of making photographs. There are also lots of excerpts from Sutcliffe's own writings - he wrote a regular column in the Amateur Photographer - which arre very illuminating.
Sutcliffe spanned an interesting era in photography. He started by using wet plates and ended up using Kodak roll film...

Alan
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Old 18th March 2015, 01:31 PM
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Martin Erdner Martin Erdner is offline
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'Setting Sun - Writings by Japanese Photographers'
ISBN 1931788839
http://aperture.org/shop/books/setting-sun
(listed there 'out of stock' and prices are high online as far as I have seen, but I got recently a replacement for my old book in a brick&mortar bookshop for the regular price)

An excerpt from the aperture-page:
'Setting Sun is an anthology of key texts written from the 1950s to the present by Moriyama, Tomatsu, and Araki, as well as by other leading Japanese photographers, including Masahisa Fukase, Takashi Homma, Eikoh Hosoe, Takuma Nakahira, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The only anthology of its kind to appear in English, Setting Sun makes these texts available in translation to Western readers for the first time and provides a crucial context for photographers who have become increasingly well known and admired in the West. Each chapter in the anthology is devoted to a central idea or theme that is particular to Japanese photography, such as watashi shosetsu (or the "I novel"), the bonds between man and woman, the role of nostalgia, and the shadows of a war lost and of a culture jettisoning its past. These writings vary in form from diary entry to scholarly treatise, but all reflect a clear connection between word and image.'

Or in my own words: The texts vary a lot, and there a few essays I have read only once, but overall I like the book. Depending on the size of the Japanese part on your book shelf, you might know some essays already. Regarding your points, the book delivers 'why', 'context society', 'memoirs' and 'intersection', I would say.
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Old 18th March 2015, 04:32 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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A book that has had a big influence on me is

An English Eye
The Photographs of James Ravilious
Peter Hamilton

As most people probably know, Ravilious documented rural life in North Devon during the last quarter of the 20th C.
He had a wonderful instinctive sense of composition, so his photographs hold together beautifully. He was also very clear about the "look" he wanted in his photographs, and the text goes into a lot of detail about how he achieved this look. He was helped, in this respect, by Brian Allen - the father of dsallen of this forum.
Above all, his photographs are brim-full with humanity, and make a wonderful document. Together with a very informative text, they make for a fascinating book.

Alan
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Old 18th March 2015, 08:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Clark View Post
A book that has had a big influence on me is

An English Eye
The Photographs of James Ravilious
Peter Hamilton

As most people probably know, Ravilious documented rural life in North Devon during the last quarter of the 20th C.
He had a wonderful instinctive sense of composition, so his photographs hold together beautifully. He was also very clear about the "look" he wanted in his photographs, and the text goes into a lot of detail about how he achieved this look. He was helped, in this respect, by Brian Allen - the father of dsallen of this forum.
Above all, his photographs are brim-full with humanity, and make a wonderful document. Together with a very informative text, they make for a fascinating book.

Alan
I quite agree - a wonderful book with some of the most honest and engaging photographs that you will ever see.

Whilst I do not want to hijack this thread, can I say that my father was at the time (and still is) extremely proud that he could help such a fine photographer. James' problems started when he had a little bit of money to buy equipment (a rare exception for him as he was always more poor than the poorest people he photographed). James bought some newer Leica equipment and just couldn't get on with it and so he contacted my father (who had established the first private school for photography in the UK with a remit of taking anyone - experienced or not - within a weekend to making negatives that would yield fine quality prints).

It was very quickly determined that the newer lenses were the problem. James had developed a style and exposure technique that worked because the older Leitz lenses had relatively few coatings and therefore were not so sharp and suffered some degree of lens flare that helped boost apparent film speed or let us say gave more light to the shadows. Further tests identified that some benefits from the newer lenses coatings suited James' style (better sharpness and bokeh, etc) but not his way of exposing.

In the end, with the help of the staff at Exeter Camera Exchange, they tested a number of newer (but not current) Leitz lenses and found one that, with the use of my fathers own version of a (replenishable) two-bath developer gave James the results that he was looking for.

I only recount this story as I feel that it might help other people on this site to understand that the newest is not always (for your needs) the best and that you should choose your equipment, film, developer, exposure technique and printing methodology that suits YOUR work.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de
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  #9  
Old 18th March 2015, 09:03 PM
Alan Clark Alan Clark is offline
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David; many thanks for your extremely interesting comments,which go well beyond the information given by Peter Hamilton in the book.
I bet you are proud of your Dad!

Alan
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Old 18th March 2015, 10:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Clark View Post
David; many thanks for your extremely interesting comments,which go well beyond the information given by Peter Hamilton in the book.
I bet you are proud of your Dad!

Alan
Well Peter's book was about the whole life and dedication of James' work so it is no surprise that (for most people his technique is not thoroughly a point for interessing discussion) his technical concerns were not rerally addressed and a resounding YES I am and remain constantly amazed at my father's breadth of knowledge with all things photographic and also feel myself very lucky that I got to know such a wonderful photographer (James I mean although I could also say that of my Dad also!)

Given what I learnt from my father, and continue to teach to this day, maybe readers of this forum will understand why I express such frustration with the advice that many here offer in terms of the "just use Sunny 16" or "I always do what Ilford say" or "technique is just a sideline to good imaging", etc. You do not need a densitometer to get good results, you do not need to "place everything on Zone II, IV, V and you do not need the most sophisticated multi multi multiple matrix exposure meters system. You just need to know what exposure will give you the results that YOU want - and, of course these things vary greatly between every single photographer. What never changes is that, if you know what you want, the technical approach is always there to help you achieve it.

Bests,

David.
www.ddsallen.de
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