Pixiq

One of the great things about lists like this is that they’re personal. Well, they wouldn’t be much use to anyone if they weren’t, would they? So, being personal means a license to be opinionated, one of life’s little luxuries. It means being able to dismiss things you don’t like, whatever anyone else says about them, and including things that no-one ever heard of. So it goes here....

1. CONCEIVED PHOTO BOOKS

There aren’t as many of these around as you might think. Lots of photo books, of course, but generally put together afterwards (see Great Compilations below). These are books that were in the mind of the photographer before he or she started shooting. The photographs are actually meant to be seen this way, in a book rather than on a wall. Here are three important ones, and I’m not adding any more because I don’t want to dilute the power of these. By the way, throughout I’m deliberately not putting in publisher and year, because in most cases there are several editions. Easy to find on Amazon or Abebooks.

The Americans, by Robert Frank

Of course, everyone knows this book, so it wasn’t a struggle to put it on the list. It changed American photojournalism, very few people liked it at first, and it also changed the way (some) Americans saw their country. There’s a new edition, edited by Frank, published by Steidl.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by Walker Evans and James Agee

Evans and Agee spent several weeks in Alabama in 1936 with the sharecropping families that are the subject of this book about the Great Depression. A heartfelt combination of images and words.

Kamaitachi, by Eikoh Hosoe and Tatsumi Hijikata

Horribly expensive now, but a work of art in its own right. A limited edition of 1,000 copies published in 1969. A strange theme, set in a farming village in the north of Japan, where dancer Hijikata enacts performances in the landscape related to the legend of a weasel-like demon. Yes, not your ordinary Beautiful Yosemite book.

2. BOOKS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

No end to these, naturally, but there are a few seminal (as we say in the business) ones. One of the big problems with this kind of book is that when writers are not photographers, they often miss the point. These don’t miss.

On Photography, by Susan Sontag

Hard to avoid, this one, arguably the first serious and literary survey of photography as it was in the 1970s. Not everyone’s cup of tea because of it’s intellectual approach.

Pictures on a Page, by Harold Evans

The book on how photographs are laid out in newspapers, books and magazines. Things that art directors and picture editors do that you never thought about. Written by one of the great newspaper editors.

About Looking, by John Berger

Berger, as usual provocative and left-wing, makes photography political. You’ll love it or hate it, as they say. Probably not for fans of Sarah Palin.

Disappearing Witness, by Gretchen Garner

A very clear history of how and why photography changed from being about capturing life in front of the camera to being about concept. The dreaded ‘self-referential’ raises its arty head.

Eugene Smith and the Photographic Essay, by Glenn G. Willumson

A detailed and heavily researched book on the master of the photo essay, his relationship with Life magazine, which was the portal for the form, and a few classic photo essays. Learn the blow-by-blow story of the making of Country Doctor, Spanish Village and Man of Mercy.

3. BOOKS WRITTEN BY PHOTOGRAPHERS

Not so many of these, at least not ones worth reading, which makes the strong ones even more valuable.

Slightly Out of Focus, by Robert Capa

Laconic, a bit too smart in the style of the forties, and self-declared as a script proposal for a Hollywood biopic on himself. But emotionally honest even if some of the factual details slip. About Capa’s coverage of the war — D-Day is especially compelling.

The Mind’s Eye, by Henri Cartier-Bresson

A slim volume, poetic almost, and the master at his most quotable, with his customary hauteur.

Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, by Ansel Adams

Just what you’d like to hear from every photographer whose work you admire. No nonsense, a blend of ideas and technique, no boasting either (a common complaint with ‘how I shot it’ writing).

Beauty in Photography, by Robert Adams

The other Adams landscape photographer, who couldn’t be more different. Eloquent.

The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer

From someone who doesn’t even own a camera (his admission and normally a red flagwaver), this is a wonderful and erudite stroll through photography that classifies pictures in a Borges-like way (hats, for example, overcoated men in the background), Anyway, any writer who can describe William Eggleston’s photographs as “like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis" has my vote.

4. GREAT COMPILATIONS

People are always putting books together by collecting together photographs. There are retrospectives, monographs, themes, groups of photographers (like Magnum), and so on. But there are very few Oscar-winners. Here are four candidates.

The Creation, by Ernst Haas

As Haas tells it, on his return from one long assignment, his assistant had assembled a selection of slides in the projector, and ran them to a soundtrack by Haydn, saying, “Do you realize what you have photographed? You have photographed the creation of the world.” You have to love it. Looking for a theme to take you beyond fire hydrants? Here you go.

Requiem, by Horst Faas and Tim Page

The premise is obvious once you think about it — images of the Vietnam war by the photographers who died in it, both sides — but it continues to haunt. Very powerful, so well put together, so beautifully produced.

Looking at Photographs, by John Szarkowski

Plotline: newish curator of photography at important institution decides to overturn the aesthetics of photography nationwide if not worldwide, and make it conform to his definition. And largely succeeds.

5. BOOKS NOT ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

Finally, books that have nothing to do with photography per se, but which I at least found very useful. Photography is about more than photography, after all....

The Painter’s Secret Geometry, by Jacques Bouleau

How painters (who of course had a lot more time than photographers to spend on their images) throughout the ages calculated their compositions. Did you know that Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus was designed musically?

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone

Looks a bit flashy and over-illustrated, but this is a Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard, and she not only knows her stuff, but amazingly shows how it works when we look at art.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan

Rather out of fashion these days, and famously unreadable at the time, but McLuhan coined ‘global village’ and ‘the medium is the message’. A couple of chapters relate to photography, and if nothing else you can impress your friends that you read it. This is the classic that defined mass media in the 1960s.

Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, by Johannes Itten

Itten taught the basic course at the Bauhaus int he 1920s, so you get Modernism and mysticism all rolled up with some very good advice from a great art teacher.

Did I miss anything out? I certainly did! But please suggest your favorite.