Geoff Dyer's "The Ongoing Moment" is a enjoyable, insightful meander through the common themes that have united and divided the artistic visions of great photographers. Dyer has both a discerning eye and an encyclopedic familiarity with photographers and their backstories, which he uses to carefully weave context into their work.
Many authors have tackled the idea of looking at photographs. The difference from this traditional approach is that in See/Saw we get a lot of Geoff Dyer as well. Dyer takes the artist’s background, significance and intent as a starting point, but uses his essays to expound on his own observations. In a sense, the […]
For our friends, acquaintances, and anyone else who is mildly interested, we are providing a online version of our annual Christmas letter. Read if you care. We start back at the end of 2021, with a few words about our trip to Korea to visit daughter Kelsey (and see Cranes in the DMZ) then move […]
Looking for a great book for your favorite photographer. Try this list of timeless books designed to get your photographer thinking more deeply about the craft.
Need a gift idea for your favorite photographer? In this second column, I focus on some affordable book series that highlight individual photographers.
When Roger Fenton took his camera to cover the Crimean War in 1855 the limits of the technology at the time meant that he was unable to photograph any scenes of combat. Today, as war rages in Ukraine, we need only open our smart phones to release a flood of posts that show the war […]
The Americans by Robert Frank First published in 1958, Robert Frank’s The Americans, ushered in a new era in documentary photography. There may be no single book in photography that has had a more significant influence on how we look at photographs and how photographers look at subjects than The Americans. That might sound like […]
Ansel Adams I admit I’ve long been ambivalent about Ansel Adams. That’s mostly because his work is so ubiquitous and so often held up by photographers and non-photographers as the epitome of photography. His photographs are beautiful and timeless. But…art does not stand still. It’s too easy to treat Adams’ work as though photography has […]
Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury Carolyn Burke Carolyn Burke’s Foursome follows the arc of two marriages – that of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe and of Paul Strand and Rebecca Salsbury. Stieglitz was the tastemaker and spiritual leader of photography as an art for much of the first half of the […]