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Criticism and Commentary-

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See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

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 […]
Cover of Public. Private. Secret

Public, Private, Secret

Public, Private, Secret. On Photography and the Configuration of Self.  By Charlotte Cotton with Marina Chao and Pauline Vermare   Public, Private, Secret. On Photography and the Configuration of Self, is an outgrowth of an exhibition held in 2016 for the opening of a new space in New York’s Bowery for the International Center of […]
Image of The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson

The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media

The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media.  By Nathan Jurgenson, Verso   Nathan Jurgenson covers a lot of territory in just over 100 pages, as he presents page after page of insightful and thought-provoking observations on photography and social media. Jurgenson dissects current opinions and attitudes about social media and nicely places them in […]
Photography as Contemporary Art Cotton

The Photograph as Contemporary Art

The Photograph as Contemporary Art   by Charlotte Cotton.  World of Art series: Thames & Hudson. Writing about contemporary anything is like running to catch a train that never slows down at a station. The author is forever destined to have missed the latest one, no matter how fast she goes. For nearly two decades, Charlotte […]
Photographers Eye

The best books on photography (irregularly updated)

None of these books will tell you anything about f-stops, but they will definitely make you a better photographer One of the consequences of my interest in photography is that I acquire and read too many photography books. I hope to develop this site as a resource for other photographers seeking out the best in […]
Mary Ellen Mark Book

A workshop in book form?

Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and MomentAperture FoundationThe Photography Workshop Series It is an impossible task to convert the experience of learning from an accomplished talent in person into book form. The Aperture Foundation deserves credit for attempting to do so with The Photography Workshop Series (which, as of the end of 2022 consisted […]
Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Camera Lucida

Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes I doubt if any book about photography has been more thoroughly dissected than Camera Lucida. I have no illusion that I can add anything significant to the body of work on this small volume. It is a safe bet to say that for every one of the 119 pages in Roland […]
Beauty in Photography

Is Robert Adams the finest writer on photography?

Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams, Aperture The measure of a great essay is that after one reads it, there is simply nothing more to say. That is my reaction to Robert Adams’ Beauty in Photography. I have read it and re-read it. I want to comment on it, but frankly, I find it difficult to […]

Camera Lucida in The Guardian

Interested in Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes? This article by Brian Dillon in the Guardian from 2011 offers a good overview and insights that may encourage you to move the book up on your list of must reads. “…what Barthes had written was neither a work of theoretical strictness nor avant-garde polemic, still less a […]
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