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Stephen Shore: Modern Instances
In “Modern Instances,” Photographer and teacher Stephen Shore takes us on a tour through his own history and influences. The book is filled with insights that will inspire and educate anyone with a serious interest in photography and growing as a photographer.
David Yarrow: How I Make Photographs
David Yarrow is one of the top wildlife photographers working today. In “How I Make Photographs” Yarrow discusses his personal vision and the challenges of shooting wildlife under extreme conditions. The book is the third in a “Masters of Photography” series from publisher Laurence King. In addition to Yarrow’s insights, the book serves as an affordable mini-portfolio of his work that will inspire anyone interested in photographing wildlife.
Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective
Imogen Cunningham was one of the most creative, versatile, influential and possibly underappreciated and underrated photographers of the 20th Century.
Born in 1883, her career extended into the 1970s, yet it was only late in life that she began to receive the recognition that her male contemporaries and colleagues had been afforded decades earlier.
A beautiful book published in 2020, Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, printed in conjunction with a Getty Museum exhibition of her work offers a well-printed, if overdue, selection of her life’s work.
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has become an iconic touchpoint in documentary photography. Deeply personal, the book is once again available in print with an updated afterword by Goldin.
Diane Arbus and the New Documents Exhibition
In 1967, the Museum of Modern Art in New York unveiled “New Documents.” It featured the work of three photographers who would became significant and influential artists of the 20th Century – Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. It was the only major exhibition of Arbus’ work in her lifetime. Unfortunately, no exhibition catalogue was published at the time. Fifty years later, MOMA rectified that, producing an excellent book on the show.
Esther Bubley and Marion Post Wolcott
Many Americans are familiar with Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” image from the Farm Security Administration, but fellow FSA and Office of War Information photographers Marion Post Wolcott and Esther Bubley are, unfortunately, much less known.
Carrie Mae Weems: A Great Turn in the Possible
Carrie Mae Weems may be the most interesting photographer practicing today. Not the most interesting Black Photographer nor the most interesting Woman Photographer, but simply the most interesting photographer.
Looking at the beautiful catalogue (Carrie Mae Weems: A Great Turn in the Possible) created for the European exhibition of Weems’ work, sponsored by Fundación MAPFRE, I had a similar reaction to the first time I saw Robert Frank’s The Americans, back in the 1970s.
Black is Beautiful: Kwame Brathwaite
Black is Beautiful, tells the story of Kwame Brathwaite. Few photographers can lay claim to helping change ideas surrounding human beauty.
But, Kwame Brathwaite could legitimately be credited with playing a major role in not only redefining beauty, but in promoting Black empowerment.
Dawoud Bey
For Black History month we are looking at four great African-American photographers. This installment features Dawoud Bey, an artist whose portraits draw on the the documentary tradition.
Gordon Parks and the Farm Security Administration
For Black History month, I am featuring the work of four outstanding African-American Photographers. The first essay features Gordon Parks and his work at the Farm Security Administration.
Photography Visionaries
Photography Visionaries is a neat survey of 75 great photographers spanning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Each photographer is represented by at least three of their best-known images, along with a concise, well-written and insightful summary of their significance.
Each essay/biography is a stand-alone document, so that readers need not move through the book in chronological order
The Ongoing Moment
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.