Posts
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
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 […]
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 […]
Interview: Philip Gefter and Buzz Hartshorn
I enjoyed Philip Gefter’s collection of essays “Photography After Frank.” So, when I saw this interview by Gefter of Willis “Buzz” Hartshorn, the director of the International Center of Photography, I knew I would want to re-post it. I’m not familiar with Hartshorn, but I’m aware of the ICP and the interview was conducted shortly […]
The Saddest Picture. Ever.
I can’t get this picture out of my head. I’ve thought about it for years and it always tears at my heart. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it’s called “Meine Frau in Freud und Leid” (My Wife in Joy and Sorrow) and it was taken in 1911 by August Sander. It shows Anna […]
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 […]
Reinhold Marxhausen and Seeing
Something recently got me thinking about Reinhold Marxhausen and how he helped teach me to see. Marxhausen was an artist and photographer who spent most of his professional life as a professor at Concordia College in Seward, Nebraska. In the mid-1970s I had the good fortune to take a brief evening class from him through […]
Striving for Art
Photography, the Key Concepts by David Bate, Berg Publishers Where exactly does photography fit into the world of art? That photography is, or can be, “art” has been a settled question for a century or more. Far more difficult to answer is: what sorts of photographs are “art.” And, who is it that determines the […]
2009 NPR Story about Robert Frank
One of the great things about Google and the Internet is that you never know when you might stumble upon a prize. This one comes via Google Alerts and is an NPR story from 2009 on Robert Frank. It’s pretty basic stuff, but I have a rule that virtually anything on Robert Frank that I […]