The Camera


Ansel Adams - 1980
    It covers everything from "seeing" the finished photo in advance, to lens choices. It is illustrated with many of Ansel Adams most famous images.

The Photography Reader


Liz Wells - 2002
    Including articles by photographers from Edward Weston to Jo Spence, as well as key thinkers like Roland Barthes, Victor Burgin and Susan Sontag, the essays trace the development of ideas about photography. Each themed section features an editor's introduction setting ideas and debates in their historical and theoretical context.Sections include: Reflections on Photography; Photographic Seeing; Coding and Rhetoric; Photography and the Postmodern; Photo-digital; Documentary and Photojournalism; The Photographic Gaze; Image and Identity; Institutions and Contexts.

American Surfaces


Stephen Shore - 1999
    It features unpublished photographs from Shore's influential work that has been widely exhibited in the US but never captured in a book for the general public.

Photography: A Cultural History


Mary Warner Marien - 2002
    Mary Warner Marien has constructed a richer and more kaleidoscopic account of the history of photography than has previously been available. Her comprehensive survey shows compellingly how photography has sharpened, if not altered forever, our perception of the world. The book was written to introduce students to photography. It does not require that students possess any technical know-how and can be taught without referring to techniques in photography. Incorporating the latest research and international uses of photography, the text surveys the history of photography in such a way that students can gauge the medium's long-term multifold developments and see the historical and intellectual contexts in which photographers lived and worked. It also provides a unique focus on contemporary photo-based work and electronic media.

Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity


Michelle Bates - 2006
    Whether you're an experienced enthusiast or toy camera neophyte, you'll find Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity chock full of tantalizing tips, fun facts and, of course, absolutely striking photographs taken with the lowest tech and simplest tools around. I got me a Holga. Now What? Holgas need a little TLC before they're ready to go out in the world and start snapping. Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity digs through all the different Holga models available, lays out thier advantages and quirks and helps you get up to speed on all the prep you'll need to do to jump in on the toy-camera revolution. What should I Feed my Holga? Holgas, Dianas, other toy cameras can use many types of film. Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, lays all their pros and cons on the line letting you get some images you want, and some you could just never imagine. Can Holga come out to play?Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity will help you steer your way through all the details and quirks of taking wonderful and weird pictures with your toy camera. We'll explore possible subjects and the best way to shoot them and play with all sorts of techniques from vignetting, to multiple exposures, to panoramas, close-ups, movement, night photography, flare, flash, color and more. For the Intrepid Holga-ographerFor the Holga master, we've diagramed and described advanced toy camera modifications and introduce you to a variety of problems, solutions and inventions born from toy cameras' "limitations." What Next?From negatives to prints or pixels, we help you navigate your post-shooting choices.Don't ForgetThe Diana, Banner, Action Sampler, Photo Blaster, and Lensbaby are all toy cameras with their own loveable qualities. We'll look beyond the Holga to show a whole wide world of toys. Artists Artists in this book include: Michael AckermanJonathan BaileyEric Havelock-BaillieJames BalogBetsy BellSusan BowenLaura BurltonDavid BurnettNancy BursonPerry DilbeckJill EnfieldAnnette FournetMegan GreenWesley KennedyTeru KuwayamaMary Ann LynchAnne Arden McDonaldDaniel MillerTed OrlandRobert OwenBecky RamotowskiNancy RexrothFrancisco Mata RosasRichard RossFranco SalmoiraghiMichael SherwinHarvey SteinGordon StettiniusMark SinkKurt SmithSandy SorlienPauline St. Denis;-p r a b u!

History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present


Beaumont Newhall - 1972
    No other book has managed to relate the aesthetic evolution and technical innovations of photography with such an absorbing combination of clarity, scholarship and enthusiasm.

On Being a Photographer: a Practical Guide


David Hurn - 1997
    On Being a Photographer has become one of the most popular books ever written with practical advice for photographers.

John Shaw's Closeups in Nature


John Shaw - 1987
    One of the country's foremost nature photographers offers closeup techniques and covers exposure, equipment and composition along with special equipments and lenses.

The Americans


Robert Frank - 1958
    There is no question that Robert Frank's The Americans is the most famous and influential photography book ever published. It was 1959 when the book first came out: a series of deceptively simple photographs that Frank took on a trip through America in '55 and '56, pictures of normal people, everyday scenes: lunch counters, bus depots, cars, and the stangely familiar faces of people we don't quite know but have seen somewhere. They are pictures that saw the "American way of life" as we hadn't yet quite been able to see it ourselves, photographs that condensed the entire life of a nation in classic images that still speak to us today, forty years and several generations later.

Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency


Russell Miller - 1997
    From Robert Capa's stark photograph of a Loyalist soldier being shot in the head during the Spanish Civil War to Eve Arnold's astonishingly intimate portraits of well-known faces - from Joan Crawford to Malcolm X - Magnum has changed how we perceive our political leaders, social crises, and the communities next door.Magnum's photographers are some of the most talented, brave, and resourceful in the world: the founders, Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger, and Henri Cartier-Bresson; and recruits, including Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, James Nachtwey, Eugene Richards, and Sebastiao Salgado. Magnum follows them on assignment, facing bodyguards and visa troubles and taking to the risk-filled trenches of several wars for the perfect shot. Full of wonderful stories and heroic feats, Magnum is an essential volume for anyone interested in photography or photojournalism.

A Short History of Photography


Walter Benjamin - 1931
    The classic 1972 translation by Stanley Mitchell is now available in book form for the first time to mark the 80th Anniversary of the original publication, with a new Introduction by writer and photographer Henry Bond.From the Introduction"Applied as a modus operandi, any intention to demystify or debunk through a rebuttal of idées reçues--conventional wisdom--often emerges directly from everyday life: anthropological field research made on a tram; in a cafe; at an art exhibition; lazing on a mountainside smoking a joint ('My First Impressions of Hashish'); or, as here, whilst perusing a selection of recently published photo-books.""Benjamin's essay was first published in German in three consecutive weekly instalments in the arts-to-politics magazine Literarische Welt, in the Fall of 1931, where it appears as 'Kleine Geschichte der Photographie.' Notwithstanding its appearance in the context of a journalistic, features-led current affairs title, Benjaimin's essay is, I claim--I am bold, but I cannot imagine I am alone in this conclusion--the single most significant essay in the quite slim canon of indispensable photo theory texts: there is no later scholar of photo who has not been influenced by it.""Benjamin's deliberately unassuming 'little' history can and should be opposed to all the grand reference tomes on photography that are packed with so much ('includes more than 3,000 color and black-and-white images,' etc.), but which are ultimately only unwieldy and tedious."

Early Color


Saul Leiter - 2006
    Although Edward Steichen had exhibited some of Leiter's color photography at The Museum of Modern Art in 1953, it remained virtually unknown to the world thereafter. Leiter moved to New York in 1946 to become a painter, but through his friendship with Richard Pousette-Dart he quickly recognized the creative potential of photography. Leiter continued to paint, exhibiting with Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning, but the camera remained his ever-present means of recording life in the metropolis. None of Leiter's contemporaries, with the partial exception of Helen Levitt, assembled a comparable body of work: subtle, often abstract compositions of lyrical, eloquent color.

Diane Arbus: Monograph


Diane Arbus - 1972
    These landmark images now have a clarity and depth not achievable in earlier editions.

The Photo Book


Phaidon Press - 1997
    The Photography Book brings together 500 inspiring, moving and beautiful images of famous events and people, sensational landscapes, historic moments, ground-breaking photojournalism, insightful portraits, sport, wildlife, fashion and the everyday.Following the winning formula of The Art Book and The 20th Century Art Book, The Photography Book is arranged in alphabetical order by photographer offering us a window on the last 150 years as it takes us on a journey through familiar and strange images by great, unknown and innovative photographers from around the world. Each image is discussed in detail, bringing it to life and offering us an understanding of this art form which plays such a large role in our everyday lives.An accessible, informative and easy-to-use guide, The Photography Book brings together an overview of this incredibly rich and diverse medium. A simple system of cross-referencing offers easy access to photographers working with a similar approach or using different means to capture the same subject. Glossaries of technical terms and movements and a directory of museums and galleries where photography is permanently exhibited are also included to provide a fully comprehensive volume.

Inferno


James Nachtwey - 1999
    Featuring brutally compassionate photographs taken from 1990-99, inspired by an overwhelming belief in the human possibility of change, this volume is a definitive selection from Nachtwey's astonishing portfolio. It documents today's conflicts and their victims, from Somalia's famine to genocide in Rwanda, from Romania's abandoned orphans and 'irrecoverables' to the lives of India's 'untouchables', from war in Bosnia to conflict in Chechnya. Inferno is an evocative visual insight into modern history, bringing it disturbingly close to our consciousness.