Dennis Hopper with his 2009 book of his photographs. Photo courtesy Taschen
Dennis Hopper died today at his home in Venice, California, at the age of 74.
The actor was for many years also a prolific photographer. In the 1960s, when he believed he wasn't going to get future work from movie studios because of his wild-man reputation, he considered becoming a career photographer; he'd received his first camera as a gift from Brooke Hayward, his first wife (who also helped resuscitate his acting career), and had taken to it readily. Most of his better known photographic output coincided with the decade of the 1960s. "I was a compulsive shooter back then," he told Christopher Goodwin. "I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people."
The most recent book of his work, Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961–1967
The movie "Easy Rider," which Hopper directed and co-wrote, and in which he co-starred, took in $50 million in 1969, when a typical movie ticket cost $1.25.
Mike
(Thanks to Dave)
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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
and 
. It's Ways of Seeing in which he constructs essays made entirely out of pictures. I'm going to try the same thing here, after the break.
is a beautifully
printed volume filled with photographs of, yes, wheat
fields. This prosaic subject yielded images of striking
patterns of plowed and harvested fields under dramatic
prairie skies. 
. Kirby’s new book is identically
designed, using the same format, cover cloth, and
typography, despite the intervening eight years. The
photographic reproductions are in harmony with the earlier
volume's. Both also have their images bracketed between
thoughtful introductions by Richard Manning and an
afterwords by Jay Dusard. Together they represent an
extended visual meditation on the North American prairie. 
and 
, as well as more
subject-specific books, ranging from 
in England to France's 
. For those
who love books as fine art objects in their own right,
copies of his beautiful 
are still available. A
re-issue of 
has also
recently been released.
, is newly available from Amazon. Gohlke is one of the best writers who is also an accomplished photographer—his thoughts and essays are articulate and thoughtful, and he's even lucid in interviews, of which there are several present here. In fact, one of the best chapters in the book is "Lieben und Arbeiten" from a 1984 Colorado College interview, which contains the famous aphorism, "At its best...photography asks us to return to the world from art."
I'm not going to argue.
by Judith Fox might seem to be not a photography book, but a book about a disease, one of those specialty titles targeting a specific and defined demographic of people who are necessarily preoccupied, through no choice of their own, with a particular affliction or condition. 
, is now available. (Here's 
—different cover in the U.K.) If you are to have only one H.C.-B. book, or if you are new to him, I still recommend the big monograph 
, which we are very lucky to still have in print. If that's too steep for you, I very much enjoyed 
, ten bucks and cheap at twice the price. Good stuff.
by Susanne Lange, Director of the Photography Collection/SK Cultural Foundation, in Cologne, Germany, with essays by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, a scholar on the staff of the Foundation, and made with the cooperation of Gerd Sander, the photographer's grandson and an expert on his grandfather's work. First published in Germany by Schirmer/Mosel, and in the U.S.A. by Abrams, to mark the 125th anniversary of Sander's birth. It's the most complete set of Sander's work extant, with 1400 pages overall and more than 150 never-before-published images.
)
(in Deutsch, Antlitz der Zeit) from Schirmer's Visual Library, a near pocket-sized recreation of the book with which Sander introduced his project to the world. Small, but it's only $9.95, and it's a nice little volume and a nice taste of the work.
, published just last fall. Here's the 
(for links to Amazon Canada and Amazon Germany, go 
from ten years ago, now out of print. It's a nomad at my house: it never found a comfortable home and keeps turning up in the oddest places. At the moment I, um, can't find it. If you want that one, it's going to be either hard to find or a little on the expensive side. When mine turns up again I'm going to lasso it and ensconce it in the new bookcase, alongside my other Marshall books. Maybe it'll settle down.
(here's the 
), which is my personal favorite of all his books because...well, because I like jazz. Although relatively new to the public I still think it ranks among the six or eight best books of jazz portraits. Like all books that "collect" famous people, it's somewhat uneven, with true masterpieces next to pictures that sorta had to be included because they were all he had of somebody he wanted to include, but overall it's a vibrant and lively collection. No color pictures in this one.
from AMMO books, a subgenre that's likely to die with film, and Jim Marshall has his own version, called 
. I haven't seen it, but the concept is standard and straightforward: a contact sheet from a shoot shown opposite the final select. As with many such books, likely to be of considerable technical interest to photographers.
. I've never seen it and don't know much about it; apparently it's a series of compare-and-contrast pairs of pictures by Jim and his friend Timothy White.
, and if so, what you can tell me about its quality, especially the quality of the reproductions...? Schirmer-Mosel is usually pretty reliable in that respect, but it's never wise to take too much on faith.
at Amazon U.S. 
at Amazon U.K.
, which is 13 1/2" x 16 7/8". That's bigger than it sounds (camera included for scale). This is one of my favorite purchases of last year, by the way. The second printing was published in 2007, and has just gone out of print, although there are still a few new copies available here and there. You can see some of the work from it 
. Although it wasn't cheap new). Not tall, but 17" wide.
, which was published last September. 
. And of course it's available from 
. Along the way, he helped make the reputations of a number of photographers who are well established now, such as Mary Ellen Mark.
by John Szarkowski (Museum of Modern Art) (
) (466 copies purchased). By far our best-selling title, probably because I named it as one of my all-time favorite photography books and the "basic primer" that I think anyone who is seriously interested in photography should own. A fine, simple, discursive introduction to the history of accomplishment in the medium, effortlessly (and painlessly!) incorporating a great number of accepted critical principles, and providing a de facto object lesson in how a great connoisseur approaches fine photographs.
by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe (Peachpit Press) (
) (203 copies purchased).
by Gary Stochl (Center for American Places) (
) (138 copies purchased). Brought to your—and our—attention by Ken Tanaka, this modest little book was extremely popular with our readers. Gary Stochl worked for many decades in complete obscurity before being discovered and championed by photographer Bob Thall of Columbia College Chicago.
by David Ward (Argentum [U.K.] / Aurum Press [U.S.]) (
) (136 copies purchased). 
by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua (Focal Press) (
) (118 copies purchased). Longtime classic that is probably the top-ranking basic text about the fundamentals of lighting.
by our friend Kirk Tuck. (Amherst Media) (
) (116 copies purchased in 2009). The only repeat champion on this year's list, Minimalist Lighting was also one of 2008's top sellers. 
by Richard Benson (Museum of Modern Art) (
by Roberto Koch (Thames & Hudson [U.K.] / Abrams [U.S.]) (
. Note that you have to search "Photobox" in the U.K., with no colon.) (91 copies purchased). A particularly fine—and inexpensive—sampler of excellent photographs by many different photographers, with commentary of a surprisingly high standard. Translated from the Italian. 
by Lewis Blackwell (PQ Blackwell) (
) (77 copies purchased). Another, more sophisticated sampler, featuring more "hot right now" photographers, who made their own selections from their own work. The most deluxe of the books on this list, and a good bargain for the asking price.
