The Online Photographer

Is this for real? I thought it had gone out of print in that desultory way that long-in-the-tooth titles go skulking away, but B&H says it's in stock. I ordered one, so we shall soon find out.

If it's true, then Canon's still #1. For some time now, you see, I've subscribed to the Theory of the Book, which holds that whichever camera company has a book out is the leading camera company. Nikon had at least two in the '70s and '80s, and Olympus published the excellent The OM System Lens Handbook of revered memory in about '84, or maybe '86 it was, in the brief moment of its ascendancy (before it decided it could forego autofocus). Since the EOS system got its legs under it, it's been The EF Lens Book, now in its third edition and hanging on in print if that listing is to be believed. Unless I'm mistaken, no other camera company has a similar publication, at least not officially.

(I don't know how well my Theory would stand up to actual research. Ernst Wildi's Hasselblad books were at least semi-official. Could you count Willard Morgan's Leica Manual from the '50s or Herbert Keppler's The Pentax Way from the '60s? I guess not, because admitting third party titles brings a plethora of confusions into play. Well, some theories are better left lightly tested.)

The entire text of the Canon book is available for free online. That doesn't count in terms of the Theory. (I do recommend that you download the penultimate chapter, "Optical Terminology & MTF Characteristics." An excellent primer on optics, cogent and readable.) I'm waiting, as I have been patiently waiting for a dozen or more years now, for the Next Book—it will be a portent, a bellwether of a change in dominance at the top. Maybe, pace the previous post, the next book will be "Photography With an iPhone" from Apple, written by "Mac" from the Mac and PC commercials....

Mike

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Perhaps this will indicate just how circuitous my thought process can be sometimes. Writing the previous article summary about the twice-lost Cartier-Bresson prints sent me off looking for an illustration for it. Most of my illustration ideas come from my head, and I thought of John Loengard's excellent portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson in old age, so I went off looking for that. I couldn't find one I could use (the only one I found has a disfiguring watermark on it), but, in the process of searching, I discovered that John's fine book As I See It is still in print. (Here's the U.K. link.)

Considering how fast many photography books seem to go out of print these days, I'm always surprised to find that good ones published in years past are still available. This was published way back in 2005. Four years is a middlin'-long lifespan for a book these days.

As a photographer, John Loengard was like a golfer who never went to Q-School* or played a mini-tour—he became a LIFE magazine photographer when he was still in college. Later, he was the picture editor for the monthly incarnation of LIFE, from 1978 to 1987.

Many of his books are more about LIFE magazine and other photographers than they are about him, like the excellent and entertaining collection of early-'90s interviews with former LIFE photographers, What They Saw. His "must-have" book in my opinion is Pictures Under Discussion, which pairs photographs with short essays in the manner of Szarkowski's Looking at Photographs (speaking of which, you do have that one by now, don't you? If you don't, chop chop). But both those books of Loengard's are out of print. As I See It is a retrospective monograph of his own photographs. Although John Loengard's contributions to photography have been multifaceted and not limited to his own work, his pictures are underrated. They're very fine, as well as being interesting and entertaining to look at because of their subjects (he's especially good with portraits of other photographers, for instance. Which I guess is where I started here).

*There are only a handful of golfers who have never had to run the gauntlet of Q-School to qualify for the tour. Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, a few champions from other countries, and a scant few others. Even Tom Watson went through Q-School—once.

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Featured Comment by Mike Peters: "When Pictures Under Discussion first came out, I pored over it for months, reading and re-reading. The book was quite illuminating for a young photographer.

"One day, I decided that I should show my work to John Loengard himself, secretly hoping he would see the work of a budding genius, or maybe just provide me with a nugget of advice or inspiration.

"So, I called the offices of LIFE and asked for his extension. Astonishingly, he answered the phone and gave me an appointment. I was on cloud nine, knowing that this would be my break. So, I prepared my portfolio, making the best prints of my best work.

"On the appointed day, I made my way to LIFE from my home in N.J. And there I was, in same hallways where the giants of 20th century photojournalism once and still roamed. We sat down and he pored over my work, inspecting, tossing aside, looking again. Finally the moment came where he had something to say, I sat forward, my heart leaping out of my chest.

"He leaned back and told me that my pictures were boring. He may have said other things after that, but my mind was stuck on boring. Dejectedly, I left, crushed, totally flattened, ready to quit photography.

"And now 25 years later, I realized that I was boring, even to myself, and my photos reflected who I was. When I was in my 20s I should have been living life to the fullest, doing interesting and crazy things, taking chances. Instead, I lived a life full of fear and negativity. Well, duh, that's what was in my photos.

"Thank you John Loengard for being honest with me, and giving me that nugget of truth.

"My copy of Pictures Under Discussion continues to give insight to all who experience it. I pass that book around to all of my friends who become interested in photography, and each person wants to read and re-read it just as I did. It has become well worn, but it's capacity to inspire is undiminished by time or technology."

Writing about Steve McCurry's new book The Unguarded Moment the other day and thinking about how well it "goes with" his earlier book Looking East reminded me that for some while now I've been meaning to write a post about books in pairs. I have a quirky tendency to shelve books next to other books that I sense they fit with. Sontag sits next to Barthes, Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word is shelved next to John Berger's Ways of Seeing. Why? I guess sometimes the pairings are obvious; sometimes it's because the two books nurture or amplify each other, sometimes it's because I feel they balance each other out or contradict. I guess it has no real meaning...it's just a personal idiosyncrasy. I'm still not sure I'm ever going to inflict that particular essay on you.

But as I was thinking about it again I was poking around on Amazon seeing what's in print and what's not, and I came across David Pye's lovely little book The Nature and Art of Workmanship again. This rare little gem hasn't always been easy to get in the 41 years since it was published, so I thought I'd just throw out another recommendation for it for whatever it's worth. Pye was Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art in London from 1948 to 1974, and this book pertains mostly to furniture...on the surface. The book is really about the philosophy of craftsmanship, however. Read it with a flexible and open mind, and you can apply many of his ideas to many other fields, to many arts and most crafts. It can be easily seen as pertaining to the "crafting" of photographs (fine art prints, at the very least) and in some ways, I think, even cameras(!). I know that ever since I first read it I've found it helpful to think of his concepts of "the workmanship of risk" and "the workmanship of certainty" with regard to photographing—in a way it's what Garry Winogrand was talking about in that marvelous and thought-provoking little video we linked to a while back.

Right now, here, today, I'm not going to jump into the deep sea of talking about photography's relationship to craft, either historically or the way it's been changing again lately. It's a big subject. In any event, this is not a book that's directly about photography. But it's one of those rare books in which someone who's been thinking for a lifetime about a subject he knows deeply makes an attempt to share his hard-gained wisdom with others. In that way it's the opposite of much of the cookie-cutter, research-and-regurgitate, processed, pasteurized book product that passes for being publishable all too often these days. I certainly enjoyed it when I read it, and I treasure it on my shelves now, and I recommend it to you with feeling if it sounds like it might appeal.

ADDENDUM: Well for Pete's sake, I forgot the U.K. link. And Prof. Pye was a Londoner, too. Sorry.

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Featured Comment by Dale: "Just for perspective, I keep my copy of Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History next to my Gary Larson collection."

Featured Comment by Calvin Amari: "Sontag next to Barthes, eh? Something tells me this is a charged statement.

"Might it be that when you see statements, for example, like this in Sontag's On Photography: 'For politicians the three-quarter gaze is more common than [a frontal view]: a gaze that soars rather than confronts, suggesting instead of the relation to the viewer, to the present, the more ennobling abstract relation to the future.'

"...and this from Barthes' 'Photography and Electoral Appeal' written decades earlier: 'A three-quarter face photograph, which is more common than [a frontal view], suggests the tyranny of an ideal: the gaze is lost in the future, it does not confront, it soars and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined.'

"...placing one volume in close physical proximity to the other is your symbolic editorial correction for the fact that Sontag didn't have the courtesy of even crediting the original with a footnote in this and similar examples? Just wondering."

Mike replies: Ah, that ill-defined line between "influence" and plagiarism. (Which brings to mind the question, how does one reproduce a Sherrie Levine in a book?) Your comparison of these quotes raises one ugly specter: that I might have found Barthes so difficult merely because his language (in translation) is less clear....

Anyway, there's that, and that they seemed to have had such a mutual admiration society going, and that their writings and all the related fuss were roughly contemporaneous, and that the books are roughly the same size and thickness...regarding that last, I'm not proud—I didn't say this habit of mine strictly made any sense.

Featured Comment by Glenn Gordon: "Here's a bad PDF of a piece I wrote in 1996 for Woodwork magazine on David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship. It was good to see your mention of the book—it was seminal for many craftsman that I know.

Download "The Workmanship of Risk" by Glenn Gordon

"Speaking of pairing books, I’ve always shelved Pye's next to Soetsu Yanagi's The Unknown Craftsman (or at least I did until some unknown borrower failed to return the Yanagi; it’s one of those books I keep having to replace, lending it too often to people who disappear.)"

Here's a deep treasure fished out of photography's recent past, rescued and revived by Steidl and the Pace McGill Gallery (where there was a show of the work this past spring). Emmet Gowin: Photographs is another of my long-time favorite photobooks, available once again, after many years, in a lovely new reprint. A straightlaced young man from a strict upbringing married into a more freewheeling, open, and expressive family and made art of the collision, with the fully open eyes of one who belongs but sees everything as if it were new (and astonishing). A book made out of the energy of young love and new freedom, and ambition.

In retrospect this is something of a period piece. The sparse highlights pulled up out of the inky blacks is a printing style that now looks very '70s. Gowin includes Sommeresque landscapes, extreme wide angles, the dense, textured, flat-field arrays that would preoccupy his later work, and a Callahan-like extended portrait of his wife Edith. But it's the snapshot-made-art quality of his new family's faces, bodies, activities, environs, and lives that are the core of the book. Lives and deaths, I should say.

Some of the pictures were made with a medium-format lens mounted on a view camera, making the pictures circular, with the areas outside the image circle carefully burned to gray or black by the photographer (who had the reputation of being a virtuoso printer). The effect is like a keyhole, or like a peephole in a door, although we're looking in, not out. It enhances the feeling that we're seeing something private and essential.

I knew this book very well as a student, and in the mid '80s I got to meet Edith Gowin. I told friends at the time that it was like meeting Lincoln, another famous subject of many photographs. To me she had a legendary quality. She spoke, however, in a high-pitched voice with more than a trace of a mountain twang, her words full of warmth and generosity. (Lincoln, too, is described by contemporaries as having a peculiar-sounding, high-pitched voice.) Not at all like the imposing, vivid, and somewhat dark figure, half wild lover, half earth mother, that inhabits the book.

Emmet Gowin: Photographs contains one of my all-time favorite pictures, too, called Nancy, a picture that could neither be simpler nor more rare. (Reproduced in this article from a while back.)

I'll probably have to get the new edition, which is very faithful to the old one but better made (and hardcover). Even though I must say I don't like the new cover. The edition I have, in paperback, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1976. It cost me $4.47, which means I bought it used. I got it perhaps four or five years after it came out. One of the essential books in my library. I look at it every year. A book that's grown with me, like a much-loved piece of music.

(Here's the U.K. link.)

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In the announcement of the demise of Kodachrome the other day, reader Luc Novovitch asked about Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah. Our old friend Dan Westergren, Senior Photo Editor at National Geographic Traveler, has written a nice blog piece about the history of the name. The area, which encompasses the famous Grosvenor Arch pictured at right, was discovered, photographically at least, by an expedition led by National Geographic writer Jack Breed in 1949, who originally dubbed it "Kodachrome Flat" because it was so spectacularly photogenic. There's an ironic twist to this Grosvenor Arch picture, though! Nature photographers especially might be interested in checking out the link.

Meanwhile, Steve McCurry, whom Kodak has selected for the honor of shooting the ceremonial last roll of Kodachrome film later this year, has a new book out, and it's a beaut. Called The Unguarded Moment, it's a major retrospective of McCurry's best and favorite work shot over three decades. As you might expect, it includes pictures from all over the world, mostly Asia and the subcontinent. (Here's the U.K. link to the book.)

McCurry is an elite travel/location photographer at the very top of his game. Fortunately for us his work is thoroughly represented and readily experienced in books. The Unguarded Moment, which might be his masterpiece, consists of horizontal pictures set vertically on the page, so the book is in effect bound at the top rather than the side, like Stuart Klipper's The Antarctic. It features the same oversized format as Looking East, McCurry's book of portraits and one of our favorites from 2006. In fact the new book makes a perfect matched set with Looking East, "landscape format" pictures to the earlier book's "portrait format" ones but bound so they can stand side-by-side together on a shelf. It has the same lush, gorgeous, deep-hued reproduction quality that suits the pictures so beautifully (looking at reproduction like this is almost a sensual experience). It's a very fine set of pictures—street and slice-of-life scenes spiced here and there with the direct, soulful portaits that have long been McCurry's signature. Highly recommendable to anyone who likes exotic locations, masterful candid street photography, or just superbly reproduced color photography in general. If you don't want to buy it, see if your library has it. Just a very satisfying and enjoyable book, another standout from this photographer.

To wander back on topic, Steve McCurry estimates that he's shot some 800,000 pictures on Kodachrome, including his most famous one.

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Seasons of the Moon, by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair
Hardcover, 176 pages
Focus Publishing (September 2008)
11.5 x 9.5 inches

$54.95 at Amazon Marketplace

Seasons of the Moon is a book of black and white photography mixed with essays and poems. It is structured around twelve key images, one for each month of the year. Each of those images is a striking and otherworldly scene that makes you wonder how it was photographed. Illustrating the title of the book, they appear to be nocturnal and mysterious, radiating spirituality with a feeling of moonlight, yet with plenty of rich texture and light both in the sky and land. Those images are nothing like what I have seen before, at least at this level of realization, where, presented as a series, they give the work a unique visual signature. Long after Ansel Adams and Edward Weston have passed away, many black and white landscape photographers still work in their footsteps. The images in Seasons of the Moon offer a refreshing departure from that classical style.

I learned that they were created with a large-format camera using infrared film and digital processing from daytime exposures. The artist explains that using light that is below the threshold of human perception is a perfect metaphor for his goal, which was to convey the hidden beauty of the land of Israel, one that is seen by the heart rather than by the objective eye. Indeed, Seasons of the Moon excels at depicting a romantic vision of the "eternal" sacred land, with landscapes, scenes and places of religious Jewish significance (there are a couple of images of other places as well, including a haunting view of the Jewish Cemetery in Prague) mixed with close-ups and a few images of traditional Jewish people, while nothing about contemporary Israel is shown. A nocturnal cityscape of Jerusalem under a rich sky makes palpable the timelessness of this most sacred of cities.

At this point, it is worth mentioning the life of the artist, who created the text as well as the photographs in the book, for he brings a unique passion and understanding of Israel to this work. After a successful career as a prominent London music producer, with several "hits" to his credit, Yaakov Asher Sinclair left everything and came to Jerusalem to immerse himself in learning the Torah. After 10 years of dedicated study, he became a Rabbi. As such, he started publishing an educational newsletter with the same title as this book that referred to the connection between the astrological symbol of the month and the corresponding events in the Jewish calendar. The essays in that newsletter were to become the backbone of the book we're looking at, but, fortunately for us outside the religious Jewish community, in the progress of this project their importance was reduced to give a more prominent place to the more than 75 photographs. Thanks to his time away from the hectic demands of the commercial world, the Rabbi had rekindled his long-time interest in photography, finding a new purpose in his artmaking

As a book, Seasons of the Moon is very well produced, with a clean design and beautiful quad-tone reproductions. Besides being the artist's first book, it is also the inaugural book published by Focus publishing, a new venture of David Spivak, the publisher of the fine art photography magazine Focus.

Besides the twelve key images, the book somehow pairs other images with essays or poems. As such, the images and the text complement and illuminate each other. Yet I wished the designer had found a way to make the text sometimes even less prominent, maybe using fold-outs like in Rob Hornstra's 101 Billionaires. This would have allowed the images to shine without distraction for the non-religious, for it is sure that even for them, the originality and atmosphere of the images will make the book worth a prolonged look.

Tuan

Book website

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Edward Hopper & Company: Hopper's Influence on Photography by Jeffrey Fraenkel; published by the Fraenkel Gallery, April 1. (U.K. link)

According to the product description, Geoff Dyer said that Edward Hopper "could claim to be the most influential American photographer of the twentieth century—even though he didn't take any photographs."

But didn't Hopper in fact take photographs—to paint from?* (It's been since high school that I studied Hopper.)

Danny Lyon: Memories of Myself; published by Phaidon, March 29. (U.K. link)

The subtitle is a misnomer; these are photo essays, which (notwithstanding being the same word) is something very different from "essays." The book contains nine photo essays, each of which includes 15 to 20 photographs.

The book inspired a recent article over at the world's best photography magazine.

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Featured Comment by Farhiz Karanjawala: "The Whitney Museum of American Art has probably the largest collection of Hopper works including many of his preliminary studies. He was known to sit in his car and sketch a scene making detailed notes about colour and light in studies for 'Rooms for Tourists, 1945,' 'Summertime, 1943,' 'Morning Sun, 1952,' 'Office at Night, 1940' and others. The New York Times some issues back had an article on Hopper's Cape Cod. If you missed it, it's worth a look."

ADDENDUM:

Danny Lyon, by Paul Sutton

Review by Scott Kirkpatrick

Two books I recently acquired, thanks to Amazon's thoughtful automatic suggestions, deal with the fabled lands of the West in entirely different ways. Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West, by Eva Respini, published to accompany an exhibit which closes June 8th at MoMA, treats the idea of the American West, as it evolves from the spiritual force conveyed by Timothy O'Sullivan, Carleton E. Watkins, Ansel Adams and Minor White to the worldly observations of its present state by Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke and Lewis Baltz. (U.K. link.) The modern view is emphasized. The back slipcover is a "movie still," from Monument Valley, starring Cindy Sherman. The front of the book at first glance shows an upscale modern house nestled under desert mountains, but on closer inspection we see that a flash flood has torn the site apart, leaving one of the driveway's Cadillacs inverted, almost covered with mud, twenty feet below.

The book—and presumably the exhibit, which I have not seen—works by juxtaposition. For example, one spread contrasts Ansel Adams' and Minor White's clearing storm views of distant towering mountains with Stephen Shore's Oregon roadside with fields and a dramatic sky, to which a billboard adds the obligatory mountain and foreground lake. The resort name and details that the billboard originally carried have been painted out; the mountain and lake remain. Other combinations work well for me. One spread that I found intriguing combines a raw new hilltop town at the south end of what has become Silicon Valley, photographed by Watkins, with a similarly situated Hopi pueblo in Arizona and Robert Adams' view of the Denver metropolis from the mountain above.

The book consists of two sections, "land" and "people." People as archetypes of the West also evolve, from the native Americans idealized by Edward S. Curtis or Gertrude Käsebier, to the present day: Joel Meyerowitz's and Bill Owens' suburbanites (in very different suburbs), and Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Major Tom, lying on John Lennon's sidewalk star. More subtle and rewarding are several groups of indigenous people photographed by members of their own groups.

Timothy O'Sullivan, Savage Mine, Curtis Shaft, Virginia City, Nevada, 1868.

Most of the earlier pictures were not familiar. Two favorites are miners inside the Savage mine (by O'Sullivan) and a spread of the entire Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in front of their tents. There is an introductory essay, that tries to say something pithy and relevant about every photographer. It can be skipped.

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The subject of Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1857-1967, we are told in the very first sentence of the Introduction, delivers nearly 2,000,000 gallons of water per second into the Pacific Ocean. (U.K. link.) The Columbia River, the second largest river in North America, cutting through million-year-old volcanic flows sufficient in volume to cover the continental U.S. to a depth of 39 feet, sustaining native cultures for the past ten thousand years, and gradually domesticated during the period 1867–1957 that this book covers, is the focus of 20 years of collecting by photographer and curator Terry Toedtemeier* at the Portland Art Museum. This book, by Toedtemeier and John Laursen, is firmly rooted in the 80-mile-long Columbia River Gorge. It tells the story of the gorge's evolution together with the history of photography drawn to it. The prints are reproduced in color, retaining the toning, occasional hand-coloring, and stains of the original vintage prints, mostly obtained from local collectors or in the Portland Art Museum collection. Negatives from this era are rare; Watkins' were lost in the 1905 San Francisco earthquake.

Background: The gorge had two impassable stretches, the Cascade Rapids and the Long Narrows. One, the terrifying end of the Oregon trail. The other, the river turned on its side, with the entire flow passing through a narrow deep crack. Great for fishing. At the beginning of the period of this book, each had been bypassed by a portaging railroad. During this period, canals with locks were built, and at the end of the period, both were inundated behind hydroelectric dams.

Bertram C. Towne, Fishing at the Long Narrows, albumen silver print, circa 1889
This is the point, five miles upriver from The Dalles, where the entire river is channeled into a single linear chasm, cut deep into the bedrock.  Several tribes had exclusive rights to the fishing here.

The first section (of five) of the book contains thirty plates by Carleton E. Watkins drawn from his visit in 1867 and subsequent trips in 1882–5. Watkins was not a pioneer in the sense of W. H. Jackson and O'Sullivan traveling with government expeditions before the Civil War. At that time there was a war going on...to eliminate the Indians. Unfortunates such as Ridgeway Glover, a Philadelphia photographer exploring without military escort, was perhaps the Sean Flynn of the early era of wet plate photography—he and a companion were eventually found dead, scalped and brutally mutilated.

Watkins, a successful portrait photographer, traveled with the encouragement and logistical support of transport company owners. His first visit to the Gorge was sponsored by the steamship and portaging railways. His second visits were facilitated by a private railway car provided by Collis Huntington of the Central Pacific. Yet he approached these opportunities as perhaps the first photo essayist. Stereo views fill in the steps between his large 20x24 wet plate exposures (and were probably his equivalent of shooting test Polaroids). He responded both to the spiritual impact of the pristine landscape, with isolated rocks, waterfalls, sand dunes, to the conjunction of steep bluffs and railroad tracks, or with detail-rich scenes of activity at the rail junctions. His mobility seems to have been limited. Later photographers, using dry plates and lighter equipment, climbed the bluffs and reached the Long Narrows where the fishing could be observed.

The middle section of the book is the work of three serious amateurs, working from 1903–05. Lily White and Sarah Ladd, on occasions joined by Maud Ainsworth, spent entire summers in the Gorge, operating from a houseboat which, in its cocktail configuration, could accommodate 150 people. It could be drawn through the canals and locks to any desired location, then moored for weeks at a time. Their platinum prints are sharp but atmospheric in intention. White and Ladd were elected associate members of Alfred Steiglitz' Photo Secession, among only six such from the West Coast.

The hand of man appears vividly in the final two sections. The fourth chronicles the appearance of the automobile, as the first tourist road was built up the gorge. The final section introduces two new elements: aerial photography, which finally integrates the separate parts of the story, and Kodachromes, by Ray Atkeson, documenting the construction of the Bonneville and Dalles dams. The entire river through the Gorge now appears broad and is navigable (with locks). The Dalles dam, producing hydropower and blessed by the fortuitous crossing of two transcontinental optical fibre links, is now surrounded by the world's largest Googleplex and many other sprawling computing facilities.

I've enjoyed both books, but I think in the long run I will spend more time with Wild Beauty. Instead of being about ideas, and indeed the ideas of others, it is about a place that Toedtemeier cared deeply about, and this care shows through.

Scott

*Toedtmeier died last December, after completing this book and opening the exhibition that is based on it. Here is an obituary that gives a nice sense of his personality and contributions.

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Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Landscape Beyond: A Journey Into Photography
by David Ward
Foreword by Joe Cornish
Paperback, 128 pages
Aurum Press (September 1, 2008)
11.1 x 8.9 inches

$23.07 at Amazon U.S.
£15.49 at Amazon U.K.

Landscape photography is obviously one of the more popular genres. There are numerous "how to" books on the subject at most any large bookstore, and many more via Amazon. They run the gamut from beginner-level nuts 'n' bolts to Photoshop-centric image-editing guides; from general overviews like John Shaw's 1994 guide to the prolific Tim Fitzharris's many books. Almost all of them talk a bit about equipment, a bit about technique, a bit about light, a bit about subjects and locations....

This is all well and good for novices. However, as Mike has pointed out before, these how-to books quickly reach a point of diminishing returns for anyone aspiring to something beyond mere competence. Taking lots of photographs, and deliberately learning from both the successes and failures, will carry you further once you know the basics.

There's also a lot to be said for close study of the work of acknowledged masters of the form, and it bears repeating that there is no substitute for viewing the actual prints. Seeing a museum or gallery exhibition in person can be a revelation. Knowing what's achievable by the best practitioners of the art permits you to set your own sights a little higher. Books are a portable "gallery" for your own home, and once you reach a nominal level of craft you'll gain more from studying a fine monograph than by reading another how-to guide.

Sometimes, though, studying the work of others or heading out with camera and tripod before sunrise aren't enough. Without getting too metaphysical about it, analyzing what you're trying to accomplish perceptually and artistically can be very worthwhile. Trying to translate the full sensory experience of a carpet of mountain wildflowers or a forest waterfall on to a two-dimensional piece of paper is a challenge, to put it mildly. So what actually makes for a compelling landscape photograph?

This is a long-winded (but I hope helpful) introduction to the work of David Ward. He's one of England's pre-eminent landscape photographers, specializing in large-format color images. To make a gross generalization, British landscape photography displays a gentler, human-scale vision compared with the typically spectacular, bombastic American idiom. Ward's work—like that of Charlie Waite, Joe Cornish, or David Noton—tends toward lyrical harmony. To me it "feels" like strings and woodwinds, rather than the bugles and trumpets of Ansel Adams or David Muench. Presumably this is driven by the softer landscape of the British Isles, shaped by human hands over thousands of years.

Landscape Beyond is David Ward's eloquent, thoughtful exploration of the aesthetic structure of landscape photographs. This is several planes higher than the customary "rule of thirds, golden hour light" type of discussion. Ward instead delves into perceptual theory, the properties of beauty, and the nature of mystery. The book is illustrated by his photographs, which are quietly breathtaking. They convey an impression of the contemplative beauty to be found in the natural world.

Ward makes an argument for a particular aesthetic in landscape photography, one centered on the three principles of simplicity, mystery, and beauty. Each is explored at length in remarkably eloquent and lucid essays drawing from multiple fields of inquiry. (Anyone who can meaningfully quote John Keats, John Szarkowski and John Cleese in the same essay has my admiration.)

Simplicity is examined as an artistic theme, starting from the common observation that painters add to a blank canvas, while photographers subtract from a chaotic reality. The gist of the discussion is how difficult, yet how very rewarding it is to distill meaningful simplicity from the wider world. In his exploration of the concept of mystery, Ward begins with the Mona Lisa's ambiguous smile to explain how subtle mysteries hold our attention and pique our curiosity, whereas the facile and obvious image quickly loses our interest despite its initial appeal. His examination of beauty proceeds from Edward Weston's sense of wonder, and touches on sources ranging from Robert Adams to Buckminster Fuller to the Navajo concept of beauty as the embodiment of harmony, order, health and balance. Ward's erudition flows organically; his arguments never feel strained. The final chapter discusses applying a sense of curiosity and exploration to landscape photography, and seeking one's own path rather than imitating images we've seen before.

I find David Ward's metaphysical approach to landscape photography the perfect antidote to ennui and creative block. Just thinking about the perceptual and aesthetic issues in play makes me want to get up at five a.m. and head out to shoot some pictures. Maybe you'll feel the same way.

David Ward's previous book, Landscape Within, covers some of the same issues from a different perspective. In it he explores the web of light linking the physical world with the final print, right brain/left brain thinking and a host of other notions, all with effortless eloquence. Well worth seeking out if you enjoy his written "voice."

Those interested in the traditional photographic notion of pictorial beauty may also want to seek out Katharine Thayer's essay in Lenswork #53, June/July 2004. Thayer gleefully assaults the post-modern disdain for beauty and environmentally-based art as an unhealthy disconnect from the natural world. Folks with recent MFA degrees may be appalled by her logic, but passionate amateurs like myself will find it bracing.

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Featured Comment by Andy: "A short BBC video clip of David Ward and Joe Cornish photographing just up the coast from me in Whitby."

Featured Comment by Yanchik: "To generalise about the British Isles is somewhat to miss the point.

"Anyone who has taken more than a superficial interest in the geology, human geography, industry or even weather rapidly comes to realise the extraordinary good luck of any outdoors photographer who happens to be based here.

"Geology from flat misty reclaimed marshlands through chalk scarps, sandy heath, limestone pavement, oak forest, a little strip of tundra, sandstone mountains with hard quartzite caps, old (Ural/Appalachian) glacial granite mountain scenery, new volcanic mountain scenery, tin, copper, coal, pick your preferred fossil era, columnar basalt....

"Of course, there are other places with such a fine variety of scenery, but not so many with it all packed into a tiny area. Comparisons might turn out odious, after all. In my personal opinion, the geological variety translates efficiently into a startling variety of regional dialects, accents and foodstuffs ('cuisines' might be a step too far; I don't want any choking Frenchmen on my conscience!)

"To Martin Doonan's point [in the comments]: take a closer look at David Ward. I don't disagree that Cornish and Waite fall into the Galen Rowell school of hyperfocal Velvia, but Ward definitely makes sallies into graphic/monochrome from time to time. I think it's also a supportable argument that for a general instructional text on landscape, David Ward, Joe Cornish, Charlie Waite and Galen Rowell make a very suitable starting point. A book based on Kenna, Sugimoto and Godwin need not fail, but it would be a harder road."

Featured Comment by PSmith: "One problem that British Landscape photography suffers from is lack of originality. The scene on the front of the book, of the streams running across Rannoch Moor and the mountain Buachaille Etive Mor at the start of Glen Coe in the background has been photographed ad nauseam and appears again and again in publications and on web sites. And that tree features in a lot of them! The vantage point is just off the A82 so although it looks like wilderness it's really easy to get to. Honestly you must have to queue up to take it. It's the British equivalent of Half Dome. What I don't understand is the attraction in taking the exact same photograph as everybody else. The fact that it's on the cover of a book by one of the pre-eminent British landscape photographers shows how endemic this problem is."

You probably remember our article about John Botte's fine book Aftermath. Just wanted to alert you that the remainder is available again on Amazon for $9.99.

However, unfortunately [rummages in closet], ah, here it is [puts on Bad Host hat]—I can't remember who sent me this tip. Whoever it was, thanks.

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Abebooks.com, the source for used books, sent out a list of its most expensive sales in April. On the plus side, it's nice that #3 is, at least in part, a photography title (and readily available for far less if you'll settle for the non-limited version); on the minus side, it's a little discouraging that even a bookseller doesn't know when to use a semicolon instead of a comma. But I curmudge.

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Featured Comment by John Taylor: "In the words of Calvin & Hobbes, 'verbing weirds language.' That said, English being beyond weird, 'curmudge' certainly looks to be a very useful weirding!"

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I promised last week, when I wrote about the new reprint of John Szarkowski's essential Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art [U.K. link here], that I'd post one of the 100 picture/essay combinations. This is neither the best nor the longest essay, and not the most appealing picture; it's intended as a representative sample of what the book's all about, to allow you to get a taste of it. (Note that the JPEG I've used here isn't the best; not all of the pictures are online in acceptable form.)

To say again: one of my very favorite photography books, warmly recommended.

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LISETTE MODEL
American, born Austria, 1906
______________________________

Gambler Type, French Riviera, 1938
13 7/8 x 10 1/4

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You can help support TOP by buying through our links:
Amazon U.S. link
Amazon U.K. link
Amazon Germany link
Amazon Canada link
B&H Photo link
Adorama Camera link

Featured Comment by Sean Murphy: "I'm so pleased that you've highlighted this book. I can attest to its enduring qualities. It was used as a textbook for a college course in B&W I took lo these many years back. I come back to it again and again even after having read and looked at it since it came out. Seeing that it is available again just gave me another reason to take it out and just look."

Mike replies: I do the same, Sean. If anything I like it better now than when I first encountered it, many readings ago.

Amazon U.S. is taking orders for Looking at Photographs again. It is expecting a shipment of books to arrive on Wednesday. Hopefully the availability will be continuous from now on so I don't have to keep posting updates...(please)....

The original post is here (so you don't have to go looking for it).

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As seems to happen all too often with our book recommendations, Looking at Photographs is no longer listed as available new at Amazon U.S. and is listed as "Temporarily out of stock" at Amazon U.K.

Just before I posted the notice below, at 11:34 p.m. Friday, the book was listed at #106,946 in sales on Amazon U.S.; and yesterday by 2:31 p.m. it was #73. I wasn't checking regularly so I don't know if that's as high as it got.

Perhaps Amazon was getting too many pre-orders and wasn't sure if its incoming shipments could cover them all. I still expect the book to be available in the immediate future.

As usual, I'll try to keep you posted. Sorry if you've experienced any frustration or inconvenience.

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I am enormously pleased to pass along the news that the long-awaited, on-again off-again reprint of John Szarkowski's great book Looking at Photographs is available once more.

If I have one single favorite book about photography, this would be it. It's a modest and simple book: Szarkowski, the longtime Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art and a great connoisseur, picked one hundred photographs from the collection and wrote short essays about each one. The pictures are on the right-hand page, with the essays facing them on the left. None of the essays fill more than a single page. The book is a paperback, not thick and not expensive.

The essays are, if anything, as beautiful as the pictures: brief, eloquent, measured, specific, declamatory and often poetic. Reading each essay has the effect of getting you to look at the corresponding picture repeatedly, adding to the richness of your experience of it. Oddly enough, the critical perspective is not what I'd call crucial—in many cases the essays are personal, elliptical, touched off by the photographs rather than constrained entirely by them; they are not even the final word on these specific pictures, never mind all of each chosen photographer's work. And yet, strangely, after finishing the book, and reading it again, and thinking about it, you realize that a great many of photography's concerns, glories, and riddles have been touched upon along the way. Think of it not as anything definitive, but as a way of tagging along as one one sensible, erudite and articulate observer experiences great work. It's the best guided museum tour of photographs ever locked into ink.

Assuming I can get permission, I'll publish a sample image and picture from the book in a day or two, so you can get a taste of the book and decide whether you might like it.

In the large literature of photography, there are only a handful of books that photographers of every level and type could read and look at with pleasure; there are fewer that deserve the attention even of general readers. This is one, in my humble opinion. I'm very pleased it's back in print.

$26.37 at Amazon U.S.
£21.21 at Amazon U.K.

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Books on Books #1
Atget: Photographe de Paris
Essays by Pierre Mac Orlan, David Campany, and Jeffrey Ladd
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
116 pp, 9.5 x 7 in.
110 4-color illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-935004-00-4
$39.95 ($26.37 at Amazon)

Books on Books #2
Walker Evans: American Photographs
Essays by Lincoln Kirstein, John T. Hill, and Jeffrey Ladd
Hardcover w/ Dustjacket
112 pp, 9.5 x 7 in.
98 Duotone and 4-color illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-935004-02-8
$39.95 ($26.37 at Amazon)

One of the common themes of photo book reviews has been how quickly even the best titles go out of print, making it a challenge to acquire books in your area of interest before they disappear. Even more difficult is trying to build a library of genuinely important photo books, those that have made a mark on photography as a whole. Some show up as reprints (John Szarkowski's Looking at Photographs comes to mind), only to disappear again before you hear about them. Wouldn't it be grand if someone started releasing reprints or facsimiles of the classics?

We now have an interesting source for such books. Errata Editions is a small publishing house formed in 2008 by Valerie Sonnenthal, Jeffrey Ladd and Ed Grazda. Sonnenthal is a photo editor/curator; Ladd and Grazda are photographer/educators. Jeffrey Ladd you may recognize as the eclectic mind behind 5B4, a photo book review website that seems to emphasize unique, offbeat and avant-garde titles. The initial announcement back in September 2008 was tantalizing, but I couldn't really visualize what they had in mind until I saw the resulting books. The first four titles are now available.

These are compact cloth-bound volumes with partial dust jacket, printed to a standard size. On the dust jacket, and repeated inside, is a color reproduction of the original cover. Following this is a complete page-for-page photo reproduction of the original, showing both text and photographs. Some spreads are reproduced two to a page, others full size. To be clear these are not reproductions of just the images, but photo reproductions of the actual book pages, as if you had it open on your desk. The result is a facsimile that demonstrates precisely what the original book looks like, conveying the photographers' and designers' intent. The downside is that both text and images are frequently reproduced too small to appreciate nuance and detail. Large multiple page stretches of text are abridged, showing the opening and concluding spreads.

Following the facsimile pages in each book are complete reprints of the original text, set in Adobe Garamond type at a readable size, followed by an essay placing the original in historical and artistic context. Next is a formal review of the original book's printing and typographical design. Finally each volume is closed with a thumbnail biography of the artist and a bibliography of their works.

Eugène Atget: Photographe de Paris is the first volume in the series. The four-color photo reproduction accurately shows the warm burgundy tones of the collotype original plates, though shadows go very murky. Following the facsimile pages is a translation of the original preface by Pierre Mac Orlan. Next is an insightful discussion of Atget's work, its rescue from oblivion by a young Berenice Abbott, and its place in the context of the art world circa 1930, by David Campany. Jeffrey Ladd then details the actual printing of the original book, including the collotype plates. (The curious reader may want to check out The Printed Picture, by Richard Benson, for more detail on the process).

Walker Evans: American Photographs is the second volume, reprising this hugely influential work. The facsimile pages accurately show the simple, unadorned design of the book. The quality of the duotone reproductions is quite good, particularly those shown full size. They are followed by the complete text of the essay by Lincoln Kirstein that accompanied the photographs. Next is a detailed account by John T. Hill of the creation of the original book. This was a collaboration between Evans, the very young Museum of Modern Art, and the famed printer and book designer Joseph Blumenthal, with patron Kirstein also serving an important rôle. Jeffrey Ladd then discusses the various editions and printings American Photographs has gone through over the years.

I find myself a bit conflicted regarding Errata Editions' worthy effort. This is clearly a labor of love, and the amount of work involved prodigious. The resulting volumes give readers the chance to own facsimiles of photography's seminal books. They accurately display the sequence of images as well as the intent of the original design. If you want to see what the fuss was about over American Photographs, this reproduction will show you. For a modest outlay you can start building a library of the most influential photo books ever printed, in facsimile form. If you understand that these are "meta-books"—that their subject is the photo book rather than the photographs per se—you may be delighted with them.

On the other hand, the relatively small size of these books, and the third generation facsimile photo reproduction, can't do justice to the original images. Readers who want a good idea of what Atget's photographs really look like should try to find a used copy of John Szarkowski's Atget monograph for its much larger, clearer reproductions. Walker Evans' photographs fare much better, but they're still a bit cramped by the format.

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These were the most popular titles that TOP readers ordered through our Amazon links (see "Amazon Portal" at right) in Q1 2009. Note that this isn't an opinion or a qualitative judgment in any way (although naturally the list reflects books we featured): I just toted up the numbers and ranked them according to how many copies you purchased.

1. Eye Mind Spirit: The Enduring Legacy of Minor White by Peter Bunnell (Howard Greenberg Gallery). Far and away our #1 bestseller in Q1, which surprised me (although good on y'all for choosing a monograph and not a technical book for the #1 spot). Readers bought almost twice as many copies of this book as the #2 titles! (U.K. link.)

2. (tie) Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua (Focal Press). Geoff recommended this as the best introductory text to the theory of lighting. (U.K. link.)

2. (tie) The Printed Picture by Richard Benson (Museum of Modern Art). Our "Book of the Year" of 2008. (U. K. link.)

4. Larry Burrows: Vietnam introduction by David Halberstam (Knopf). (U.K. link.) If you liked this, you'll want to know about the new and long-awaited Eddie Adams: Vietnam. (Not available yet in the U.K.)

Kirk Tuck

5. Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography by Kirk Tuck (Amherst Media). (U.K. link.) And if you liked this one, you'll be happy to learn that the companion volume, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography, has just been published. (The difference is in those two little words in the titles, "location" and "studio.") The two together make a matched set. (The new book is not yet available in the U.K.)

6. The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes by Joe McNally (New Riders). Based on the popularity of this one, I hope David Hobby is busy writing his own book.... (U.K. link)

7. (tie) (I know, two ties? But like I said, I just toted up the numbers.) Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith (Business Plus). The only non-photography title on this list. Recommended in a guest posting about business books for photographers by Todd Sattersten.

7. (tie) In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday by Stacey McCarroll Cutshaw and Ross Barrett (University of Washington Press). The catalogue from a show of the Rodger Kingston Collection; Rodger wrote about the collection on TOP just a few days ago. (U.K. link.)

9. The 50 Greatest Photo Opportunities in New York City by Amadou Diallo (Course Technology PTR). (U.K. link.)

10. TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845 -1945 by Alison Nordstrom (Douglas & McIntyre). (Not available new in the U.K.)

11. Stieglitz: Camera Work (25th Anniversay Special Edition) (Taschen). (U.K. link.)

Sam Abell

12. The Life of a Photograph by Sam Abell (Focal Point). (U.K. link.)

13. The Creative Digital Darkroom by Katrin Eismann and Sean Duggan (O'Reilly Media). (U.K. link.)

14. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson (Palgrave Macmillan). I just got this one. (U.K. link.)

15. The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters by Joe McNally (New Riders Press). The companion volume to no. 6. (U.K. link.)

Scott Kelby

16. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby (New Riders Press). (U.K. link.)

17. Annie Leibovitz at Work by Annie Leibovitz (Random House). (U.K. link.)

Mike

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The ever-elusive Pentax medium-format digital has surfaced again, this time on the Japanese site Impress Watch. I see my fate in this camera, to an extent. I picture myself looking like Imogen Cunningham's father at ninety, feeble and nearing my end. And they'll say to me, "You've had a good life, Mike—well, at least after you became an internet tycoon in 2013. Anything you regret?" And I'll splutter "But...but..." and then whisper my last words into the ear of my faithful great-grandson. And then I shall expire.

The others will turn to my grandson, wondering what my parting words of wisdom could have been. The lad will shake his head sadly. "He said it was such a shame that he had to go just now, just before the new Pentax medium-format digital camera comes out...."

Such is life.

Imogen Cunningham, My Father at Ninety, 1936

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ADDENDUM: Speaking of Imogen Cunningham and heroic California landscapes, another book of (mostly) large-format photography I like is Rondal Partridge's Quizzical Eye, which I notice you can still get as well. It's a softcover exhibition catalogue from a 2006 show called "From the Byways to the Highways: Rondal Partridge Photographs California 1936–1969." The pictures are quirky, almost impish in their inquisitive good humor and playfulness; I particularly like the early photographs of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange at work, although he has a roving and wide-ranging eye and mind. (I first became aware of Rondal Partridge through a fairly bizarre portrait of a shorn and severe-looking Lange dressed in an almost outlandish white dress with poofy shoulders and 19th-century skirts, seated in front of a window...I still wonder what the occasion was, whether she was dressed in period costume for a play or to adorn an historical reënactment or something? The picture is in the book.) For a long time I thought Rondal was Dorothea's son, but that's wrong; he's Imogen's son (and thus the grandson of the white-bearded fellow above). A long-lived crew, that bunch: Imogen died at 93 and Rondal must be nearly that age now.

Expect irony as much as beauty from Rondal Partridge. His famous photograph of Yosemite's Half Dome is a pointed but very funny commentary on his mentor (and his mother's friend) Ansel Adams's work.