The Online Photographer

I read a fair amount, fifty or sixty books a year, mostly non-fiction, a significant minority of them relating to life skills and self-improvement in some way

One of the grandaddies of all modern self-help books is Alcoholics Anonymous, written largely by William G. "Bill W." Wilson in 1939. With more than 30 million copies in print, it's the origin of the countless 12-step programs in the world and a classic of the genre*.

Angela Duckworth's Grit might be the second-best self-help book I've ever read.

The MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient has been studying the subject of success for years, and in her book she doggedly (grittily?) dismantles the essential elements of succeeding, all of it based on her research or the research of others. I love her ideas and concept. The simple morphology of job/career/calling is interesting if maybe not groundbreaking, but the sections on goal levels and "purpose" blew my mind. Simple, clear, but, in my opinion, correct.

There's a lot of power in just plain being right.

Think it's not relevant to photography? It's especially relevant to photography. Think flexibly, apply the ideas to your photography, and it might be the best and most relevant not-about-photography photography book you've ever read**. It's about the first principles photographers need to think a lot more about.

Dang
Unfortunately, I scored very low on the Grit Scale—a test you can take in the book—lower than 90% of the population.

You know what they say: Oh well.

On the other hand, I do very well on the concept of practice. I made up my mind to be a writer in the 9th grade (I remember where I was standing when I made the decision), and none other than Saul Bellow told me how to practice, in 1976. And I've been writing more or less every day ever since. I'll bet there have been whole years in which I didn't miss a day. I'm not the kind of writer I ever envisioned, but still, I am one. It's something.

What I've been missing, in Angela Duckworth's terms, is a top-level goal.

Not insignificantly, the book is also a bit of an upper. It's inspiring. It left me feeling energetic and hopeful, feeling good. It's not about talent after all, not about genius; it's about grit. 

I gave a copy of Grit to my son. (He likes audible books, so he'll listen to it.) I wish I could give out a dozen every month. Suck the good ideas out of this and it will stand you in good stead, I'll bet.

Highly recommended. Get Grit. You'll thank me.

Mike

* "The Big Book," as it's called, is brilliant and still useful, if also somewhat dated and showing its age—see the en passant review in The New Yorker, April 2, in the article "Whiskey and Ink" by Gary Greenburg, p. 84 (the article has a different title online, which seems to be a thing with The New Yorker).

** I want to thank Frank DiPerna for having us read Zen and the Art of Archery in my third year of photography school. "Read it as if it were about photography, as if it's about aiming a camera instead of aiming a bow and arrow," Frank advised us. I did. It works that way. Ever after, I've had the skill of reading books about disparate disciplines as if they applied to photography. It was a lesson that has kept on being useful.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Emil Aaltonen: I can highly recommend mounting the Grit lens on a The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People camera body. It’s my go-to setup. The two are a perfect match. Or at least, as the saying goes, IMHO."

Quick kudos to friend o' TOP and frequent commenter John Camp, who writes novels under the pen name John Sandford:

I clicked on the Best Seller list wondering if by chance I might find John on it, and what do you know, there he was, right in the coveted pole position. That's cool as can be. Here's the book. Big congrats to John! (And Virgil.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Steve Rosenblum: "Here's a cool interview with John from 2017."

Gary: "And you get a shout out from Virgil in Holy Ghost: Virgil is catching up on the news: 'He checked a few wildlife forums and The Online Photographer.' Clearly a smart, well-rounded detective!"

Mike replies: Really?! I did not know. That's great! I'm pleased. Thanks John.

Sharon: "I started reading the Prey series when the first one came out. I wish I could say I was 10 years old then as that was quite a few years ago!"

Paul Braverman asks: "Why do highly desired photography books remain out of print? There is an obvious demand for Winogrand's Women Are Beautiful and Heath's Dialogue With Solitude. The price for a copy can reach four figures. Why not reissue them? Seems like the estate of those photographers would make some money, collectors would still be able to brag that they have a first edition, and I would be able to buy a new copy at a reasonable price. Everybody wins. What am I missing?"

Mike replies: Many photo books are reprinted, of course, and I'll talk about that in a second. But the underlying problem is the nature of the demand. It's slow and steady. This doesn't fit the business model these days. As I understand it, the tax code was changed in the Reagan years the way inventory was accounted was changed by a 1979 Supreme Court Ruling [see JG's Featured Comment below —Ed.] such that publishers have to pay higher taxes on unsold inventory, which pushed the sales model to an all-at-once "bestseller" mode. An author friend of mine was told that if her book hadn't established good sales within seven months, the publisher would stop promoting it and it would be toast. Contrast this with the classic model, which was that publishers printed a big batch of copies and sold them out of stock for years. One legend in the book industry was that back in the '70s Oxford University Press had brand-new books on the shelves that were more than a hundred and fifty years old, and they could go whole years without selling a single copy. Yet they would stay "in print."

The new model fits books with a bestseller sales curve, but it's unsuited for any book that has low sales but consistent, continuing demand—which happens to describe most photography monographs (a monograph is a book of pictures by a single photographer). I don't generally admit ex-library books to my collection, but I have one book by Henri Cartier-Bresson that is ex-lib because I loved the irony of the "DISCARDED" stamp in the front—it says "No Longer Relevant." The irony is that while that may be true of the information in the pictures—no longer current—but of course it's not true of the photographic artistry of the pictures.

A picture book that sells 25,000 copies right away and then sees demand quickly tail off to nothing fits the way publishers need to do business now, but a book that sells 3,000 copies its first year, 2,000 the second, 1,000 annually for the next five years, and then 500 copies a year for the following twenty years just doesn't work for publishers any more...even though the eventual total sales numbers might be the same.

I might point out that this also better fits certain types of work. A romance novel that's read for entertainment and is part of an ongoing series of books fits a bestseller sales curve quite nicely. The kind of work that suffers is the "magnum opus" kind of thing whereby an expert might work for twenty years to summarize all of her knowledge in a certain field. That type of book should ideally stay in print for many years, to be readily available for the scholar or serious student who needs it. Unfortunately, many photography monographs are closer to the latter type than the former—a photographer might toil for twenty years on a body of work and then want to publish it in one grand coffee-table tome...which should sell to that photographer's fans at a slow but steady rate for many years. That kind of working model no longer fits the prevailing publishing model, unfortunately.

Reprints happen
As I mentioned, many photography books do receive reprints, because of the phenomenon you mention, Paul—the consistent, continuing demand after the book is NLA (no longer available) new puts upward pressure on the price. That often goes on until the pent-up demand justifies another reprint. An example is Walker Evans' American Photographs. First published in 1938, it received a 25th anniversary reprinting in 1962, followed by a paperback version in 1975, another reprinting for the 50th anniversary in 1988, and finally the 75th anniversary reprint (the best reprint as it tries to exactly replicate the original book, only with better paper) in 2012. This version is still available, probably because it is such a staple of Museum in-house bookshops. (Which are excellent places to go look at photobooks, incidentally.)

Reprints vary widely in quality, and you have to be careful. Some reprints are better than the originals, and some are much worse. Although I love books, I'm more interested in the photographs than the books, so I look at content first. I prefer the Pantheon reprint of Brassai's Paris After Dark (or Paris by Night), because the first edition is very expensive, very fragile and often damaged in the first edition because of its spiral binding, and the reproduction in the Pantheon reprint is so outstanding. As an example of the opposite, Eliot Porter's In Wildness is the Preservation of the World is a remarkable book in its first edition—the color printing method used was involved, difficult, beautiful, and no longer even legal because the chemicals need for the process were so toxic. But the 2012 reprint by Ammo is so atrocious that it completely misrepresents Eliot Porter in my opinion and, I would argue, actively damages his reputation. (It's still available but I refuse to link to it.)

Probably the most famous photobook that went a very long time without a reprint was Cartier-Bresson's 1952 The Decisive Moment, which finally received its first-ever reprint by Steidl in 2015 (the reprint is apparently just going out of print now). Although Steidl didn't stint, the reproduction choices have been controversial, and not everyone loves the reprint. It's well worth owning, of course. My problem with it is that although it's H.C.-B.'s most famous book, it's not the best book of his pictures—that honor would go to Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, first published by New York Graphic Society in 1979 and later reprinted by Bulfinch. That one was available for years and is still plentiful on the used market—check eBay Books or Abebooks.com. (I like Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art, too, although you have to take the dense text with a grain of salt.)

One book you mentioned, Dave Heath's Dialogue With Solitude, is a special case, because the entirety of the original book is reprinted within the pages of the epic retrospective Multitude, Solitude which is a must-have in my opinion. That book is getting expensive but of course everyone reading this blog already bought it on my strenuous recommendations three years ago at the low original price.  :-)

The other book you mentioned, Garry Winogrand's Women Are Beautiful, sold extremely poorly at first issue and was remaindered for years, available for next to nothing. It's a bit pricey now but I suspect the demand for it, although ongoing, is extremely low, probably too low for a reprint to be feasible.

More recent books are reprinted too. Alec Soth's Niagara was just reprinted last month by Mack. If you're a fan of large-format color and want it but don't have it, be sure to snag it while you can.

Conclusion
The upshot is: many photography books are only printed once; many photo books are plentiful, maybe even too plentiful, while they're in print, but then get scarcer and scarcer once the book is discontinued and the supply dries up in the face of ongoing low-level demand; and, many famous old books follow a feast-to-famine-to-feast cycle as they receive periodic reprints and then those reprints, in turn, go out of print. To be a real photo book collector is a fascinating game, but anyone with a personal photobook library, however small or large, can play the game at any level. But no matter what level you play it at, it's always a game.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Darrell Gray: "Disfarmer: The Heber Springs Portraits was a book I always wanted but could not afford—a good used copy was in the hundreds. Then a year or so ago it was offered 'new' at around a hundred bucks. I bought it, and comparing it to a library copy first addition I could not tell the difference. Same ISBN, same publisher, same dust cover, same everything. Did somebody find a box of them sitting in a corner somewhere? By the way, it was $22.50 in 1976."

Kenneth Tanaka: "There can be other factors in play besides those Mike mentioned. For example, many large-run photo books these days are produced in association with shows. Getting the rights clearances and production scheduled to reprint a second edition of such catalogs is rarely as easy as you might think. Works in a catalog are usually owned by various parties who must agree to a second edition. And top printers, such as Steidl, are generally booked years in advance. With respect to money, the only parties to make money from photo books are generally the printers. It’s usually a money-losing or, at best, a break-even marketing or commemorative initiative for everyone else. It’s frankly remarkable when we see a major photo book reprinted independently of another exhibition."

JG: "At the risk of being pedantic, it was not an 'inventory tax' per se that caused publishers to start carrying fewer books in inventory, but a change in the way they accounted for the inventory on their tax returns, which in turn affected their reported profits or losses for the tax year. For an interesting analysis of this—well, it was for me, anyway!—I recommend reading 'How Thor Power Hammered Publishing.'"

Mike replies: Thanks JG. I amended the post in accordance with the information at your link.

J D Ramsey: "After reading this post, I wanted to order the books mentioned. I was particularly intrigued by the Multitude, Solitude book by Dave Heath, who I was unfamiliar with. Sure enough, I found through the link to Amazon, but for $275, too rich for me. I was disappointed that I hadn't bought it earlier. Then I noticed the message in the upper right saying I ordered this book in December 2015! Say what? I immediately walked over to the shelves where my photography books are and there it was with a rather nondescript dark blue binding. Of course I immediately took it off the shelf and started to leaf through it. Thanks Mike for reminding me of this wonderful book and making me aware that I really need to smell the roses and sometimes just sit down with the books I've bought but haven't devoted some quiet time to."

Mike replies: That's the best delivery service I've ever heard of!

Library of Congress

William Stinson, Three Comanche men, Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, c. 1873 (albumen print)

So many books, so little time.

Sometimes you can read the article version. If you have time to waste this fine holiday Sunday, don't stare dull-witted at the idiot box or flit through dopey vids on YouTube. Acquaint yourself with a certain celebrated magazine piece, written by Sam Gwynne, which appeared in Texas Monthly in 2010.

"Around midnight, the regiment was awakened by a succession of unearthly, high-pitched yells. Those were followed by shots and more yells, and suddenly the camp was alive with Comanches riding at full gallop. Exactly what the Indians were doing was soon apparent: Mingled with the screams and gunshots and general mayhem was another sound, only barely audible at first, then rising to something like rolling thunder. The men quickly realized that it was the sound of stampeding horses. Their horses. Amid shouts of 'Every man to his lariat!' six hundred panicked horses tore loose through the camp, rearing, jumping, and plunging at full speed. Lariats snapped with the sound of pistol shots; iron picket pins, which a few minutes before had been used to secure the horses, now whirled and snapped about their necks like airborne sabers. Men tried to grab them and were thrown to the ground and dragged among the horses, their hands lacerated and bleeding.

"When it was all over, the soldiers discovered that Quanah and his warriors had made off with seventy of their best horses and mules, including Colonel Mackenzie’s magnificent gray pacer. In West Texas in 1871, stealing someone’s horse was often equivalent to a death sentence. It was an old Indian tactic, especially on the High Plains, to simply take a white man’s horse and leave him to die of thirst or starvation. Comanches had used it to lethal effect against the Spanish in the early eighteenth century. In any case, an unmounted Army regular stood little chance against a mounted Comanche. This midnight raid was Quanah’s calling card, a clear message that hunting him and his Comanche warriors in their homeland was going to be a difficult and treacherous business."

The piece is "Last Days of the Comanches" and it appeared in the May issue. Justly famed. A must-read.

Sam Gwynne also wrote a book about Stonewall Jackson (excellent, although I must say the venerated General was a very odd bird indeed) and a book about football (I struggled like a lineman till time ran out but to be honest it requires more appetite for football than I possess), but his best book (in my very humble opinion) is his masterpiece about the Comanches, which was expanded from the 2010 Texas Monthly article. The book is called Empire of the Summer Moon and I've sung its praises before. Since he writes about things near and dear to the heart of Texans, I'm assuming his next books will be about barbeque and/or the Longhorns (the human kind. I think in Texas an adroit writer, which Sam Gwynne absolutely is, could roll those disparate objects of worship into one book and spare me from having to read two, because I will read anything he chooses to write, an honor I accord precious few writers).

But if you'll never have time for the book, read the article. Costs nothing. Ain't too long. Blade-sharp writing, gripping story.

Two very white fat girls in one-piece bathing suits just pedaled by on a recumbent tandem bicycle, swerving lazily to and fro. Parked cars crowd the shore and neighbors were igniting fireworks (illegally, but the police aren't enthusiastic about enforcing that law) last night after dark. It's the last big weekend of the Summer and it's fantastical to believe it's here.

Me, I'm taking the day off. Coming up: How to say "Nikon," a camera bargain, and what Sony should do.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Rob White: "Having a copy of Empire of the Summer Moon and being a huge fan of Western history, I heartily recommend and endorse the book. It's found a place in my collection of must-read, must-keep books and is a very easy read!"

Bruce: "Darn you, Michael Johnston...I wake up, log in, and am still here two hours later reading about North American history having not been remotely interested previously!

"Growing up in New Zealand, now living in Australia, we were taught little or nothing about Native American issues, apart from the awful, skewed ideas that were prevalent then...(all bad). The article from Texas Monthly is riveting reading...made me click over to Google Earth and scan the country. Fascinating indeed! I am only now, in my early 70s, starting to appreciate the incredible lives of Indigenous Australians, and their Rock Art especially. (By far the oldest in the world!) And I love listening to Maori language on fishing and hunting TV shows emanating from NZ on our SBS-TV. Aaah, to be a few years younger...so much to absorb, so much to photograph. Thanks for a fascinating, educational morning. "

Bill La Via: "Yes, I read the book a few years ago after your recommendation; never thanked you for the tip but would like to do so now. The full book is excellent and well worth the read. Thanks for the suggestion!"

scott kirkpatrick: "The Gwynne article is compelling, but his book, Empire of the Summer Moon, is unforgettable. This is the land about which [photographer] Frank Gohlke writes (in Where I Come From): 'Until the 1860s, most of the Red River Valley was too dangerous for permanent settlement. The Comanche's claim to exclusive use of North Texas derived from their willingness to kill anyone (white or native) whose presence annoyed them and to cheat or rob the rest...the Comanches were not vanquished until they encountered a people who were meaner, more ruthless, and less trustworthy than they were, the Texans. My people.'"

Speed: "At Mike's recommendation (June 2011) I read Empire of the Summer Moon which includes 'Last Days of the Comanches.' The book teaches a history of the United States that we never got in school. And if history had been taught this way I'd have studied it more. Or at all."

Joe Holmes: "I read Empire of the Summer Moon on your recommendation and found it absolutely unforgettable. What a gripping and multi-faceted story! It really changed my understanding of the place that American Indians hold in our history."

I'm not adjusting to my CPAP machine very well. Seems like I'm trading one reason for waking up in the middle of the night for another reason for for waking up in the middle of the night. For instance, last night when I finally got back to sleep I had the weirdest dream—I dreamed I wrote a TOP post about designing the marketing for the new Nikons that are going to be announced on Thursday!

Ha. It must have been the result of eating too soon before bed, and reading this:

A book JH recommended the other day. It's a fun, fast-to-read book that I'm enjoying, probably because it reinforces my belief that many companies don't market themselves very well. Al Ries is a friend of JH's. It's even more fun because it's 25 years old and the examples paint a picture of the time when "Seinfeld" was new. Remember Lotus, for instance, of 1-2-3 fame? And back then, Acura had twice the market share of Lexus, and both looked like they were going to clobber Mercedes-Benz. Ah, history.

By the bye, some of you might think so, but none of the professional photographers out there think that this subject is off-topic for this blog. One thing I was told early on in my (so far unsuccessful) attempts to make a living as a professional photographer*: "professional photographers spend more time marketing than they spend photographing."

Hard to believe this must-read is already more than ten years old. But read the reviews, don't take my word for it.

Mike
(Thanks to JH)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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JG: "I believe having your ideas stolen—er, used—without any sort of acknowledgment happens a lot to those who work in the hobbyist press. You're having a conversation at dinner or talking at a trade show and they just slip out, as these things do. I know of at least three instances where it happened to me while I was a member of the audio press. And when, like you, I brought it to the attention of the guilty parties, they all looked away and/or shuffled their feet and whistled, instead of admitting to what they had done. Worse, because the nature of my job required that I remain in the good graces of the industry, I had no alternative but to suck it up, lest I ultimately get screwed a second time and by myself! So, yeah, I know exactly how you feel about this.  8^/  "

Joseph: "Everyone I know who has sleep problems and is told they need a CPAP end up in the same place as you. And many of these people abandon the device after a couple of months of sleepless nights. One can't but wonder if these are being prescribed a bit too broadly. Frankly, I think it's a scam."

Paul: "Concerning the CPAP: Stick with it. Try to use it every night but don't force yourself if it's really bothering you and try again the next night. Eventually you'll find it easier. It took me many weeks of trying until I finally got used to it. Very rarely now does it bother me. Getting diagnosed and using my CPAP machine changed my life remarkably for the better. Stick with it and be patient with yourself!"

Michael Perini: "Ries & Trout is a classic that, despite dated examples, is full of good advice. I met Jack Trout several times as he was a semi-regular speaker at management conferences. And yes, no matter how hard we tried, applications of what we learned were always imperfect. As corporations grow they become less efficient and less nimble for lots of reasons (some are even good reasons). It is a cost of size that can be partially offset by focus and attention to customers' needs—it never can reach the efficiency of a good small enterprise. But being large can give you economies of scale, and resources for R&D (or just make you big and slow). Marketing on a large scale is hard. Just look at Apple, the most successful corporate enterprise ever, yet we all have a list of things it is 'doing wrong,' and some of our gripes are undoubtedly true. As for marketing, every business has to spend more time marketing and servicing customers and other more mundane aspects of business than they do 'producing.' It’s just that when people enter the photography business from being a good non-professional, many forget that the less attractive aspects are critical to success."

The new book Flash, believe it or not, published just three days ago, is the first real biography of Usher Fellig, AKA Arthur Fellig, AKA Weegee the Famous. David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire, says, "we know the photographs, and now, with this biography from Christopher Bonanos, we can finally know something of the legendary, improbable, and much-caricatured man." The timing is perfect, seems to me. Weegee's meaning and place in history is still very much in flux, as he recedes in time and as photojournalism continues to change irreversibly.

I collected, and read, a handful of photographer biographies in the few years surrounding 2004 or so, but I quickly decided my reading needed to range more broadly. But I've been waiting for this one. Weegee (he got his name from the squeegee used to get the water off freshly washed prints in the Times newsroom, not from a ouija board) has receded much further back into history since I got into photography in 1982. His meaning seems to be changing all the time. But he's such a vivid, outsized character, and his best-known pictures so lurid and stark, that he remains sui generis in American photography and a photographer you can't get around in a survey of history. Gotta confront him head on, light him up directly and look at him without blinking.

If you don't want to read a whole biography, there's an "I read the review instead" article at the New Yorker, by Thomas Mallon.

Author Christopher Bonanos is City Editor at New York magazine, where he covers arts, culture, and urban affairs.

Here it is from Amazon, from Amazon UK, and from The Book Depository (International shipping free). I'm reading it as an e-book.

Mike
(Thanks to Richard Newman)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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hugh crawford: "Christopher Bonanos also wrote a very fine book on the history of Polaroid. Instant: The Story of Polaroid." [That link is for the Kindle e-book and the hardcover; here's the paperback. And the hardcover. No clue why there are separate listings. —Ed.]

You probably remember the Jamie Livingston Project, the ultimate "PAD" (picture a day) project...possibly in all of the history of photography. Jamie Livingston took a Polaroid SX-70 photo every day of his life starting in 1979 during his last two months at Bard College, and ending at his death on his 41st birthday.

In a true labor of love and as a great devotion to the memory of their friendship, Jamie's great good friend (and ours), Hugh Crawford, who has been a part of the TOP Commentariat for years, had the pictures published as a book. That's right, all 6,754 of them. The project was right at the outer edge of what the printer could accommodate, and the book is formidable: it's 780 pages, 12x15x3 inches, and it weighs 11 pounds.

Let's just say you're not going to ingest it all in one sitting.

And if you can't go for the big kahuna, there is an elegant little sample book that includes a number of Jamie's photographs that include the Twin Towers of the now-perished World Trade Center. It's tiny, slight, and much cheaper, so you can have a sample without having to deal with the 11-pounder.

The big book is $150 list, $125 on Amazon, and $95 for Hugh's friends, and you can have it for even less. As he writes:

Here's the link to the direct sales site for the books.

Totally bananas and off-topic: According to USA today, which listed the top misspelled words by State in its coverage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, 'bananas' is the most  misspelled word in New Mexico, but the most misspelled word in Wisconsin is 'Wisconsin.'

So the secret coupon code for TOP readers is 'top hat,' because who can remember how to spell bananas anyway?

TOP readers get 10 dollars off of each copy of Some Photos of That Day: 6754 Polaroids Dated in Sequence and an additional 10 dollars goes to Mike's Regrettable Weather Re-Wiring Recompensatory Wishlist, or the more easily remembered MRWRWRW.

The books are also available on Amazon at higher prices for people who insist on buying on Amazon but there is no advantage that I can think of.

This is not a project for the faint of heart, on any level (now the race is to see if Hugh can break even), but it's really unique in the history of the medium. Quixotic, yes, but I think it's a project worth supporting. One of photography's true epics....

Mike
(Thanks to Hugh)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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ALP0A: "I'm so delighted to see this. I've been a reader here for several years now Mike, but I must confess I've never left a comment. I think it was a comment by Hugh on here himself which led me to Jamie's story several years ago and in turn inspired me to begin my own daily recording. I went through a bad divorce and wasn't getting regular contact with my children and this was a way of nulling the pain, forcing me outside but also leaving a record so my children could see who I really was. Thankfully I'm now in daily contact with them and they are growing up wonderfully and also love the original story. I've just ordered my copy and look forward to receiving it. I promise to try and comment more now. I do love this site. David."

We heard from William Neill, whose beautiful retrospective book Geoff reviewed here a few days ago. He invites anyone from TOP who would like a signed copy of the book to visit his website.

Mike
(Thanks to William)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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This almost cannot fail to be interesting. Turns out that Michael Kenna, known since forever for his exquisite work with a Hasselblad on a tripod, has been photographing on the side for many years with...Holgas. The yin of the yang, the other end of the stick, the lo-fi to his usual hi-fi. And he's finally putting out a book of his best Holga images from over the years.

At the very least, the man is the master of the square composition, which should be fully on display in his Holga work. And his work is all about mysterious, impressionistic simplicity, and I don't see how a Holga would be in conflict with that, either.

This will be a must-see for all Michael Kenna fans, I would guess, as well as fans of toy camera work.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

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Nigel: "I bought this wonderful monograph today as a matter of coincidence. On a first viewing I was knocked out by this wonderful poetic series of pictures. I love the work of Michel Kenna. He took a series of landscape pictures up in the hills above my town, in a place I know well and have photographed many times. Seeing his pictures of Canossa made me realise, unfortunately, the mediocrity of my own photography. He recently held an exhibition here in Reggio Emilia of a series of photographs he took of 'confessionals' in a series of local churches. Despite the offbeat subject, the exhibition was most engaging. The camera might be primitive, but the darkroom skills used to create these photographs are definitely not. This is one of those books like my tattered Kertesz 50 years monograph that I will reach for when I need to cheer myself up."

TC: "I was visiting Luang Prabang, Laos, several years back, and I went up to the small hill with a temple on top of at the center of town. It was crowded with tourists wanting to take photos on the sunset, while I, to their apparent dismay, took pictures of the tourists. After the sun slipped below the horizon, everyone left, but I stuck around. After everyone else had left, a photographer showed up with a tripod and began setting it up facing the temple. It was Michael Kenna. He looked at me, the sole remaining person on the hill, grinned, and said, 'Wait for the light. It's about to get really nice.' And it was. Not my type of shot, personally, but really nice."

Michelle Bates: "This is so exciting! I met Michael at an opening in Seattle years ago and noticed one of the images in his calendar looked familiar. I asked (tentatively) if it was a Holga photo and he said (with mock horror) 'Would I use a Holga?!' 'I don't know, would you?' 'Yes—I love Holgas!' Such a fun moment! I convinced him to be part of my book, and featured his Holga images in the second edition of Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity. I was always hoping he would do an exhibition of the images, and I'm thrilled that he's doing a book—I can't wait to add it to my toy camera library!"

Mike replies: Great to hear from you Michelle—it's been quite a while since we featured the first edition of your book.

Geoff Dyer, The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand. University of Texas Press, 240 pages, $60. (links to other Amazons at the bottom of this post)

From the publisher's promo: "Award-winning writer Geoff Dyer has admired Winogrand’s work for many years. Modeled on John Szarkowski’s classic book Atget, The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand is a masterfully curated selection of one hundred photographs from the Winogrand archive at the Center for Creative Photography, with each image accompanied by an original essay.

"Dyer takes the viewer/reader on a wildly original journey through both iconic and unseen images from the archive, including eighteen previously unpublished color photographs. The book encompasses most of Winogrand’s themes and subjects and remains broadly faithful to the chronological and geographical facts of his life, but Dyer’s responses to the photographs are unorthodox, eye-opening, and often hilarious. This inimitable combination of photographer and writer, images and text, itself offers what Dyer claims for Winogrand’s photography—an education in seeing."

Robert Adams, Art Can Help. Yale University Art Gallery, 92 pages, $17.85 (links to other Amazons at the bottom of this post)

From the publisher's promo: "Following an introduction, the book begins with two short essays on the works of the American painter Edward Hopper, an artist venerated by Adams. The rest of this compilation contains texts—more than half of which have never before been published—that contemplate one or two works by an individual artist. The pictures discussed are by noted photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Emmet Gowin, Dorothea Lange, Abelardo Morell, Edward Ranney, Judith Joy Ross, John Szarkowski, and Garry Winogrand. Several essays summon the words of literary figures, including Virginia Woolf and Czeslaw Milosz. Adams’s voice is at once intimate and accessible, and is imbued with the accumulated wisdom of a long career devoted to making and viewing art. This eloquent and moving book champions art that fights against disillusionment and despair."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JG: "Maybe it's just me, but the words 'with each image accompanied by an original essay' pretty much killed any interest I might have had in the Winogrand book. Personally, I buy photography books to look at the photos, not to read about them (or worse, essays inspired by them.) Of the 400 or so books in my modest collection, the number of times I have found the accompanying essays or texts to be a significant factor in my enjoyment of them can easily be counted using fewer than ten fingers."

Ed Hawco responds to JG: "I'm the complete opposite of JG; the words 'with each image accompanied by an original essay' pretty much sealed the deal for me, even though it's $84 up here in the great white north (Canada). To each their own."

David Boyce: "I'm certainly going to check out the Dyer/Winogrand book. Don't think I have ever read anything by Dyer that hasn't either improved my knowledge and understanding or got me thinking about the meaning of life/existence/art. Such a great writer. Otherwise Known as the Human Condition should be on everyone's reading list, along with But Beautiful."