great photography books?

[mattchow]

can anyone reccommend any book with great photography in them? I want to start a nice collection of books, I recently picked up some of the National Geography books "Wide Angle", "Through The Lens", as well as a Chinese photography book that my girlfriend's dad was published in.

Any other recommendations? Links would be great as well.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by mattchow

can anyone reccommend any book with great photography in them? I want to start a nice collection of books, I recently picked up some of the National Geography books "Wide Angle", "Through The Lens", as well as a Chinese photography book that my girlfriend's dad was published in.

Any other recommendations? Links would be great as well.

Let's start with David Douglas Duncan:

This Is War! A Photo-Narrative in Three Parts (1951) (still in print or easy to find

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition...thisiswar.html

War Without Heroes (1970)

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition...outheroes.html

Sunflowers for Van Gogh (1986)

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition...unflowers.html

Tim Page:

Tim Page's Nam

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/050...Fencoding=UTF8

REQUIEM By The Photographers Who Died In Vietnam and Indochina
Edited By Horst Faas and Tim Page

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9711/req1.htm

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067...lance&n=283155

Diane Arbus

diane arbus - An Apeture Mongraph

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089...lance&n=283155

Diane Arbus Revelations by Diane Arbus

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/037...lance&n=283155

And for something different.

Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal By Roses, Photographs of Yukio Mishima by Eikohn Hosoe

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089...lance&n=283155

These are some of my favorites and no, my signed copies by Duncan and Page aren't for loan.

I forgot Nachtwey.

Inferno

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/071...lance&n=283155

War : USA.Afghanistan.Iraq (Hardcover)
by VII, James Nachtwey, Alexandra Boulat, Lauren Greenfield, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097...Fencoding=UTF8

Deeds of War by James Nachtwey

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/051...lance&n=283155

And if you want to see a great photographer at work get this DVD. You look through his eyes with the micro video cam on his camera as he works.

War Photographer (2001)
Starring: James Nachtwey, Christiane Amanpour Director: Christian Frei

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130

As some may have noted, I don't like pretty photo's. I like pictures with a very hard edge.

[johnastovall]

David Douglas Duncan's Yankee Nomad and the sequal Photo Nomad

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition...nkeenomad.html

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition...hotonomad.html

Portrait of Myself (Hardcover)
by Margaret Bourke-White

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067...lance&n=283155

[johnastovall]

I'll put this out Phaidon is the best publisher of great photography books.

http://www.phaidon.com/

[Rick Waldroup]

As you can see Matt, John has a very extensive photo book library. I too love collecting and reading great photography books. John's taste in photography is a lot like mine. I like mostly B&W, a lot of photojournalism stuff- I like photos that tug at your emotions and make you think. Try to find Workers by Sebastiao Salgado, In China by Marc Riboud, Americans We by Eugene Richards, Untitled by Diane Arbus or just about anything by Arbus, and for a lighter note, how about Dogs by Elliott Erwitt. I hit used bookstores to hunt for my photo books. I know just about every used store in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. You can find some great deals buying these books used as some of them can be rather pricey new and also some are hard to find. And if you do not own anything by Bresson, do yourself a favor and pick up any book by him. Usually about once a month, my wife and I will hit the stores and I will buy many more photo books than I can possibly read at any one time. I take them home, put them in my library knowing there will come a day I will read them. My favorite time to look at them is when I'm off work, early in the morning while the wife is still in bed. I make a nice pot of coffee, sit in a favorite chair with a nice reading light and enjoy some of the books that I may have purchased months or years ago. And I really spend some time with each book, really looking at the photos, etc. I hope you enjoy whatever books you decide to get !

[lscottpht]

I second that about Phaidon!!

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by Rick Waldroup

As you can see Matt, John has a very extensive photo book library. I too love collecting and reading great photography books. John's taste in photography is a lot like mine. I like mostly B&W, a lot of photojournalism stuff- I like photos that tug at your emotions and make you think. Try to find Workers by Sebastiao Salgado, In China by Marc Riboud, Americans We by Eugene Richards, Untitled by Diane Arbus or just about anything by Arbus, and for a lighter note, how about Dogs by Elliott Erwitt. I hit used bookstores to hunt for my photo books. I know just about every used store in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. You can find some great deals buying these books used as some of them can be rather pricey new and also some are hard to find. And if you do not own anything by Bresson, do yourself a favor and pick up any book by him. Usually about once a month, my wife and I will hit the stores and I will buy many more photo books than I can possibly read at any one time. I take them home, put them in my library knowing there will come a day I will read them. My favorite time to look at them is when I'm off work, early in the morning while the wife is still in bed. I make a nice pot of coffee, sit in a favorite chair with a nice reading light and enjoy some of the books that I may have purchased months or years ago. And I really spend some time with each book, really looking at the photos, etc. I hope you enjoy whatever books you decide to get !

I like to look at photo books as you early in the morning on those winter days when it's to nasty to go out and the light is bad.

You mentioned Bresson, he did a book on Glaveston, Texas which shows up from time to time in used book stores, _The Galveston That Was_. Also a double play is David Douglas Duncan photographing him. Duncan told a wonderful story about the time he did it at the donation of his archive to the Ransom.

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition.../faceless.html

My having met DDD that day and getting to talk with him was on of the true high points in my life. I almost died when he signed my copy of _I Protest_ and was so happy I had a copy that day for him to sign in LBJ's library where the reception was as LBJ had tried to have the book suppresed.

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibition.../iprotest.html

[snidow]

I second the Diane Arbus books, she was an amazing photographer with an insight into people that I have not seen anyone else achieve.

[Rick Waldroup]

Matt, if you are looking for something a little more experimental or avante-garde try anything by Cindy Sherman, Joel Peter Witkin, or Ralph Eugene Meatyard. We live in such a wonderful time. There are more photo books available to us now than ever before. And John and Leslie are right about Phaidon- they produce some of the best photo books in the world.

[h00kemh0rns]

Originally Posted by mattchow

can anyone reccommend any book with great photography in them? I want to start a nice collection of books, I recently picked up some of the National Geography books "Wide Angle", "Through The Lens", as well as a Chinese photography book that my girlfriend's dad was published in.

Any other recommendations? Links would be great as well.

What did you think of those NG books Matt? I have a couple of NG and Time DVD's about the photographers. Very interesting to watch their techniques.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by Rick Waldroup

Matt, if you are looking for something a little more experimental or avante-garde try anything by Cindy Sherman, Joel Peter Witkin, or Ralph Eugene Meatyard. We live in such a wonderful time. There are more photo books available to us now than ever before. And John and Leslie are right about Phaidon- they produce some of the best photo books in the world.

Interesting about Meatyard, I have the series he did on Fr. Thomas Merton and the photo's Merton did after he taught him to use a camera.

Here's Meatyard's photo of Merton in habit and a baseball cap.

http://www.merton.org/collection.htm

[Joshua]

I would recommend playboy and maxim... wait those are magazines... bah pick them up anyways... oh and if you want something for photography... just read the other post in this thread

[Rick Waldroup]

John, I love the links you provide. Always very interesting. Meatyard was an odd duck wasn't he? I show his stuff to friends of mine and a lot of times they look at me like I've lost my mind. That's a great shot of Father Merton. Meatyard's photos always bring a smile to my face.

[NavyPhoJo]

For a great read and insight into one of the great photojournalists of all time read _Slightly Out of Focus_ by Robert Capa.

You know, John, (Stovall) you own the ONLY signed copy of _I Protest_ I've ever seen.

[jeffkohn]

I'm more into nature and landscape photography than photojournalism. Jim Brandenburg has a book called Chased By The Light that I found fascinating. It came from a photo-a-day project - literally, as in he exposed exactly one frame of film on any given day. I also recently got Our Nation's Parks by David Muench which has some really beautiful photography in it. I also picked up a couple of the National Geographic books that were on sale at Costo a while, can't remember the titles off the top of my head.

I haven't really bought too many photo books, as my reading focus has been more on "photography" books (how-to's/instructional/etc), but that's starting to shift and I plan to pick up more of these in the future. I'll definitley look over some of the other recommendations in this thread.