Must-haves? An Essential Reading List Thread

[nelsonfotodotcom]

[Kirk - searched, but not finding what I'm looking for. Hope this thread isn't considered redundant. Maybe one to be stuck for posterity?]

I've seen other threads wherein folks mention certain books they consider essential, but no luck--thus far--conjuring up a catch-all thread for same.

So?

Which photography-/photographer-related books, regardless the related format(s), would you have to have if you could have, dig? Please, post information for books still in print or links to public domain works if such exist. Anything impossible to locate won't be of much help.

Thanks,
Craig

[PViapiano]

Tech books:

Tim Rudman's Master Printing book; and his book on toning.

Darkroom 1 and 2 from Lustrum Press (Ralph Gibson's short-lived publishing house)

Barry Thornton's Edge of Darkness

Larry Bartlett's B&W Printing Workshop

Monographs:

Salgado's Workers

David Heald's Architecture of Silence

Linda Butler's Italy book

Ray McSavaney's Explorations

Anything by Irving Penn

[jenn wilson]

the nature of photographs
- stephen shore

photography speaks: 150 photographers on their art
- aperture publication

fotographia publica: photography in print 1919-1939

hiroshi sugimoto
- kerry brougher

e'
- masao yamamoto

on photography
- susan sontag

also relevant, although not exclusively pertaining to photography

regarding the pain of others
- susan sontag

search for the real
- hans hofmann

all currently in print and available through amazon

[Brian_A]

As far as "essential" goes, I'd have to consider the Ansel Adams lineup an essential. (The Camera, The Negative, The Print, Examples, An Autobiography, etc.) There are plenty others that I think should be there, but those would be among my top picks.

-Brian

[QT Luong]

A fairly classical list by a photo editor:

http://aphotoeditor.com/2007/12/20/photography-books-talking-about-photography/

[Ron Marshall]

The Negative and The Print by Adams.

The Art of Photography by Barnbaum.

The Film Developing Cookbook, by Anchell and Troop.

Those are the only ones I would consider "essential". There are many others that are highly useful.

[Mike Castles]

Well, Dakota must have looked in my bookcase...those are all books I would say are a must own...along with
-Technical -
Dick Arentz - Platinum & Palladium Printing
Christopher James - Alternative Photographic Process

David Plowden - Vanishing Point
June Van Cleef - The Way Home (if you like Paula's High Plains Farm, this is a must have).
Paul Strand - Southwest and The World on My Doorstep
Laura Gilpin - An Enduring Grace
Keith Carte - Photographs 25 years

are just a few more...and don't forget Tillman Crane has a new book coming out in Nov - Oden Stone.

[Bruce Barlow]

On Being a Photographer - Bill Jay and David Hurn
Art and Fear - Ted Orland and David Bayles
The View From the Studio Door - Ted Orland
The Creative Habit - Twyla Tharp (a choreographer, but it's great)
Weston's daybooks
The Zone VI Newsletters - Fred Picker

For me, these are all essential, which means I need to own them. Picture books by great photographers (Atget, Strand, Evans, Adams, Weston, Koudelka, etc. are nice, and available from the public library.

[Daniel Grenier]

Time in New England - Paul Strand
Bullock - Wynn Bullock
Wright Morris - The Friends of Photography
Contact - The Friends of Photography
Southwest - Elliot Porter (b&w work)
Atget series - MoMA
Linda Butler - The Shakers
Hometowns - George Tice

[Brian Sims]

Perception and Photography by Zakia taught me more about composition than anything else.

[Sandeha]

They're both doorstoppers with a thousand images in one and five hundred in t'other, but if the house burned down these are the first two I'd replace. ;)

150 Years of Photo Journalism, Hulton Getty Picture Collection, 1995. The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, 1997. Needless to say, it's not about individual shots since each collection is constrained by what was available to the publisher. It's about breadth, and history, and key periods - which is useful to me.

[tmastran]

Time in New England - Paul Strand
Bullock - Wynn Bullock
Wright Morris - The Friends of Photography
Contact - The Friends of Photography
Southwest - Elliot Porter (b&w work)
Atget series - MoMA
Linda Butler - The Shakers
Hometowns - George Tice

I like your list. I would add: Meyerowitz, Joel - Cape Light, for a little color.
I saw these in person in an Atlanta gallery last December as 4 ft x 5 ft prints. They were mesmerizing!

[Peter De Smidt]

William Mortensen's The Model.

[John Kasaian]

Lots of good suggestions. I'll "second" (or is it "third?") the Ansel Adams trilogy and The Making of 40 Photographs, and add:

Using The View Camera by Steve Simmons
The Art of Black and White Photography by John Garrett
Night Photography by Andrew Sanderson
Graflex Photography by Morgan and Lester (any year!)
Kodak Professional Photo Guide (by The Great Yellow Father in Rochester)
The History of the Photographic Lens by Rudolph Kingslake
...and anything by Roger Hicks and Frances Schultz (I hope I got the spelling right!)

As for monographs, there are far and away too many to speculate---go with which ever floats your boat!:)

[BradS]

I am surprised that View Camera Technique by Leslie Stroebel hasn't been mentioned.

Here are a few of my other favorites:

Introduction to Photography by Robert B. Rhode and Floyd H. McCall - the first edition is better than the second - although only marginally so.

Object and Image by George M. Craven - again, opt for the first edition. The later editions went a little too commercial and cut out a bunch of the interesting stuff.

In this Proud Land: America 1935-1943 As Seen In The FSA Photographs by Roy E. Stryker and Nancy Wood

[Lightbender]

I used Google Book Search to index some 192 complete works related to photography. They are freely available to read on-line or you can download each in pdf format for later reading. Below is a hyperlink to selections I have made in my on-line library. Feel free to add them to your library. Enjoy! Dann

http://www.google.com/books?uid=11755300410566273582

PS. I find each and every one to be essential. ;)

WHAT A GREAT RESOURCE! THANK YOU FOR SHARING!

[Bill_1856]

The Daybooks of Edward Weston.

[Tom Conway]

Here is my Top Ten. By way of explanation, I'm an amateur with a specialty in garden photography. Also, have tried to avoid listing books already mentioned.

The Photographic Experience, Jeff Berner, 1975
Imogene Cunningham: Ideas
without End, Richard Lorenz, 1993
Color Vision, Joe Marvello, 1989
The Sensuous Garden, Montagu Don, 1997
Moments in Eden, Richard Brown, 1989
Lighting for Still Life, Steve Bavister, 2001
Designing a Photograph, Bill Smith, 1985
Impressions of Giverny, Charles Weckler, 1990
Monet's Water Lilies, Vivian Russell, ?
Appalachian Wilderness, Eliot Porter, ?

I've found that library book sales, and remainder tables to be a economical way to add to ones personal collection.

[Ole Tjugen]

The Print, Ansel Adams
The Print, William Mortensen
Portrait Lighting, also Mortensen.

Poet of Prague - Josef Sudek.
South with Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1917 - Frank Hurley

The History of the Photographic Lens, Rudolph Kingslake
AGFA Rezepte, AGFA
Photographisces Hilfsbuch für ernste Arbeit, Schmidt, Berlin 1910.

[Hany Aziz]

The Negative and The Print by Ansel Adams
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs by Ansel Adams
The Zone VI Workshop by Fred Picker
Large Format Nature Photography by Jack Dykinga

Any book of photos by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Paul Caponigro, Wynn Bullock, John Sexton or Sebastião Salgado.

Sincerely,

Hany.

[myoptic]

The books that got me started, and which helped me to grow the most are the ones I return to over and over:

(Looking at Photographs J. Szarkowski) - already mentioned in Google list
(Camera, Negative, Print A. Adams) - already mentioned

Family of Man E. Steichen
Camera Work A. Steiglitz
Portraits of Indians (not a title, but a body of work) E. Curtis
Photography: Art and Technique A. Blaker my favourite old school photo resource book
Elements B. Thornton

There are some books in my collection that are just images by photographers that I find significant, but have not included here.

Note: I added to this old thread as I was searching LFF for this very information.

[Witold Grabiec]

Jut getting back at photography after a few years spent on moving to Europe, building a house, and finding below at last

Andre Kertesz - ISBN 978-0300167818
Andre Kertesz - The Polaroids - ISBN 978-0393065640

[robert liebermann]

I like books and I like photography... three (more or less) I can think of that probably nobody else would add: the Time-Life series (including the photo-year eds.); can be had for a song; Field Photography by Blaker; 15 Years in a Photographer's Life by Nadine Blacklock. There are many more I like!

[andrew gardiner]

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes hasn't been mentioned.

[AF-ULF]

Light: Science and Magic. The only lighting book you will ever need. Invaluable.

[Jim Jones]

Way Beyond Monochrome by Ralph W. Lambrecht and Chris Woodhouse is the best of my many books on LF images and technique.

[p martinez]

War of Art by Pressfield has helped me face mountains of negatives.

[greenbank]

Should this thread be called Craig's List?

Almost everything here is good. However, I'd caution anyone who picks up Barthes or Sontag unawares: these two are cultural theorists with some very unusual (and rarefied) views on photography. Barthes in particular cheerfully admitted that he had never even used a camera - which in my book entitles him to provide cultural and artistic critiques of photographs, but not of photography, since he never experienced the joy of snapping a shutter on a perfect image. My personal view of Sontag's ideas is that she was a consciously intellectualising controversialist (sorry about the long words!) who craved not just attention but adoration, and I feel she has almost nothing either useful or sensible to say about the experience of being a photographer.

I'd also add that an excellent source of books, both new and out-of-print, is Abe Books (www.abebooks.com, or www.abebooks.co.uk). No personal connection, except as a very satisfied customer.

[Darin Boville]

A few to add:

Ansel Adams--the original NYGS monograph--so we can remember how Ansel thought of himself as a photographer rather than how his business manager what us to think about him.

The Essential Duane Michals

Harry Callahan (National Gallery of Art/Bulfinch)

Deux Ex Machina--Ralph Gibson

People of the 20th Century--August Sander

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher--Timothy Egan

Complete Untitled Film Stills--Cindy Sherman

--Darin

[John Kasaian]

Your homeowners insurance policy. Specifically the floater that covers your old camera stuff.

[Peter De Smidt]

The Command To Look and Monsters and Madonnas by Mortensen.

[tgtaylor]

Summit/Vittorio Sella/Mountaineer and Photographer/The Years 1879-1909, Aperture.

Many here are probably already familiar with Sella and his work but Sella is a new discovery for me. A truly inspiring and uplifting photographer regardless of whether or not "mountain photography" is your cup of tea. The quality of the reproduced images are astounding notwithstanding that they were taken in the late 19th century and reproduced by Aperature with the printing technology of the late 1990's.

If mountain photography and travelis your cup of tea, then you may also like Round Kangchenjunga by Douglas Freshfield, 1903, and a free download at http://archive.org/details/roundkangchenjun00fresrich

Thomas