I found a great collection of photography books at a used bookstore in January, 2020.
Every so often I love stopping by local used bookstores to see if any interesting photography books have turned up. You just never know what you may find. This month I came away with a great haul of books, some I’d never heard of. Take a look and let me know if you’ve read any of these.
I’ve provided links to Amazon in case you’re not able to find these books locally. These are affiliate links and I’ll be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links, though this won’t cost you anything extra. Thanks much!
ShadowLight: A Photographer’s Life by Freeman Patterson
I’ve always heard great things about Freeman Patterson, and I own a couple of his instructional books, though I’ve yet to read them. So when I stumbled across this book about his life and photography I grabbed it. The book is full of beautiful photographs interspersed with written sections where Patterson talks about his life and creative process. I look forward to reading it.
Galen Rowell: A Retrospective
Galen Rowell is one of those names many people interested in outdoor and adventure photography will be familiar with. He was for a time THE iconic adventure photographer and created some absolutely incredible and beautiful photography. I was so happy to find this large format book collecting some fantastic examples of his work. But it’s not just photography, it also contains a number of essays about Rowell I can’t wait to read.
The Family of Man by Edward Steichen
You may recognize The Family of Man from a previous used book roundup. In that post I’d mentioned the paper quality of that edition was very poor and that I’d love to find a better copy. Well, now I have! This edition, printed in 1996 is much better than the older edition, printed on more substantial paper with pages that have not yellowed with age. The book chronicles the large photographic exhibition put together by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, often called the greatest photographic exhibition of all time. It essentially tells the story of mankind, photographically. I hope to one day put together a post specifically about this book.
Tone Poems: Nine Photographic Opuses, Book 1 — Opus 1, 2 & 3 by Bruce Barnbaum & Judith Cohen
This book fascinates me. Bruce Barnbaum is an amazingly talented photographer (who wrote an incredible instructional book I’m still reading, The Art of Photography). Judith Cohen is a pianist. It appears they have put together a book that presents Barnbaum’s photographs arranged into collections that are matched to pieces of classical music. I honestly have no idea how this is supposed to work, but I find the concept intriguing. Granted, I would have purchased it for Barnbaum’s photography alone, as it contains a stunning collection of his black and white work. But I will be curious to see how well it pairs with the music, and whether I happen to have any of the pieces it pairs with. It appears a CD came with the book when new, but was missing from my used book purchase.
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs by Ansel Adams
This is a classic, and a book I’ve wanted to own for some time. In it Ansel Adams selected 40 of his photographs to talk about, sharing some of his thoughts about each image. I love these sorts of books, especially when written by the photographer. We can learn so much hearing what they saw, thought and felt when creating the image, and what processes they used both in the field and back at the dark room. This one will take longer to read than some of the others, but I very much look forward to it.
The Greek World by Eliot Porter
This was a fortunate find, as it wasn’t in the art and photography section, but instead with the books on Greek history. Eliot Porter is one of the big names in photography, in fact he had the first one-man exhibition of color photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I look forward to viewing some of Porter’s photographs, and learning a bit about Greece from the text written by Peter Levi.
So how’s that for a great collection of books? Used bookstores can be a fantastic resource, especially for out of print books. They’re also a chance to find large, sometimes expensive, books without hurting the wallet quite as much. Have you read any of these books, or have you found any interesting used (or new) books lately?
