Perceptive Photographer #33: On The Photographer’s Bookshelf Part 2

In part 2 of this series on photographic books, I recommend a number of books that you should consider for the photography section of your bookshelf. With hundreds and thousands of books available, it is often time overwhelming knowing where to start. Even as I started pulling a list of books together, I was paralyzed by the number and direction to take the recommendations. I think it is easier when you are trying to recommend books for a specific genera of work. It is easy to recommend Winogrand, Frank, Cartier-Bresson, Davidson, Maisel and Erwitt for street and Avedon for fashion and so on, but what do you do for the general photography bookshelf. In this podcast, I attempted to pull together a collection of class books, projects or photographers that I think should be on your bookshelf. In no way is this list comprehensive. My own list leaves out many of my own favorite books, but in the interest of time, I narrowed the list down. These books are a mix of amazing projects and collections. Some of the books are from early in an artist career while other come later. In each case, I tired to find a book that really stood out as an interesting body of work. I also attempted to select books that were not retrospectives of a photographer's life. While those are amazing books, there is so much to learn from looking at how a single project or books is created verse a whole life or decades of work--of course there are a few exceptions. In this podcast, I mention work by Nicolas Nixon Diane Arbus William Eggleston André Kertész Michael Kenna Bruce Davidson Syliva Plachy Andreas Gursky Gary Winogrand Elliot Erwitt Robert Adams Stephen Shore Cindy Sherman Ansel Adams John Szarkowski Keith Carter Man Ray Richard Avedon