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Favorite writers on photography

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Deleted member 88956

There are many photographers whose work inspires the aspiring, yet this is not what I am about to ask.

There are writers, some great photographers, who have the knack for putting together engaging essays conveying with ease artistic and technical topics. There are others who have the great skill to photograph, yet fail miserably at describing how or why they do it. And there are just writers, some of whom have hardly taken to photography as a medium, yet have great fun writing about it and are joy to readers.

There are a few greats in this sense, that have maintained a very high standard throughout, each publication is a near guarantee it will be another good one and worth reading (same as with few, very few, musicians)

My list of the greats is rather short, although I'm sure I have an ocean yet to discover. I'll mention a couple here.

Bill Jay - humor, sarcasm, colorful. sometimes deliberately confusing, only to clear things up in the last sentence, I keep going back to his essays and always come out full and relaxed. Great loss was his passing.

Andreas Feininger - never failed me discussing any photographic topic he chose, great photographer to boot, the latter giving so much more credibility to everything he had to say.
 
You might want to check out Dan Winters' book, Road to Seeing. Lucien Clergue's Nude Workshop has some essays on his approach, too. Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Mind's Eye is more philosophical than practical. Aperture has a good series of books called The Photography Workshop that are worthwhile.
 
Pieter12 said:
You might want to check out Dan Winters' book, Road to Seeing. Lucien Clergue's Nude Workshop has some essays on his approach, too. Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Mind's Eye is more philosophical than practical. Aperture has a good series of books called The Photography Workshop that are worthwhile.
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Got them all, some stand out, others do not for me. The two I mentioned are my front runners. There are still a lot of volumes on my shelves I have not touched yet and the Road to Seeing is on my current short list.

To be clear I am not asking about how to explanations, but rather writers who have it, can spell out their minds in all sort of ways, yet ways that are easy to notice and hard to forget, ways that leave long lasting impression. I could mention a few greats here I cannot stand reading. Few are recognized for their photographic achievements I cannot look at more than once. All personal, nothing universal, some would agree with me, many would not. But this is not about this kind of legacies.
 
Witold said:
There are many photographers whose work inspires the aspiring, yet this is not what I am about to ask.

There are writers, some great photographers, who have the knack for putting together engaging essays conveying with ease artistic and technical topics. There are others who have the great skill to photograph, yet fail miserably at describing how or why they do it. And there are just writers, some of whom have hardly taken to photography as a medium, yet have great fun writing about it and are joy to readers.

There are a few greats in this sense, that have maintained a very high standard throughout, each publication is a near guarantee it will be another good one and worth reading (same as with few, very few, musicians)

My list of the greats is rather short, although I'm sure I have an ocean yet to discover. I'll mention a couple here.

Bill Jay - humor, sarcasm, colorful. sometimes deliberately confusing, only to clear things up in the last sentence, I keep going back to his essays and always come out full and relaxed. Great loss was his passing.

Andreas Feininger - never failed me discussing any photographic topic he chose, great photographer to boot, the latter giving so much more credibility to everything he had to say.
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BTW, I cut my teeth on Feininger's The Complete Photographer in 1965.
 
Pieter12 said:
BTW, I cut my teeth on Feininger's The Complete Photographer in 1965.
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First I got to know Feininger through The Complete Photographer, quite a few years later did I discover his actual photography and never figured how that happened. Must have enjoyed his prose without giving it much other thought.
 
Pieter12 said:
An interesting book, not sure if it is what you're after: Life Photographers: What They Saw by John Loengard.
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I'll make a note, but am generally looking for names I have likely not seen.

Bill Jay was and is to me a master speaker. Read his column first at LensWork magazine that I used to subscribe to and it took off from there. I'm sure there are some treasures of similar magnitude without a long publishing history that stand out.
 
I have his book with David Burr, On Being a Photographer. A great read. I'll have to check for his LensWork EndNotes writings.
 
mohmad khatab said:
This slogan ((phrase)) is very funny.
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I don't want to take too much away from Roger Hicks and his knowledge. Years years ago he was quite vocal on one the forums and every time he came in it was "here is my book, read it" and that turned me off to this day and I don't know nor do I care what he has to say. It might not be the best advice to all who seek help in photography, just I made vows with myself back then not to worry about RH's publications and well ... just called myself in and renewed them again. Have enough to explore of really high quality information without such condescending undertones.
 
Pieter12 said:
I have his book with David Burr, On Being a Photographer. A great read. I'll have to check for his LensWork EndNotes writings.
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On being a photographer is such a joyful ride, both so different and complementing at the same time. Have to read it again soon I guess as it's a couple of years. Plus I actually read while running on a treadmill which augmented my enjoyment further.
 
Michael Firstlight said:
Bruce Barnbaum - The Art of Photography.
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I thought the same thing when I read through it, then I purchase his Visual Symphony. What you see on the cover is to tease into a boring display of photographic (or editorial judgment) ineptness. This unfortunately affected how I now feel about anything that stands behind BB, and I think he has shown great skill in print making, just Visual Symphony also has shown me pretty bad judgment. I cannot believe what was picked for that book was thought through at all, unless it was like a hot girl picks up a not so hot to go out together, so the attention is guaranteed to be on one. When you see the cover image you go wow, then you see more of pretty much the same cover images inside a chapter and you start sliding towards so so, once you get to the end of the book you're at meh point. By comparison I go to John Sexton's Listen to the Trees and I see exquisite page one after another. Ii blows my mind every time I have to move Visual Symphony to get another book out off the shelve.

I would still recommend Art of Photography as good read though, just to be clear.
 
I became enamored of photography at a young age - mainly for the amazing mechanism by which a lens, a piece of film, and how six or eight minute in a developing solution (plus fixing, etc.) could give a detailed image of what had been in front of that lens. By the time I was perhaps ten or twelve years old I was always looking forward to the next issue of Life magazine so I could pore over the photos and picture stories. Photojournalism became my biggest interest, and most of the Life photographers were the next thing to heroes for me. These would include people like Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, Larry Burrows, Gordon Parks, and the like. (Some of these are in Pieter12's book rec.)

One web site I used to enjoy quite a bit was Dirck Halstead's digitaljournalist.org (way out a date, but still online). It was set up as an online magazine.

A couple of articles that I enjoyed there are: About Alfred Eisenstaedt near the end of his life, including a short part about photographing President Bill Clinton and family (about 2/3 down the page):
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue9911/marks.htm

Another about Nick Ut, and the events that unfolded as he took the photos known as "napalm girl," or something to that effect. Not well known is that Nick is mostly responsible for saving her life as detailed in one of the articles.
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng2.htm

Thw website is a bit difficult to search, but plenty of stories and insights into the photographer's mind for those who enjoy photojournalism.
 
I haven't seen any mention yet of John Blakemore and his excellent book, John Blakemore's Black and White Photogrpahy Workshop. I've read it and referred to certain chapters again and again over the years since it was published.
 
Feinenger wrote a very easy to understand book on techniques of photography. For a more general approach I enjoyed the columns my late friend Louie Stettner wrote for Camera 35 magazine and also the introductory essays to his books.
 
A very broad question indeed. The photographer whose writings I keep going back to are David Vestal. Yes, he leaned toward the technical but in his later columns in D&CCT he often moved toward the philosophical. His views on print contrast and print size are the clearest writings on the subject I have come across. He was an iconoclast in an era of conformity. Two quotes stand out, he didn't really like the pretentious term "fine art" and wondered if there was such a thing as fine art does it follow that there must be "coarse art", and, like woodworking files, maybe "medium art"? Another time he was talking about print aesthetics and the popular claim that "less is more" his response was "no, less is not more but rather enough is enough. Priceless!
 
Yes, should have remembered Vestal. His book on technique and craft first appeared as a serial in Camera 35. Later, excellent pieces in Darkroom Techniques. His contribution to Leica Manual of 1970s also very good.
 
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