What ART books are you reading?

Kimberly Anderson · Nov 4, 2005

Curious what art books folks are reading right now.

I'm studying the early American pictorialist and landscape painters. I'm trying to understand more clearly their motivations, inspirations and successes. Hopefully the ideas I glean from them will pass through to my photography.

I also got one of the Day Books of Weston and a book about William Henry Jackson.

Anyone else studying photography and art through books? Does anyone go to the library anymore in the new age of the interweb?

jmdavis · Nov 4, 2005

I try to check out the University library every so often. I haven't taken in a class in a couple of semesters (a benefit of working for the school is the ability to take up to two classes per semester) so reading and shooting are what I do instead.

I'm rereading the W. Eugene Smith Aperature monograph that I picked up at a used book store last year.

Mike Davis

roteague · Nov 4, 2005

Now that you bring it up, I'm not reading anything, and I should be. I just returned from a long trip; generally when I travel I read a photography related book. This trip I read "Light and the Art of Landscape Photography" by Joe Cornish (probably the 5 or 6th time I have read it). I should finish reading Ansel Adams "The Negative".

Thanks for bringing that up, I need to get busy again .... and quit being lazy.

firecracker · Nov 4, 2005

Michael Slade said:
Curious what art books folks are reading right now.

I'm studying the early American pictorialist and landscape painters. I'm trying to understand more clearly their motivations, inspirations and successes. Hopefully the ideas I glean from them will pass through to my photography.

I also got one of the Day Books of Weston and a book about William Henry Jackson.

Anyone else studying photography and art through books? Does anyone go to the library anymore in the new age of the interweb?

You might be interested in reading some posts on this thread bellow:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Although it's not my thread, I found the comments posted by the fellow APUGers very helpful when I had a similar question like yours popped in my head.

Robert Brummitt · Nov 4, 2005

I'm currently reading Brooks Jensen's latest book "Single Exposures" then I'm waiting for the new Don Worth book collection of his work. If you want to read a neat history of American photograhy try "Trace & Transformation" by Joel Eisinger.
After I read a few photo books or any non fiction I need to escape to Stephan King booK.

Struan Gray · Nov 4, 2005

I'm finally starting to read Andy Goldsworthy's "Time" instead of just looking at the pictures. Also, a history of abstract art from the library, and a bunch of Clement Greenberg essays I found online. Just finished "Diana and Nikon" by Janet Malcolm.

Mostly though it's Katie Morag and Hairy Maclary.

mmcclellan · Nov 4, 2005

I have found that books on the "Delft School" of painting (especially Vermeer, de Hooch, and Saenredam) and most other "Golden Age of Dutch Painting" books to be extremely useful in helping me to understand perspective, composition, "where to stand," etc. Likewise, Canaletto and any other painter who used the camera obscura are helpful to study.

Even Coptic "funerary art" (the Berlin Museum has a superb collection) from the early Christian period in Fayoum, Egypt, is instructive for a modern-day photographer. Don't limit yourself, but scan the entire range of art throughout the centuries and see what those artists can teach you about our modern-day medium.

As for photographers, snap up anything and everything you can get from Paul Strand. His photos, studied in conjunction with the Dutch painters, IMHO, really bring it all together in applying the techniques of great painters to photography. After all, it's all about where you set up your easel/tripod that ultimately determines what is in the final image.

George Tice is also superb and his book on the Amish is easy to find at discounted rates. And, of course, the usual masters such as Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston, Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, Paul Caponigro, etc., are unrivalled.

Other painters I enjoy studying, and find applicable to photography, are Degas, 19th century Russian painters of the "Itinerant" or "Peredvizhniki" school who painted peasant life and everyday scenes, Constable, Hopper, all the Impressionists, etc. to be very useful and inspirational.

Whatever you do, though, do NOT limit your study of photography to photographers only, but study painters from all periods. In the final analysis, photography is about getting an image into a frame and artists have been struggling with that issue for thousands of years!

127 · Nov 4, 2005

I read the Aperture 50 book over the summer - THOUGHROUGHLY RECOMMENDED as a quick and easy way to get started figuring out what you like, or a way of finding new work that speaks to you. About 200 photo's by almost as many photographers. The text is OK, but mainly just historical notes.

As a result I just bought two more books - The Last Steam Railroad (Winston Link), and XXX 30 Porn Star Portraits (Timothy Greenfield-Saunders). Their images in the Aperture exhibition were the ones that totally stunned me at the time and have stayed with me, even though it's they're about as different as you could imagine. I did enjoy the idea of ordering a book of 1950's trains at the same time as a book on Porn...

I'm still digesting both books, and haven't reached any final conclusions, but so far I'm cautiously enthusiastic.

Ian

colrehogan · Nov 4, 2005

I'm currently looking at Tillman Crane's book, Structures. I even browsed through a book titled, The Art of Michael Whelan (he has painted many sci-fi/fantasy book covers over the last 25 years or so).

laz · Nov 4, 2005

This is a really good topic! Only yesterday I found myself at a Barnes and Nobel leafing through photography books during lunch. It's been a while since I picked up an actual "art" book. In photography I've been reading purely technical stuff; gotta change that.
-Bob

Bill Mitchell · Nov 4, 2005

With the well publicised death of Rosa Parks, I pulled my copy of Brian Lanker's "I Dream a World" from the shelf and enjoyed a rainy afternoon with the photos and the text.

Bill Hahn · Nov 4, 2005

Right now I am looking at a book of photographs by Chansonetta Stanley Emmons. (Foreword by Berenice Abbott). Another somewhat obscure New England photographer whose talent humbles me....

...search images.google.com for her name to see some examples....

-Bill

laz · Nov 4, 2005

Bill Hahn said:
...search images.google.com for her name to see some examples....
-Bill

This combined with the high cost of Art books is why it's been years since I purchased any.

It's always a pleasure to study the masters, but, I find that I get much more from studying magazines and places like the APUG gallery. Seeing a wide variety of style and technique is what stimulates me.

It may be hearsay to speak it here, but, while I greatly admire Ansel Adams' work, I'm long over exposed to it and get so much more from looking, at say, Gandolfi or Jim Galli's work.
-Bob

Bill Hahn · Nov 4, 2005

Um, I suspect you meant 'heresy' and not 'hearsay'.

I have established a good relationship with the owner and employee of a used bookstore, they let me know when any photography-related books arrive in stock. This is useful not only for the occasional bargain, but also to see what books are out there (and out of print).

laz · Nov 4, 2005

Bill Hahn said:
Um, I suspect you meant 'heresy' and not 'hearsay'.

LOL! You are absolutly correct! I guess AA doesn't qualify for someone whose reputation is unverified information heard or received from another!

Bill Hahn said:
I have established a good relationship with the owner and employee of a used bookstore, they let me know when any photography-related books arrive in stock. This is useful not only for the occasional bargain, but also to see what books are out there (and out of print).

I think I've mentioned elsewhere on APUG that I used to manage a used and rare bookstore. Bussiness was often quite slow and I spent many happy hours like a pig in the mud enjoying photo books (among others)
-Bob

removed account4 · Nov 4, 2005

man ray's "self portrait," and "camera portraits," the national portrait gallery's (photographic) collection

lee · Nov 4, 2005

I would recommend "Art and Fear"

lee\c

tim atherton · Nov 4, 2005

The Collected Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

TheFlyingCamera · Nov 4, 2005

not a recent read, but in keeping with the painters-and-photographers thread, if you want to understand the power of light, you MUST study Caravaggio. Especially his later works. I'm chugging my way through the recent bio of Ruth Bernhard ( I keep getting sidelined by other stuff, like re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia).

JustK · Nov 4, 2005

Great question Michael! Thank you for asking!

This year I began training as a docent for a local American art musuem and am finding that this training does inform (and hopefully will improve) my photography. For the program, I am reading American Visions by Hughes and American Art by Craven, great survey books of American art. For my own photography, I just purchased a DVD about Brett Weston, and his book BW - Photographs From Five Decades, can't wait to immerse myself in these. Lastly, a friend and I are going through a workbook called Walking In This World by Cameron, it's kind of a spirituality & art self-help book.

Blessings, Krystyna

SuzanneR · Nov 4, 2005

I recently bought "Appalachian Legacy" by Shelby Lee Adams. He makes portraits of friends and family in Kentucky. It's an area that has been photographed so frequently from the famous (Walker Evans), to the obscure (William Gedney)... but Adams grew up there, so he really knows the subject, and his photographs are indeed thought provoking, and call into question the depiction of rural poverty in Kentucky. We could start a whole thread on the subject...

At any rate, well worth the read.

vet173 · Nov 5, 2005

Dune. Edward & Brett weston. As much as it cost me I'll be reading and drooling at it over and over. But I'll try to get by.

bjorke · Nov 5, 2005

Suzanne, have you seen the documentary on Shelby Lee Adams? Pretty great.

To answer the actual original question about art books I am actually reading right NOW (that is, I am in mid-book with one or two weeks to go):

Revelations - Arbus
Ezekiel's Horse - Keith Carter
Shooting Under Fire - Howe
Coaching the Artist Within - Maisel
Visual Explanation - Tufte

(and ignoring books for work or otherwise like Mansfield's Human Response to Vibration or the tumbling stacks of half-read relationship, card-trick, psychology, scuba, and computer books clogging my desk and the space under and around my bed)

esanford · Nov 5, 2005

Art for Dummies... it's actually quite good, The Day Books of Edward Weston... The Fred Picker Newsletters (I just acquired an electronic version of the entire set)

colrehogan · Nov 5, 2005

TheFlyingCamera said:
not a recent read, but in keeping with the painters-and-photographers thread, if you want to understand the power of light, you MUST study Caravaggio. Especially his later works. I'm chugging my way through the recent bio of Ruth Bernhard ( I keep getting sidelined by other stuff, like re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia).

I could never manage to get through the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia. I got bored with it.

What ART books are you reading?

Kimberly Anderson

jmdavis

roteague

firecracker

Robert Brummitt

Struan Gray

mmcclellan

127

colrehogan

laz

Bill Mitchell

Bill Hahn

laz

Bill Hahn

laz

removed account4

lee

tim atherton

TheFlyingCamera

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esanford

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