Tag Archives: Photographic Criticism

Books Every Serious Photographer Must Have

The best books on photography (regularly updated) One of the consequences of my interest in photography is that I acquire and read too many photography books. I hope to develop this site as a resource for other photographers seeking out … Continue reading

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Forget the Analysis and Just Read Camera Lucida

Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes I doubt if any book about photography has been more thoroughly dissected than Camera Lucida. I have no illusion that I can add anything significant to the body of work on this small volume. It is … Continue reading

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Is Robert Adams the finest writer on photography?

Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams, Aperture The measure of a great essay is that after one reads it, there is simply nothing more to say. That is my reaction to Robert Adams’ Beauty in Photography. I have read it and … Continue reading

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Interview: Philip Gefter and Buzz Hartshorn

I enjoyed Philip Gefter’s collection of essays “Photography After Frank.” So, when I saw this interview by Gefter of Willis “Buzz” Hartshorn, the director of the International Center of Photography, I knew I would want to re-post it. I’m not … Continue reading

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Striving for Art

Photography, the Key Concepts by David Bate, Berg Publishers Where exactly does photography fit into the world of art? That photography is, or can be, “art” has been a settled question for a century or more. Far more difficult to … Continue reading

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In Search of Things as They Are

Disappearing Witness by Gretchen Garner. Johns Hopkins University Press. Gretchen Garner thinks documentary photography contributes something that is worth preserving. For much of the 20th Century,  that would have seemed like a ridiculously self-evident perspective. Documentary photography, or more precisely, … Continue reading

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Two Languages: Words and Pictures

Philip Gefter, Photography After Frank. “Many people approach the act of looking at photographs with an inherent blind spot. They need to know what it is before they can appreciate how it looks.” For me this statement, and the essay … Continue reading

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Stephen Shore Lecture

Here’s an interesting video of Stephen Shore giving a talk at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London in October, 2010. I wanted to simply embed the video, but the school apparently doesn’t like to share its free … Continue reading

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What I’m Reading

Photography After Frank. Essays by Philip Gefter. I’ll want to write more about this book. But, it’s so good that I thought I’d put in a quick plug right away. It’s not really what I expected. Rather than a single … Continue reading

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On Topographics, Street Photogaphy and Lewis Sullivan

Perhaps it’s just me. But when I visited three separate exhibitions and a single piece in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago they meshed into a larger reflection on the context,  connections and cross-pollinating influences of street … Continue reading

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