10 Photo Books YOU should own.

Welcome back! In this fairly quick entry, I am going to list and give a brief outline of 10 photobooks that I own and that I think you should too. This is going to cover everything from landscape photography to street photography and the craft of photography in general.

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may received a small kickback if you make a qualifying purchase after clicking one of the links in this blog.

I own all of these books, with the exception of one of them; the last one on the list (which I am hoping to receive for Christmas, or bag a copy in the Black Friday sales.

I think what surprised me about the list when I wrote it was that I haven’t chosen a lot of landscape photography books. In fact, there are only 3 ‘real’ landscape books. I like to have a variety of photography to look at. I don’t want everything I consume to be the stuff that I am shooting, I don’t want to be sat looking at what I could be taking - I want to be out there taking it and on top of that I don’t want my creativity to be limited by thinking about how I can recreate images that I have seen.

I think that the last point applies even more so to social media, but that’s a whole other blog I am going to write need to unpick that!

Anyway, here goes with the list. I will include a link to each one of them on Amazon so that if the mood strikes, you can go ahead and grab a copy for yourself or maybe to give as a gift to a very lucky photographer.

1. Susan Sontag - On Photography

   I think that this is a really important book and one that every photographer should read. In this book, Sontag discusses many ideas, but chief among them (for me anyway) is that photography makes us spectators of life, rather than people who participate in it. I think this rings ever more true the more prevalent social media comes in our lives.

   She also looks at several other themes such as photography becoming a form of control, explores how it can distort our perception of reality (social media again, anyone?) and how we can becomes desensitised to things such as the atrocity of war because of how much we see it in the course of our daily lives.

   If you haven’t read this then you probably should, it’s also really reasonably priced at less than £10 on Amazon.

2. Liam Wong :TO:KY:00

   This isn’t just one of my favourite photo books, this one, and it’s sequel After Dark are two of my favourite books that I own. They might even be two of my favourite possessions full stop. The images in these books are just incredible and Wong’s training as a video games artist really shows. The images are crisp, the compositions are simply incredible and the colours… just WOW.. serious cyberpunk vibes! There’s a lot of neon lights going, the photos are dark, moody and tell some incredible stories.

   The other thing worth mentioning about these books is that they are so incredibly well produced. They have lay flat binding so that you’re not going to get them all creased up and ruin the spines and there are fold-out panoramic shots as well so you can really enjoy the images the way in which they were intended to be seen.

3. Ansell Adams 400 Photographs

   Would this list be complete without some kind of mention of the Godfather of landscape photographer, Ansell Adams? If you want to enjoy as much of the great man’s photography as possible, and in one palace, then this is the place to do it. The images are organised into groups, starting with some of his earliest stuff in Yosemite around 1916 up until some of the work he did around the National Parks in the 1960s.

   If you’re into landscape photography, or just like the natural world then this is something you need on your bookshelf. You can pick this one up for around £30 here on Amazon

4. The Photographer’s Eye - Michael Freeman

   If you are looking for a way to improve your landscape photography, then this is a good place to start. This is well organised book which guides you through a process which ultimately will change the way you view the world. What I like about this is the clear language it uses and moreover, the way the book uses such a wide range of example images from all around the world so that it doesn’t fill your head with images that are a stones throw from your front door that you can just head out and copy. I really like that.

   This book has recently been updated and you can grab a copy of the latest edition for about £18 on Amazon by clicking here.

5. This Pleasant Land - Hoxton Mini Press

   This is one I have had a couple of years and frequently dip into. It shows a modern perspective on the UK landscape as it exits today, and it isn't just classically ‘beautiful’ photographs. It looks at the beauty that can be found in decay as well as exploring the more traditionally aesthetically pleasing side that we associate with landscape photography. Is it predictable? No. Is it traditional? No. Do you need a copy? Yes. Yes you do. It’s available on Amazon for just shy of £22

6. Magnum Contact Sheets - Kristen Lubben

   Another one which isn’t a landscape book, but I don’t know a single photographer who hasn’t been fascinated by this book. It’s a collection of contact sheets and stories as told by the incredible photojournalists that have worked for the Magnum Agency. We’re talking big names in this book… Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliot Erwitt and Bruce Gilden to name just a few.

   I find the stories behind the images fascinating and perhaps at times, the reasons behind the selects even more so. It’s just an incredible book and even you’re not into photojournalistic work, you can learn a heck of a lot about storytelling and composition by spending a couple of hours with this book. It’s one of the heavier books on the list both in terms of physical weight and price coming in at around £45 on Amazon

7. Ernst Haas - New York in Colour - Prestel

   Haas moved to New York from Vienna in 1951 and qucickly set about photographing it. What he captured was just incredible and marks his move away from his career shooting in black and white. All of the images have the classic New York vibe that we have come to expect from the city that never sleeps. The images explore the technical challenges he encountered shooting with Kodachrome and then printing the images in colour. I can’t tell you exactly what it is about this book that makes it so good, it’s just an incredible set of images that you need to see. This one is currently selling for £35 on Amazon

8. William Eggleston - Portraits

   Do you like shooting in colour? Do you like looking at colour images in galleries and at exhibitions? You do? Well then you have William Eggleston to thank for that. At a time when colour photography was for amateurs and the establishment’s attitude was that in order to be considered a true professional and a ‘serious’ artist then you had to shoot in black and white. There was a lot of snobbery about the use of colour and Eggleston broke down that barrier. The potraits in this book show colour photography at its very best, the compositions are often hectic, playful and the way people are portrayed in them feels really authentic. There is a whole bunch of books by Eggleston that could have made this list (The Democratic Forest and 2 1/4 are fantastic, but unless you have very deep pockets, you might struggle to justify the £6100 that a copy of the former is currently listed for on Amazon). Portraits has a much more wallet friendly price, coming in at around £35 on Amazon.

9. Life on The Mountains - Terry Abraham

   You didn’t think I was going to complete this blog without talking about The Lake District, did you? This gorgeous book which talks about a ten year project Abraham worked on, documenting the fells of Lakeland, encountering some pretty sketchy weather and taking some nasty falls along the way. The photography in this book is nothing short of stunning, helped of course by the quality of the environment he was shooting! It’s a book that really does speak for itself and is as equally at home in the hands of a photographer as it is with an outdoor enthusiast and love of The Lake District; I reckon Wainwright would have loved it! You can grab your copy on Amazon for just under £20!

10. The Decisive Moment - Henri Cartier-Bresson

    Ok, so full disclosure, I don’t own a copy of this book, but I have had the chance to peruse one in a library when I still lived in London. If you had asked me to write this list 6 months ago, this book would’t have featured; it was out of print, hard to get hold of and if you wanted a useable copy, you were looking at deep into three figures territory. So why is it on here now? There has been a new print run and it’s available to buy again!

    This is one of, if not the most famous photobooks in existence. It looks at the concept of the decisive moment in photography. The exact meaning of ‘the decisive moment’ is a bit of a bone of contention amongst photographers, but it boils down to waiting for the right moment to capture the image, but its a bit deeper than that at the same time. This really is a genre defining book and is definitely something you should own!

    The reprint is currently going for £40 on Amazon.

    And here endeth the list.
    
    This just my opinion based on what I own and what I have read. I don’t profess to be the oracle of photographic literature, but I reckon a number of these would pop-up in conversations about books with fellow photographers. I love owning photo books, they bring me a lot of joy and have pride of place in my house, they’re a great talking point and who knows, maybe one day, I will have one of my own!

    Prices are correct as of 11pm, Wednesday 19th November, please bear in mind that I am writing this as I waiting for the Amazon Black Friday to start at midnight (I really do love a bargain!), but that means that Amazon have an absolute raft of deals going on in the run up to the start of their event so please don’t be mad if the prices have gone up by the time you get round to reading this!

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