The Photobook Thread

[Mike Lopez]

All of these Atget books, with Szarkowski at the helm, are wonderful. A few years ago I got into a debate with someone on this site (I’ll omit his name here) over whether Szarkowski really did admire Atget’s work, or whether he was simply “damning him (Atget) with faint praise.”

The answer is rather obvious.

 

[Arthurwg]

IMHO, Atget is the bridge between photography's 19th and 20th centuries. If he is the God of photography, Szarkowski is his profit. I did hear him speak once at MOMA years ago, a rather profound experience.

 

[MattKing]

If he is the God of photography, Szarkowski is his profit.

Somehow, I think you meant something a bit different here.
Although "profit" might have some relevance as well.

 

[Arthurwg]

Somehow, I think you meant something a bit different here.
Although "profit" might have some relevance as well.

I'm too old to spell correctly.

 

[Pieter12]

...speaking about profits, I think Berenice Abbott was the only one to make any from Atget's photos, and that was after years of promoting his work. Well, besides later resellers, that is.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I'm too old to spell correctly.

If knowing how to spell correctly was an important quality, <control> L would not have been on keyboards.

 

[cliveh]

I would love to have that 4 volume set of Atget. The Van Gogh of photography.

 

[Arthurwg]

Happen to discover a wonderful book at the local library today, "Sites & Structures:The Architectural Photographs Edward S. Curtis," Chronicle Books (2000. One the best books of native American architecture and ethnology that I have ever seen.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

For those who, like I, are interested in photojournalism, here's a book that might be of interest:

Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present​

Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present - 10x10 Photobooks

Flashpoint!, an anthology focusing on protest photography in print, presents a global selection of photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals and alternative newspapers that address protest and resistance from 1950 to the present.

10x10photobooks.org

Not yet published. Will be mid-November.

First time I've been aware of this publisher, 10x10 Photobooks. Interesting mission:

10×10 Photobooks is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization with the mission to foster engagement with the global photobook community through an appreciation, dissemination and understanding of photobooks. Founded in 2012, 10×10 offers an ongoing multi-platform series of public photobook events, including reading rooms, salons, publications, online communities, and partnerships with arts organizations and institutions.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Happen to discover a wonderful book at the local library today, "Sites & Structures:The Architectural Photographs Edward S. Curtis," Chronicle Books (2000. One the best books of native American architecture and ethnology that I have ever seen.

I'll look into it.

In a totally different architectural spirit, I recently found on the use market Bob Thall's The Perfect City. Wonderful Chicago architecture and urban landscape photography.

 

[jeffreyg]

I would love to have that 4 volume set of Atget. The Van Gogh of photography.

I have that four volume set all first editions. Haven’t looked at them for some time They are about forty years old but in new condition. Now I’m going to have to reread them. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I recieved the three books from Pier 24. About Face, Collected and Grain of the Present. All are worthy of the measly $20 price tag. About Face is the weakest of the three I think. Still worthy though.

 

[MTGseattle]

I picked up these 2 titles yesterday;

The Nature of Photographs | Photography | Store | Phaidon

Tir a'Mhurain: Outer Hebrides

Paul Strand is one of those photographers who have esta…

www.goodreads.com

I didn't do very well on prices apparently but that's ok.

 

[logan2z]

I recieved the three books from Pier 24. About Face, Collected and Grain of the Present. All are worthy of the measly $20 price tag. About Face is the weakest of the three I think. Still worthy though.

The Grain of the Present was an excellent exhibition, I saw it a few times during its run. The exhibition catalog is quite good as well.

Really disappointed that Pier 24 is closing, what a huge loss for the photographic community.

 

[logan2z]

Tir a'Mhurain: Outer Hebrides

Paul Strand is one of those photographers who have esta…

www.goodreads.com

Great book, I love Paul Strand's work.

 

[MTGseattle]

I wouldn't call myself very "schooled" on Paul Strand, but I like this book a lot and I've fallen into a stretch of finding books of/related to places I have been.

I also picked up a fun (to me) book called Abandoning's: Photographs of Otter Tail County Minnesota.

Otter tail county is close to where I grew up. I have spent quite a bit of time driving those roads and fishing on lakes there. I think it also boasts the most lakes contained within a single county in the contiguous US.

Abandonings: Photographs of Otter Tail County, Minnesota by MacKenzie, Maxwell: Acceptable (1995) | SecondSale

Free Shipping - ISBN: 9781880216347 - Hardcover - Elliott & Clark Pub - 1995 - Condition: Acceptable - Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. - Abandonings: Photographs of Otter Tail County, Minnesota

www.abebooks.com

 

[albireo]

MACK is currently exploring and rediscovering the work by legendary Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri.

A new volume, 'Viaggi' is out now:

Luigi Ghirri: Viaggi

Among the many recurring interests that connect the rich and open-ended oeuvre of Luigi Ghirri, a fascination with travel resonates through his photographs, publications, and writings. This book by curator James Lingwood charts a course through Ghirri’s photography between 1970 and 1991...

mackbooks.eu

The same publisher has another, beautiful piece of work by Ghirri which came out last year, 'Puglia' - a love letter to the once obscure (now a tourist hotspot) southern Italian region which goes by that name:

Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti (Second Printing)

Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti offers a brilliant account of Luigi Ghirri’s relationship with Puglia — a distinctive region at the heel of Italy, which was pivotal in establishing Ghirri’s career and continued to inspire him throughout it. A first visit in 1982 introduced Ghirri to Puglia’s...

mackbooks.co.uk

I have the Puglia one, which is extraordinary IMO, and own an older Italian book with some of the images in 'Viaggi', but I've just placed an order for the new MACK volume - the prints in the book in my possession leave a lot to be desired and based on the previews on the MACK site, much has improved.

A short bio:

Luigi Ghirri | Matthew Marks Gallery

Inspired in part by the Conceptual art of his time, Luigi Ghirri used his camera to examine the relationship between the physical world and the world of images. His subject was the landscape around him, but his photographs are much more than visual documents of 1970s and 1980s Italy. With his...

matthewmarks.com

Inspired in part by the Conceptual art of his time, Luigi Ghirri used his camera to examine the relationship between the physical world and the world of images. His subject was the landscape around him, but his photographs are much more than visual documents of 1970s and 1980s Italy. With his uncanny eye for composition, Ghirri searched out chance arrangements in the human-built world, framing them in his camera’s viewfinder like found photomontages. He worked in color because, as he put it, “the real world is in color,” and he made modestly sized meticulous prints, rarely producing more than one or two from each image.

In 1978 he published Kodachrome, a book of his photographs that touches on many of the subjects that defined his career, including windows, billboards, murals, and other sites where, as he put it, “the world of signs merges with the physical world.” Ghirri wrote eloquently about the power of the image in contemporary life, especially in relation to photography: “Beyond all critical and intellectual explanations, beyond all negative aspects it might possess, photography is, I think, a formidable visual language for fostering this desire for the infinite that inhabits each of us.”

Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) spent his working life in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Although he exhibited extensively in Italy during his lifetime, it is only since his untimely death that his work has begun to be more widely appreciated. In 2010 Thomas Demand organized the acclaimed exhibition “La Carte d’Après Nature” around Ghirri’s photographs, and in 2011 and 2013 Ghirri’s work was featured in the Venice Biennale. His work has been the subject of several museum exhibitions in recent years, including at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. In 2018 the first major retrospective of his work at a museum outside of Italy opened at the Museum Folkwang in Essen and later traveled to the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Jeu de Paume in Paris.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

MACK is currently exploring and rediscovering the work by legendary Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri.

A new volume, 'Viaggi' is out now:

Luigi Ghirri: Viaggi

Among the many recurring interests that connect the rich and open-ended oeuvre of Luigi Ghirri, a fascination with travel resonates through his photographs, publications, and writings. This book by curator James Lingwood charts a course through Ghirri’s photography between 1970 and 1991...

mackbooks.eu

The same publisher has another, beautiful piece of work by Ghirri which came out last year, 'Puglia' - a love letter to the once obscure (now a tourist hotspot) southern Italian region which goes by that name:

Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti (Second Printing)

Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti offers a brilliant account of Luigi Ghirri’s relationship with Puglia — a distinctive region at the heel of Italy, which was pivotal in establishing Ghirri’s career and continued to inspire him throughout it. A first visit in 1982 introduced Ghirri to Puglia’s...

mackbooks.co.uk

I have the Puglia one, which is extraordinary IMO, and own an older Italian book with some of the images in 'Viaggi', but I've just placed an order for the new MACK volume - the prints in the book in my possession leave a lot to be desired and based on the previews on the MACK site, much has improved.

A short bio:

Luigi Ghirri | Matthew Marks Gallery

Inspired in part by the Conceptual art of his time, Luigi Ghirri used his camera to examine the relationship between the physical world and the world of images. His subject was the landscape around him, but his photographs are much more than visual documents of 1970s and 1980s Italy. With his...

matthewmarks.com

He's very interesting indeed. I only have his Complete Essays 1773-1991, also published by Mack, which are absolutely brilliant, and somewhat challenging intellectually when compared to those of Robert Adams and Stephen Shore. Puglia is on my wish list.

The Complete Essays

The Complete Essays 1973–1991 is a long-awaited collection of short, allusive texts on the curiosities of photography written by the great Italian artist, Luigi Ghirri. Ghirri's writings spiral outwards from his practice, intuitively exploring the subjects at the core of his images – the themes...

mackbooks.co.uk

 

[logan2z]

Robert Frank's Photobooks - Lecture Panel with Gerhard Steidl

I just got wind of this event scheduled for October 29th from 7:00-8:15pm EDT. It's an in-person event (already sold out) but will be streamed online for free by MoMA. Registration required.

From Steidl's Instagram story:

What was it really like to make books with Robert Frank? To visit him every few months at his homes in Bleecker Street, New York, and Mabou, Nova Scotia, to explore new ideas and finalize a book’s journey to printed object? To print and publish more than 30 titles with Robert Frank over the decades—from “The Americans” and “The Lines of My Hand”, to his later visual diaries?

Gerhard Steidl shares all this and more in a talk at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 29 October, on the occasion of the museum’s exhibition “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue”. We’re proud to say the talk’s already sold-out but you can register to experience it virtually.

 

[Pieter12]

Robert Frank's Photobooks - Lecture Panel with Gerhard Steidl

I just got wind of this event scheduled for October 29th from 7:00-8:15pm EDT. It's an in-person event (already sold out) but will be streamed online for free by MoMA. Registration required.

From Steidl's Instagram story:

What was it really like to make books with Robert Frank? To visit him every few months at his homes in Bleecker Street, New York, and Mabou, Nova Scotia, to explore new ideas and finalize a book’s journey to printed object? To print and publish more than 30 titles with Robert Frank over the decades—from “The Americans” and “The Lines of My Hand”, to his later visual diaries?

Gerhard Steidl shares all this and more in a talk at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 29 October, on the occasion of the museum’s exhibition “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue”. We’re proud to say the talk’s already sold-out but you can register to experience it virtually.

Thank you for posting this.

 

[logan2z]

Thank you for posting this.

You're welcome. Should be good.

 

[Arthurwg]

Saw the show last week. Spectacular! Focus is on the work after the "Americans," which I find pure poetry. Surprisingly, a review in the Financial Time got it completely wrong, claiming that Frank was lost and struggling after his famous book.

 

[Pieter12]

Saw the show last week. Spectacular! Focus is on the work after the "Americans," which I find pure poetry. Surprisingly, a review in the Financial Time got it completely wrong, claiming that Frank was lost and struggling after his famous book.

The critics got it wrong on The Americans, too. Beside the fact the Frank couldn't find a US publisher for the book, once it was published in the States, it was pretty much panned universally.

 

[Daniela]

Robert Frank's Photobooks - Lecture Panel with Gerhard Steidl

I just got wind of this event scheduled for October 29th from 7:00-8:15pm EDT. It's an in-person event (already sold out) but will be streamed online for free by MoMA. Registration required.

From Steidl's Instagram story:

What was it really like to make books with Robert Frank? To visit him every few months at his homes in Bleecker Street, New York, and Mabou, Nova Scotia, to explore new ideas and finalize a book’s journey to printed object? To print and publish more than 30 titles with Robert Frank over the decades—from “The Americans” and “The Lines of My Hand”, to his later visual diaries?

Gerhard Steidl shares all this and more in a talk at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 29 October, on the occasion of the museum’s exhibition “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue”. We’re proud to say the talk’s already sold-out but you can register to experience it virtually.

Just signed up, thank you! It'll be at midnight for me, so I hope I'm able stay up

 

[Arthurwg]

The critics got it wrong on The Americans, too. Beside the fact the Frank couldn't find a US publisher for the book, once it was published in the States, it was pretty much panned universally.

That's what they said about Thelonious Monk as well. But in Frank's case, it was largely because they felt he disparaged the United States. Ansel felt that way too.