August 19
You’re not
trying to capture reality. You’re trying to capture a photograph of reality.
– Stanley
Kubrick.
Photography
takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
– Dorothea
Lange.
Whatever
happens in front of the lens stays. What’s captured during the encounter is all
that exists.
– Gregory
Heisler.
I think
photography is a universal language as far as storytelling goes, and I think
that’s what it’s most successful at.
– Mary
Mattingly.
It’s
amazing how photography can capture just a split second of something exquisite.
– Kiera
Cass.
Recommended reading:
Eye on America
Photographs by Michael
Ruetz.
Introduction by William
Least Heat Moon.
New York Graphic Society
book.
Published by Little,
Brown and Company.
Published 1984.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 0821215736
Description:
85 color illustrations,
including 7 panoramic foldouts.
“America,” writes
William Least Heat Moon in his introduction, “is yet a place to test a vision
or to find a vision of whatever kind.”
Eye on America is the stunning embodiment of one such vision – a
celebration of this nation’s unsurpassed beauty, its contrasts and ironies.
Michael Ruetz, highly regarded in Europe for his photojournalism and
photographic books, spent two years on a solitary odyssey, traversing the
United States. From Pemaquid, Maine, to the volcanic slopes of Maui, he
captured the scope and grandeur of the country for this collection of images,
which includes seven panoramic foldouts.
Eye on America stands well apart from the run of photographic books, not
only because of Ruetz’s superb technique, but because of the unusual camera he
uses. This Technorama camera is capable of encompassing hundred-degree views
without distortion. In Eye on America, cities – Boston, New York,
Atlanta, Saint Louis, and Houston among them – unfold in sweeps of skyline.
Juztaposed with these glowing human monuments are expanses yet untamed – the
Grand Canyon, Bruce Canyon, the Oregon coast, Point Lobos, and Death Valley.
Through subltle and striking light effects, Ruetz transforms the familiar into
visions at once mysterious and new. As William Least Heat Moon comments:
“Michael Ruetz almost
creates this beauty within the camera; he catches a casting of light, or he
backs away from his subject until the breadth of view minimizes specifics and
turns even the jarring details of a city into concordance. With the particular softened,
the universal comes forward, and with it, Ruetz hopes, the timeless.”
A Photographer’s Life:
1990-2005
by Annie Leibovitz.
Published by Random
House Trade Paperbacks.
Published 2009.
Paperback.
ISBN-10: 081297963X
ISBN-13: 978-0812979633
Description:
“Annie Leibovitz’s
photographic memoir of the past fifteen years in her life captures powerful,
intimate moments…. She juxtaposes the most personal against the full-color
flash of celebrities and the grandeur of the natural landscape against the
bloody horror of war. A Photographer’s Life is a testament to a life
lived large – and in full embrace.” – More magazine.
“Her fans may be
astonished both by the range of the work and the unstudied, everyday quality of
some of the images–a family day at the beach, a newborn in the delivery room.”
– Newsweek.
“A revelation.” – Boston
Sunday Globe.
“Startling.” – Washington
Post.
Time Frames: City
Pictures
By Michael Spano.
Photography by Michael
Spano.
Introduction by Susan
Kismaric.
Published by powerHouse
Books.
Published 2002.
First Edition.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 1576871401
ISBN-13: 978-1576871409
Description:
Time Frames, Michael
Spano’s long-awaited first monograph, is an exploration of spatial and temporal
dimensions in photography framed by the backdrop of New York City. Divided into
five chapters, each employing a distinctive technical process. Time Frames
showcase a wonderful, typically disjointed way of looking at life in New York
City. Panoramas captures interacting urbanites moving through elongated frames
as the lens of an extremely wide field camera pans during exposure. Grids
captures eight moments on a single negative as Spano moves through a sequence
of events, pre-determinedly exposing one small portion of the negative every
four seconds. Portraits focuses on individual inhabitants transformed from
their settings through the solarization and blurring of forms into atmospheric otherworlds.
Multi-Exposures matches solarizations with multiple perspectives. These
single-negative layered compositions arrange and compress selected intervals of
time and space into one image. Diptychs fuses two distinct moments onto one
negative, in which the scale, focal planes, and perspectives shift and ultimately
compose a dual image of urban spaces.
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The Here and Now: The
Photography of Sam Jones
By Sam Jones.
Published by It Books.
Published 2007.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 0061348120
ISBN-13: 978-0061348129
Description:
“Sam Jones has a unique
ability in this age of insane celebrity idolatry to humanize these people who
often seem entirely estranged from the world the rest of us live in. This book
is about celebrity, yes, but its also about one artist’s ability to use fame to
create something uniquely delightful.” – David Granger, Editor in Chief, Esquire,
from the Foreward.
Portraits
By John Hedgecoe.
Published by Collins
& Brown.
Published 2000.
First Edition.
Hardcover.
ISBN-10: 185585726X
ISBN-13: 978-1855857261
Description:
For the past four
decades John Hedgecoe has been taking pictures of the leading figures in the
worlds of art, literature, science and politics – from Winston Churchill to
Mary Quant. His technical skill and unerring ability to capture the essence of
the sitter in a single frame have brought him tremendous critical acclaim.
This comprehensive
portfolio brings together an impressive collection of John Hedgecoe’s
portraits, featuring an eclectic mix of personalities from all avenues of life.
These masterful photographs reflect his wide-ranging career, from the early
days on Queen magazine to his years as Professor of Photography at the
Royal College of Art in London.
Accompanied
by short anecdotes that offer an entertaining insight into the special
relationship that exists between the photographer and his subject, Portraits
is a revealing portfolio and an illuminating read.