Today’s Photography Read: #45: Collecting Images is Important for Photographic Expression – Digital Camera Hour

A book series in which photographer Ryo Owada presents books related to photography. Every two weeks, we pick up three books, ranging from picture books, novels, essays, photography theory, and even trivial books that at first glance seem unrelated to photography.

A book that allows you to get variations in your image

In Part 43 of this series, we talked about some books on learning photography techniques, but this time let us delve a little deeper into this field. Last time we talked about books that can be used as reference, focusing on how to think about photography, but this time I would like to offer useful books for referring to images and keywords.

In fact, when it comes to photography, it’s very important to know how many photos you’ve seen. The more images a photographer collects, the more variations he or she can imagine for a single scene. For example, it depends on whether the photographer taking street photos has seen the photos of Daido Moriyama or William Klein, or whether the photographer taking landscape photos in Biei knows Shinzo Maeda or Franco Fontana, it’s the same way you imagine the photo Through the lens it changes completely.

Also, his use of imitation is a completely different story. Therefore, many photographers go to libraries and museums during their training, are exposed to many masterpieces, and think about what to do with them and how to refer to them in the modern era, and I found a new image for myself.

I believe that photography is an art that needs to be studied more deeply and on a broader scale because anyone can handle it. I think this is true whether you are a professional or an amateur, or whether you pursue it as an artistic or academic subject. In this regard, it is important to look at many photos, but it is actually very difficult to create a huge photo book from scratch.

That is why today I would like to introduce a book that seems to have some immediate impact on the acquisition of photographic techniques and the diversity of images. I think any of them would be a good primer.

『The Street Photographer’s Guide』David Gibson, Hams & Hudson, 2020

The first book is “The Street Photographer’s Guide.” Specializing in fast photography, we’ve collected photographers’ works, keywords and useful tips.

The text at the beginning of the book offers advice for all photographers, such as “Spend your money on experiences (travel, workshops, education), books” and “Spend plenty of time selecting images.” While featuring photographers such as Elliott Erwitt and Joel Meyerowitz, each chapter explains photography using key words and tips.

Images are posted with keywords such as “WAITING”, “SHADOWS”, “DOUBLE” and “ETHICS”. You will be able to fully understand the relationship between images and keywords without having to read the English text explanation in detail. This book is full of engaging pictures and ideas.

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Photographer’s Guide Video (Thames & Hudson・2023)

The second book is “The Portrait Photographer’s Guide” which is a continuation of the previous book. This is a book compiled around the topic of portrait photography.

First, the book outlines the basics of how to take portraits, covering things like rangefinders, large cameras, the differences between film and digital and how to take advantage of them. In addition, each chapter introduces how to use different highlights and methods, and Chapter 6 explains how to build a career and how to create a portfolio on different social media and web.

Compared with the first book, there are many parts where you need to read more text, but the amount of text is not very large, so I believe you can read it smoothly if you use the real-time translation function of your smartphone. camera. There aren’t many books like this one in Japan, so it’s definitely worth a read.

All the works on display have a very modern style, allowing you to get a sense of how photographs are taken today, based on classic images. This is a book I would really like to see published in Japanese by some publisher.

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『American Geography: A Reckoning with a Dream』 Thames and Hudson (Thames and Hudson · 2021)

And last but not least is American Geography: Accounting for a Dream. Unlike the previous two books, this one is not a didactic book, but a collection of photographs that essentially chronicle photographer Matt Black’s travels across modern America.

Written by a photographer who works for magazines such as Time and The New Yorker, this book focuses on modern poverty, the opposite of the American dream. The richness and diversity of the captured images, as well as the uniqueness of the editing and selection, will serve as a reference for many photographers.

There are many picture book masterpieces that depict aspects of the American nation at that time, such as Walker Evans’s American Pictures, Robert Frank’s The Americans, and Stephen Shore’s American Surface, but this book I believe is a modern update of the works of these predecessors.

This work depicts various forms such as landscapes, people and still lifes from a unique perspective and impressive images, and it can be said that it is a photo book that will bring new perspectives to many people.