Andrew Bellamy’s Analogue Photography: Reference Manual for Shooting Film is exactly what the title says: a film photography reference manual. It reminds me a good deal of the first photography-related book I bought—Technical Manual of Basic Photography, TM 1-219, July 1, 1941, a manual published by the War Department for the Army Air Forces—crossed with a …
Category Archives: Reviews
Jeffrey Saddoris – ‘Photography by the Letter’
Jeffrey Saddoris‘ Photography by the Letter is a lovingly designed dictionary of all things photography, from Aperture to Zoom Lens, with all kinds of stuff in between and a set of interviews with well-known professionals at the end.
Geoff Dyer – ‘The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand’
The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand is Geoff Dyer‘s new-ish homage to John Sarkowski, whose Atget and Looking at Photographs form the jumping off point for Dyer’s exploration of the Winogrand archive. As a Winogrand monograph, it might fall a bit short, though it does include 18 previously unpublished color(!) photographs and a contact sheet from Winogrand’s …
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1970s Ricoh Compacts, part 2: the Sears 35rf
The Sears 35rf (not to be confused with the Sears 35|RF) is a Sears-branded variant of the Ricoh 500 RF, a compact rangefinder from 1980, and one of the last in the line of cameras that began with 1972’s 500 G. Like other cameras in the series (and I’m going to tire of writing this), …
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Michael Watson – ‘The Wrestlers’
Michael Watson’s The Wrestlers: Polaroid Portraits 2015-2018 collects a bunch of Polaroids (or, really, Impossible Project black frame black & whites) of amateur wrestlers, shot backstage at various events in Chicago and the Midwest, California, and Florida, in costume/character and more relaxed. I helped to kickstarter it back in January 2018, and it arrived in my …
1970s Ricoh Compacts, part 1: the Ricoh 35 ZF
The Ricoh 35 ZF is a zone focus, shutter priority (and full manual) 35mm camera from 1976. With a 40mm f/2.8 lens, shutter speeds from 1/500 to 1/8 (plus B), and an ISO range of 25-800, there isn’t too much to worry about: set the shutter speed (1/250 or 1/500 in daylight), put the aperture …
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Mhtab Hussain – ‘You Get Me?’
I acquired Mahtab Hussain’s You Get Me? as part of a Contact Sheet subscription renewal. Copublished by Mack and Light Work, the book is beautifully printed,* and the project itself—portraits of young, working class British Asian men and boys—is hard for me to talk about with any clarity.