Larry Fink – ‘on Composition and Improvisation’

Larry Fink on Composition and Improviation is the second (I think) volume in Aperture’s Photography Workshop Series,* the second one I acquired, and didn’t initially find much it in to apply to my own practice. But after spending a few months with it, I find some of his ways of looking keep popping into my head …

Stephen Shore – ‘Stereographs: New York, 1974’

In 1974, Stephen Shore, always ready to explore new photographic tools and techniques, acquired a  Stereo Realist camera and began exploring “the puzzle of how to most effectively translate the real world into a successful “3-D” image given the particulars of the technology. ‘I was interested in seeking out situations in which the camera was doing …

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb – ‘Memory City’

For Memory City, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb took five trips to Rochester, NY over the year following Kodak’s bankruptcy, when Kodak, and, indeed film photography in toto, seemed almost certainly on its last legs. Thankfully, by the time Webb and Norris Webb finished their trips, and certainly by the time Memory City came out, Kodak …

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb – ‘Slant Rhymes’

Slant Rhymes (La Fabrica, 2017) is a collection of photographs from Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb that explores the relationships between their work. After reading/flipping through their excellent Aperture Workshop book on Street Photography and the Poetic Image, I needed more Rebecca Norris Webb photographs in my life, and quickly ordered this book and Memory City (review …

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb – ‘on Street Photography and the Poetic Image’

My affair with Aperture’s Photography Workshop Series of books started with Todd Hido’s incredible on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude. Later on, I picked up Larry Fink’s on Composition and Improvisation, thanks to a recommendation I saw on Twitter (review forthcoming), and before I knew it, I hunted down and picked up copies of the other two …

Zanele Muholi – ‘Somnyama Ngonyama’

Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) is an incredible collection of Muholi’s self portraits, rendered huge, capturing and taking control of the colonial imaginings of black female bodies, as domestic workers, slaves, witches and soothsayers, making them all her own and forcing viewers to confront her power, her strength, her gaze, on her own …

Gary Briechle – ‘Gary Briechle’

Gary Briechle was Charcoal Book Club’s photobook of the month for June 2018. It’s an interesting book, beautifully designed and full of somewhat disconcerting photographs of Briechle’s family and friends. That said, had it not been for my subscription, I might not have picked it up myself. One of the benefits of a Charcoal Book Club …