Old books

baldmountain

Being cheap I decided to see what kind of Photography books the library has. I took out a couple. One is "Art of Photography" by the editors of Time-Life Books. The other was "LIFE Legends: The Century's Most Unforgettable Faces" I was dumbstruck by both of them. They are old books that many libraries would throw away since it has been years since someone has taken them out.

The portraits in "LIFE Legends" are stunning. All were taken on film and are equal to anything being produced today. If anything I like them better.

Art of Photography was even better. I remember time-life books being kind of mediocre. But this one left me stunned. There are images from Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Cartier-Bresson, Siskind, Friedlander, etc. and all are used to teach. There is no discussion on aperture or exposure. It's all about capturing images. One section includes different professional photographers approach to the same assignment. The images are wildly different and far more experimental and original than what I see today. I liked it enough that I ordered a used copy from Amazon.

The point of this is that there are some real gems out there. Go visit the library and see what you come up with. I can hardly wait to explore the rest of the books they have.

Terrence

Absolutely. I've been taking out collections of old pictures to get educated and inspired. The Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Annie Liebowitz books are great. The best part is you could maybe justify buying one or two of these a year. Instead just get them out or go browse when you want to get juiced. So silly I never thought of this before.