Essential Readings for the Photographer

Image by Berenice Abbott. from Berenice Abbott: Changing New York.

Abbott, Berenice and Bonnie Yochelson. 2008. Berenice Abbott: Changing New York. New York, NY: The New Press.
Abell, Sam. 2008. The Life of a Photograph. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

Adams, Ansel. 1983. Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. Boston: Little, Brown.
Adams, Ansel. 1993. Ansel Adams in Color. Edited by Harry Callahan. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
--------------------. 1974. The New West. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press.
Adams, Robert. 2005. Why People Photograph. Millerton, NY: Aperture.
--------------------.2005. Beauty in Photography. Millerton, NY: Aperture.
--------------------. 1974. The New West. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press.

Adcock, Craig. 1990. James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Agee, James, and Walker Evans. 1941. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Appleton, Jay. 1975. The Experience of Landscape. London: John Wiley and Sons.
Arnheim, Rudolf. 1969/2004. Visual Thinking: 35th Anniversary Printing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Badger, Gerry & Gossage, John. 2005. The Pond. Millerton, NY: Aperture.
Barthes, Roland. 1975. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang.
Bayles, David & Ted Orland. 1993/2010. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Art Making. Image Conitnuum Press. (Kindle)
Beahan, Virginia, and McPhee, Laura. 2005. No Ordinary Land: Encounters in a Changing Landscape. New York: Aperture.

The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph. - Walter Benjamin

Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Berger, John. 1990. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.
---------------. 1980. About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books. (Kindle)
---------------. 1985. Sense of Sight. New York: Random House.
Berger John and Mohr, Jean. 1982. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon. (Kindle)
Berger, John, David Levi Strauss and Diana Stoll. 2005. Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics. New York, NY: Aperture.
Bernhard, Ruth. 2011. Ruth Bernhard: The Eternal Body: A Collection of Fifty Nudes. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

"Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends". Ruth Bernhard 

Bravo, Manuel Álvarez, Colette Alvarez Urbajtel, John Banville, Jean-Claude Lemagny. 2008. Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Photopoetry. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

From  Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Photopoetry.

Bye, A.E. 1983. Art into Landscape; Landscape into Art. Mesa, AZ: PDA Publishers.
Caponigro, Paul. 1981 Paul Caponigro. New York: Photography Gallery.
-------------------. 1994. The Voice of Print. New York: Muse Press.
-------------------. 1975. Landscapes. New York: McGraw Hill.

Image by Henri Cartier-Bresson, from The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photographs and Photographers

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. 1952. The Decisive Moment. New York: Simon and Schuster.
---------------------------. 1999. The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photographs and Photographers. New York: Aperture.
---------------------------. 1998. Europeans. Boston: Little, Brown.
Collier, John Jr., and Malcolm Collier. 1986. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Corner, James, and Alex S. MacLean. 1996. Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cosgrove, Denis and Stephen Daniels (Eds). 1988. The Iconography of Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DeCarava, Roy, and Langston Hughes. 1967 /1955. The Sweet Flypaper of Life. New York: Hill and Wang.

Helen Douglas. from Unravelling the Ripple

Douglas, Helen. 2001. Unravelling the Ripple. Edinburgh: Morningstar
Evans, Terry. 1998. Disarming the Prairie: Creating the North American Landscape. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Evans, Walker. 2011. Walker Evans: American Photographs. New York, NY: Errata.
------------------. 2004. Many Are Called. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
------------------. 2001. Cuba. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Ferrer, Elizabeth. 2006. Lola Alvarez Bravo. New York, NY: Aperture.

Lola Alvarez Bravo. Burial in Yalalag, Oaxacz, Mexico, 1946

I look for the essence of beings and of things, their spirit, their reality. Interest, experience, moral and aesthetic commitment, form the third eye of the photographer. There are those who focus on the landscape; I feel attracted to human beings.  - Lola Alvarez Bravo

Frank Robert. 2008. The Americans. New York: Steidl.
Friedlander, Lee. 1982. Factory Valleys: Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York: Callaway.
Fuchs, R.H. 1986. Richard Long. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Gerster, Georg. 1986. Below from Above: Aerial Photography. New York: Abbeville.
Goldsworthy, Andy. 1990. A Collaboration with Nature. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Heaney, Seamus. 1980. "The Sense of Place." In Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
---------------------. 1992. Sweeney’s Flight, with photographs by Rachel Giese. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Hall, James Bake and Minor White. 2005. Minor White: Rites and Passages. Millerton, NY: Aperture.
Hockney, David. 1988. Hockney on Photography. New York: Harmony Books.

From Hockney on Photography.

Hood, Walter and Leah Levy. 1997. Urban Diaries. Washington, DC: Spacemaker Press.
Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. 1985. The Essential Landscape: The New Mexico Photographic Survey. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
--------------------------------. 1986. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
--------------------------------. 1996. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
--------------------------------. 2000. Landscape in Sight: Looking at America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Jussim, Estelle, and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock. 1985. Landscape as Photograph. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kepes, Gyorgy. 1995. Language of Vision.New York: Dover.
Klett, Mark, Rebecca Solnit, and Byron White. 1992. Yosemite in Time: Ice Age, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers.  San Antonio: Trinity University Press.
Klett, Mark. 1992. Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Lange, Dorothea. 1967. Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman. Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum.

Dorothea Lange image from An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion.

This benefit of seeing... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate. - Dorothea Lange 

--------------------, and Taylor, Paul S. 2002. An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. New York: Jean Michel Place.
Levi-Strauss, Claude and Sylvia Modelski. 1995. Saudades do Brasil: A Photographic Memoir. University of Washington Press.
Loori, John Daido. 2007. The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. (Kindle).
Lynch, Kevin. 1960. Image of the City. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
----------------. 1972. What Time Is This Place? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lyons, Nathan. 1974. Notations in Passing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
MacLean, Alex. 2003. Designs on the Land: Exploring America from the Air. Thames and Hudson. 

Image by Alen MacWeeney. from Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More.

MacWeeney, Alen. 2007. Irish Travellers: Tinkers No More. Henniker, NH: New England College Press.
Maynard, Patrick. 1997. The Engine of Visualization: Thinking through Photography. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Meinig, D.W., ed. 1979. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bay/Sky by Joel Meyerowitz

Meyerowitz, Joel. 2009. Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks. New York, NY: Aperture.
--------------------. 2002. Cape Light: Color Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz. New York, NY: Bullfinch.
---------------------. 1993. Bay/Sky. New York, NY: Bullfinch.

Richard Misrach: Golden Gate

Misrach, Richard. 2012. Richard Misrach: Golden Gate. New York: Aperture Foundation.
Mitchell, William J. 1992. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Morris, Wright. 1999. Time Pieces: Photographs, Writing, and Memory. New York: Aperture.
------------------. 1972. The Inhabitants. New York: DeCapo.
Morrison, Philip, Morrison, Phylis, and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. 1994. Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe. New York: Scientific American Books.
Owens, Bill. 1999. Suburbia. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books.
Papageorge, Tod. 2011. Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography. New York, NY: Aperture.
Pfahl, John. 1990. A Distanced Land. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Potteiger, Matthew, and Jamie Purinton. 1998. Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories. New York: John Wiley.

Image by Aaron Siskind from Harlem Photographs 1932-1940.

Siskind, Aaron. 1990. Harlem Photographs 1932-1940. Introduction by Gordon Parks. Washington, DC: Smithsonian.
Smith, Eugene W., and Aileen M. Smith. 1975. Minamata. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Smith, Kevin. 2003. Structure of the Visual Book. Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop.
Sontag, Susan. 2001. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador.
Soth, Alec. 2004. Sleeping by the Mississippi. Steidl.
-------------. 2006. Niagara. Steidl.
Spirn, Anne Whiston. 2009. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stafford, William & Robert Adams. 1994. Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West. Millerton, NY: Aperture.
Swirnoff, Lois. 2000. The Color of Cities. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Szarkowski, John. 1973. Looking at Photographs. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
--------------------. 2004. Atget. New York: Museum of Modern Art.Thomas, Ann, ed. 1997. Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
---------------------. 2007. The Photographer's Eye.  New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art.
Tice, George. 2006. Paterson II. Quantuck Lane Press.
---------------. 2002. Urban Landscapes. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
---------------. 1972. Paterson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Image by Paul Strand. from Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs.

Tomkins, Calvin and Paul Strand.  2009. Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs. New York, NY: Aperture.
Trager, Philip. 2000. Changing Paris: A Tour Along the Seine. Arena.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 2011. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Kindle).
--------------. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Kindle).
Vanderbilt, Paul. 1993. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.

Camilo Jose Vergara. from American Ruins (Camden, NJ).

Vergara, Camilo Jose. 1995. The New American Ghetto. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
--------------------------. 2003. American Ruins. New York: Monacelli Press.
Wallis, Claire. 2009. Richard Long: Heaven and Earth. London: Tate Publishing.

From Richard Long: Heaven and Earth.

Ward, Alan. 2006. American Designed Landscapes. Washington, DC: Spacemaker Press.
Weifenbach, Terri. 1997. In Your Dreams. Portland, OR: Nazraeli.
Welty, Eudora. 1996. One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression. University Press of Mississippi.

Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz. 2001. Bystander: A History of Street Photography. New York, NY: Bulfinch.
White, Minor. 1969. Mirrors Messages Manifestations. New York: Aperture.
----------------. 1968. Light 7: Photographs from an Exhibition on a Theme. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Yochelson, Bonnie. 2010. Alfred Stieglitz: New York.  Skira Rizzoli.