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Title: The Photo Book by Ian Jeffrey, Phaidon Press ISBN: 0714836346 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: September, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57
Rating: 4
Summary: Famous Scenes, Human Pathos, and Restrained Beauty
Comment: Before considering this book, let me note that like many photography books this one contains a fair number of nude images of men and women that will offend some. If bare flesh is not something you want to see in your books, avoid this one.
Grading this book was difficult. The photographs were well chosen to be interesting and rewarding, were reproduced faithfully, and worked well as images on facing pages. The page sizes are generous to allow more room for reproduction. Many of them are photographs that almost anyone would want to have. Almost anyone would agree that the photographs and design of the book deserve five stars.
The accompanying texts, however, were not up to the standard of the photographs in most cases. I graded these texts on average at three stars. Averaging the two scores was how I arrived at four stars.
The book's concept is to take 500 of the best photographers ever, and show one image of each in alphabetical order. Although this sounds strange, it actually works quite well. Most of the images are in black and white, but some are in color. As a result, you get a full dimensionalizing of what photography can do and mean to the photographer and viewer.
Among the famous scenes in the book are Eddie Adams' Street Execution of a Vietcong Prisoner (1968), Neil Armstrong's Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (1969), Matthew Brady's General William Tecumseh Sherman (1865), Robert Capa's Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936), Harold Edgerton's Milk Drop Coronet (1957), Alfred Eisenstaedt's V-J Day in Times Square (1945), Robert Jackson's The Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald (1963), Yousuf Karsh's Winston Churchill (1941), Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima (1945), Sam Shere's The Hindenburg Disaster (1937), and Nick Ut's Children Fleeing an American Napalm Strike (1972). If you are like me, these images brought me back to what I felt when I first saw these events or these photographs. It was a moving experience in each case. It is almost like looking at an album of your own life, once removed.
I was also moved by the many images of human pathos that I had seen less often or not at all before. Especially noteworthy to me are Abbas' South African Miners (1978), Lucien Aigner's Benito Mussolini (1935), G.C. Beresford's Leslie Stephen and his Daughter Virginia (Woolf) (1902), Margot Burke-White's Mahatma Gandhi (1946), Charles Hoff's Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano (1954), Frank Hurley's The Endurance by Night (1915), Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936), and Arnold Newman's Georgia O'Keeffe (1968).
Beauty was very much present, but almost always restrained in a variety of ways. That restraint created a tension that heightened the awareness of beauty. I particularly was affected by James Abbe's Bessie Love (1928), Eve Arnold's Marilyn Monroe (1960), Richard Avedon's Dovinna and Elephants (1955), Ian Bradshaw's Streaker (1975), Robert Mapplethorpe's Derrick Cross (1983), Man Ray's Tears (1930), Lennart Nilsson's A Human Foetus at Three Months (1973), Vittorio Sella's On the Glacier Blanc (c. 1880s), Frederick Sommer's Livia (1948), Jerry Uelsmann's Floating Tree (1969), and Edward Weston's Nude on Sand (1936).
How can you further benefit from enjoying these images? I suggest that you dig out your old camera (or consider getting a new digital one), and find scenes that evoke the emotions and memories you most want. Take a few lessons from the ways the masters captured their scenes, and see what you can do. Like the student patiently painting a copy of a famous painting in a museum, you can create your own images to illuminate your life for now, for the future, and for future generations.
Turn it all into a snap!
Rating: 5
Summary: outstanding
Comment: An extremely comprehensive guide to photographers and their representative work. The book has a welcome emphasis on documentary, journalistic and artistic photographers. For each photographer, a cross-reference list is offered suggesting other artists with similar styles or subjects. Well-researched and edited. Convincingly enough, all of my favorite photogaphers are represented in this one volume. Buy it if you have any interest in photography---one of the most reasonably priced hard-bound full-color photography books I have ever seen.
Rating: 3
Summary: It rather depends on your tastes
Comment: First of all, read Donald W. Mitchell's review of the book. It contains a lot of information on the book itself. I strongly agree with his comments on the text which does little more than tell you what school the photographer belongs to and, rather often, how they died violently. Not at all informative, rarely relevant to the actual photograph and much more suitable to a book about photographERS than photographs. Pity.
My main quibble was in the selection of the photographs themselves. For reportage and especially war photos the overage is excellent. There is also a good selection of montage images. I found the portrait selection to be OK. I'd have been more happy to have seen fewer pictures from the FSA (Farm Security Administration ), which, although uniformly good, seemed to crowd out other sources. I suspect Ian Jeffrey got a good deal on this set of photos.
I was surprised to see very little 'fine art' photography, especially still life. It seemd that the editor felt that pictures ought to make a statement, and that therefore a picture of a typical person or a strange juxtaposition is superior to a simple, beautiful work. Even the picture of Marilyn Monroe is an odd one; technically only average, revealing little about her, the text invites us to consider the meaning of the chair beside her. I would have liked to have seen more photographs that are there because they look beautiful.
I also, frankly, got very tired of seeing pictures of railway bridges and miscellaneous uninteresting shots from the 1800's. Yes, these were important. Yes, they give an indication of the technology of the day, but do we really need to see so many sepia photographs that do not inspire? Again, I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe they had been chosen because their copyright had run out ..
So, the text is pretty much a waste of time and I wasn't keen on the selection criteria. Why do I give the book three stars? Becasue I have to agree with Donald Mitchell. Many of the photos are very significant, the production quality of the book is great and, with 400 photographs, it's hard not to find something you like every four or five pages.
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Title: The Art Book by Phaidon ISBN: 0714836257 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The 20Th-Century Art Book by Phaidon Press ISBN: 0714838500 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The American Art Book by Phaidon Press ISBN: 0714841196 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Fashion Book by Phaidon Press ISBN: 071483808X Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: The 20th Century Art Book by Phaidon ISBN: 0714835420 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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