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The history of photo books is not that well known because no one knows when the very first book with photos in was made. This is also down to opinions on what a photo book actually is? Are victorian photo albums classed as a photo book? Or are Astronomical photos considered to be a photo book? Or are newspapers with images in the first photo books?
Photo books only really took off in the 20th century when cameras became readily available to the public at affordable prices. At the turn of the century Kodak launched the Box Brownie camera with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest." This enabled the average person to take images without having to do their own developing. From here on photo books became increasingly popular, particularly in the 60s when printing became more affordable. |
Shit London - Bad jokes, contradictive graffiti, strange shop names and badly worded signs, Shit London is a photobook on typical London humour.
The cover image sums up the style and subject of the photos in the book very well. It is a good indication into what you can expect the book to be about without even turning a page. The humour of the crudely drawn bicycle wheels is a typical photo in this book by Patrick Dalton. I like the front cover, I like the fact the text colour colour stands out, and provides some colour symmetry against the top of the page with the double yellow lines. The tagline "Snapshots of a city on the edge" expresses the style of the photographs, they are snapshots, the photos have an amateurish feel to them that make them feel like they are quick shots, taken as Dalton was passing. Most of the photos in the book you would not think were taken by a professional photographer, but as a collection the photos come to life and become a photographic documentation of the "shitness" in London. |
In 1961, the director of MoMA’s Department of Photography, Edward Steichen received a phone call from a fourteen year old boy called Stephen Shore.
Shore says ‘I think I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to do this. So I just called him up and said, ‘I’d like to show you my work.’…He bought three!' This was the start of Shore's photography career. Stephen Shore first published Uncommon Places in 1982, it inspired and influenced a generation of photographers. For this book Stephen Shore used a 8×10 large format view camera. He also went against the grain by shooting in colour, something that at the time was only used in advertising and fashion photography. I feel colour film was the best choice for this book it gives a feel to the photos that makes you experience the temperature and humidity that you cannot feel with black and white photography, The tone of the colour film also suits the subject very well, it captures the air and feeling at this time in this place. |
Ravens, a less well known photobook by the Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase, is now considered a pioneering classic of photobooks. Ravens is a book of 63 black & white photos taken in Japan. Not only does he photograph Ravens but he also attempts to capture the culture of Japan by photographing other subjects amongst the Ravens.
Fukase's images are dark and grainy, they have a strong ominous feel that is reinforced by the blurred flight of the ravens. I really like his photos, they are quite brutal especially the top left photo of the Ravens flying around a rickety fence against a very bleak background. |
The Americans is a very significant post-war american photo book. It was first published in France in 1958 as Les Américains and the following year was published in the United States. Frank focuses on the high and low classes of American society, his black and white photographs have a strong feeling of late 50s american culture, the photos are very typical, one photograph of a black man wearing a Marlon Brando style cap and woman wearing a flying cap sitting on a Harley Davidson, a photograph of a man in a club choosing a record on a juke machine, a photograph of two young couples kissing on towels beside a large american car and a photo of a mixture of people on a bus; at the front a woman who appears to be very upper class, then behind her two young children who could be middle class and finally behind them is a black man dressed in a working class outfit. This is likely not true and was probably not intended either by the photographer, but it works quite well with the image and the American Society Frank is expressing through his photographs. The photograph of the two people on the Harley is definitely my favourite image, I love wide contrast of their dark black clothes in the foreground and exposed white shirts in the background. The shiny, polished bike with metal studs on the leather panniers is captured very well in black & white and makes me think the photo was likely taken at night with only the light from street lamps reflecting on the bike. There is also only black people in the photo, not a single white person, this is another photo that shows an aspect of american culture.
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William Eggleston is a master of colour photography. Chromes is a 3 Volume book of more than 5,000 Kodachromes and Ektachromes. These images were taken from ten chronologically ordered binders found in a safe in the Eggleston Artistic Trust. This book displays the warm colours of Eggleston's early photos in Memphis. Each photo perfectly captures the heat and humidity in each setting. You can feel the sun baking the hot tarmac roads and the coolness of the shadows. My favourite image is the top right photo of a blue 1960s Chevrolet. I love the composition of this photo, the fact that it is a cropped image with only part of the car in the shot. I really like the choice and arrangement of objects in the shot; the thick wooden pole taking up the right hand side of the image, the rusty chain wrapped around the bottom, the General Electric paper bag lying amongst the rubbish under the rear tyre of the car. It is in my eyes a perfect photo, it captures the life and style of this part of America. Most of all I love the colours; the beautiful turquoise, blue of the space-age shaped car, the dusty white of the sun baked sidewalk, the dirty black of the tarmac and the damp brown of the wooden pole all add to the scene to create a really stylish image.
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Michael Miller is an American photographer famed for working with iconic 90’s supermodels, famous rappers and pop stars. In this 200 page book Miller has brought together a selection of photos he has taken of West Coast hip-hop stars including Tupac, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, King Tee, Arabian Prince, Cypress Hill, WC, MC Eiht and many more.
I really like the fact they are all black & white photographs, each image is very hight contrast, the blacks are very black and the perfect blue skys are completely white. My favourite image is the bottom right photograph that shows Tupac Shakur and other black males running from the police. I love this action shot, particularly the blurred white jeans of Tupac, I feel he is the centre point of the image and his blurred legs really make for a more spectacular photo. The angle of the photograph is really dynamic it portrays Tupac as large and strong man even though he is running, |
They are two completely different environments, one street life photo and one landscape shot of mountains captured from inside an aeroplane. The street photo is taken from inside a house looking down the hallway, through a smashed glass window and focussing on a bright red car. This red car stands out immediately to the viewer and provides a dramatic contrast to the complete opposite photo of the beautiful blue sky, mountain range. The photo taken in the dark hallway has a very dark shadow covering the door and walls, this emphasises the bright colour of the car and creates a very clean, solid black border to separate the two images. |
Luke Fowler is best known for his short films, but in October 2014 published the book 'Two-Frame Films', which is a series of half-frame photographs. Fowler used a half-frame camera to do this, which works by taking twice as many photos on a roll of film. The images are exposed as a portrait orientation instead of the normal landscape orientation used by 35mm cameras.
Luke Fowler carefully chooses subjects that contrast each other when photographing with this camera. For example the image on the left shows a photograph of a mountain range in one photo and a smashed front door in the other photo. Two completely different images that work strangely well together for the reason that they are so far apart. |