Prowling my world, camera in hand

15 December 2007

Books by fellow photographers

Filed under: — Administrator @ 10:23

With the advent of Blurb and similar services, book publishing has become democratised, just as happened with electronic publishing thanks to blogs like this one, YouTube etc. On this page, I have collected links to Blurb books put out by my fellow photographers, mostly on the Leica Users Group.

Immodestly, I start with my own books: My Last Year in the Netherlands. It is a pictorial record of 2007, the last year I lived here before moving to Spain.

My second book, published in June 2008, is called Once meses en Sevilla and documents the eleven months I spent working in Seville during 2003 and 2004. It contains 55 B&W images from what is still some of my best work, both in my own estimation and according to many others.

In both 2009 and 2010 I published yearbooks in the small 7×7 inch format. They contain a sample of the weekly pictures you can see on this site. I usually carry the most recent edition with me in my camera bag. This way, if anyone asks why I am taking a picture of something seemingly mundane or uninteresting, I can whip out the book and show them the kind of photography I like to do.

In October 2011 I had the good fortune to spend almost a week in Taiwan, a place which made an impression on me like no other place I have visited in recent years. Of course, a book called simply Taipei resulted from this trip.

Kyle Cassidy, a photographer in Philadelphia, has actually made it big with his book Armed America, which is on Amazon’s top 100 for 2007 and has garnered worldwide attention.

Douglas Herr, aka The Birdman of Sacramento, is one of the world’s greatest nature photographers. And that is not hype. Those of us who are familiar with his work will attest to that. His book is called Wild Light 1971 to 2007.

Graham Battison, aka geebee, is an English photographer who has been documenting Northamptonshire for several years, and now has a book: Northamptonshire: Rose of the Shires. In March 2008 he added a second book.

The Leica Users Group now publishes a yearbook with two photographs each from participating list members. It is a wonderful collection of photographs from all over the world. The first edition came out in 2006. Subsequent versions are: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. The books come about through the heroic coordinating efforts of Jim Shulman, a fine photographer and great human being. One additional reason for buying these books is that $5 of the purchase price is donated to Project H.O.M.E., an organization dedicated to providing shelter, medical care, and vocational training to homeless individuals.

In January 2009, another collection of LUG images was published, called 12 Leica Users. The book is smaller than the standard LUG Yearbook (see above), but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. Each photographer has contributed 4-5 photos, all taken with Leica equipment exclusively, and among them are such iconic images as Ted Grant’s famous portrait of David Ben Gurion and his capture of the late Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sliding down a banister.

During 2000-2005, about 100 members of the LUG came together to contribute images to a Family of Man 2 project, designed to commemorate Steichen’s seminal exhibition in 1955 by updating it to reflect the world as it looks 50 years later. This book is simply not to be missed. It is destined to become a modern classic, not only showing the world at the turn of the millenium but also demonstrating the possibilities for collaboration across continents offered by the Internet.

LUGger Ernie Nitka has several books on Blurb.

Phil Swango tackles fashionable shoes and off-beat attire in shoe two.

Harvey Ball Arche in Nashville does a wonderful job of documenting Southern US life in under the radar.

Tarek Charara, a photographer in Perpignan in the south of France, has documented the life of Palestinian refugees in the Chatila camp in Lebanon in his book à l’ombre de Chatila.

Steve Barbour, known on the Leica Users Group as “kididdoc”, has for years moved and impressed us with his sensitive portraits of his fellow doctors and nurses, and most importantly, the usually very ill children at the hospital where he works. His first book, I never wanted to be famous, was published in 2008. The title is a statement made by one of his patients. His second book deals with people coping and living with dementia. Published in 2011, it is called but for the Grace of God….

Michiel Fokkema from Rotterdam, a talented photographer and a friend of mine, has published a book about a subject that may be news to many: tango in the Netherlands. There is quite an active tango subculture there, and Michiel has documented it in his book, Cuartito Azul. He has also been involved with Orion, a place that provides protected employment to mentally and physically handicapped people, for several years. In December 2009 he published book called Werkers! (“workers” in Dutch), documenting the volunteers and employees who make the place function.

LUG member John Heinz contributed portraits of artists to the book Breathing Stone, a study of contemporary sculpture by the Haida, the first-nation inhabitants of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the western-most location in Canada.

Ric Carter has been photographing signs and showing them to the rest of us for several years. Now he has put a collection of them in a new book called Signs of Life.

Harvey Ball Arche in Nashville has a second book, with more images documenting Southern US life, called While Dancing to Nero.

George Kase explores American cities, particularly Chicago, in his book public.private. The book is a study of the private worlds people carry with them in public places.

Daniel Ridings has edited a book of photographs by members of Rollei Users Group. If you like traditional, film-based photography with the rich tonality only medium format film can provide, this is the book for you.

Roger Hart has a book documenting the years when Formula 1 racing took place in Detroit, called Postcards from Detroit.

Henning Wulff has published a travelogue from a visit to Ukraine. It is a large book, called A short visit to Ukraine.

Jim Shulman from Philadelphia has long delighted the Leica Users Group with his humourous images from events like scrapple fairs and the like, mainly in south-eastern Pennsylvania. He has published several collection of those images, including Pennsylvanians, In Plain View 2009, The United States of Oblivious (2010), and, most recently, in 2011, Prizewinners. All are veritable gems of non-so-chic Pennsylvania culture.

Ted Grant is the most famous living Canadian photographer and an inspiration to many of us on the Leica Users Group and elsewhere. He has now published a retrospective entitled Real Photographers Shoot B&W – and Sometimes Colour. The title refers to one of his sayings: “real photographers shoot B&W, eat sushi and drink single malt.”

Richard Man has a new book entitled Full Circle which combines atmospheric photos with Chinese calligraphy.

B.D. Colen, a renowned photojournalist and teacher, has recently published a collection of images showcasing his approach to photography. It is called OBSERVATIONS.

Lluis Ripoll is a Catalan photographer and a friend. He lives in Barcelona and has an amazing eye for spotting not only the beautiful women of his cities but also all manner of interesting vignettes in the urban environment. He is, surely, the Catalan answer to Henri Cartier-Bresson, although I am sure he is a much nicer person than HCB was. In 2011, Lluis finally published a book, documenting the Barcelona edition of the protest movement that swept Spain in the summer of that year, called Indignats. Subsequently, he has published a book about the French city of Perpignan, where one of Europe’s most important photography festivals, Visa pour l’Image, takes place every September.

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