Ex Libris: W.M. Hunt

DATE 9/13/2011

LIGHT

Think of photographs as light, captured in two dimensions, as if by magic.

Photography is a unique art form. We have so much direct experience with it. We look at millions of images in newspapers, books, television, advertisements and now Facebook, Google, and on. We make photographs; we take them. They are everywhere. We don’t have that experience with dance or theatre or music or painting and sculpture.

It is popular and populist. Photography is still a relatively young art. It is not much more than 150 years old.

Collecting photography can be a journey for you and your imagination. When you are considering the possible acquisition of a photograph, you can recognize a great one when you look at it and the hair on the back of your hand or neck stands up straight or when the sound of your heart beating is louder than the voice in your head saying “you can’t afford it” or when your feet keep walking you back to the same spot over and over. Commit. Then you are a collector.

If you want to start a collection of books on collecting photographs, start with the basics below.

COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHY: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Robert Adams: Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values (Aperture, 1981)

2. Robert Adams: Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews (Aperture, 1994)

3. Bruce Bernard: One Hundred Photographs (Phaidon Press, 2002)

4. Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs (Phaidon Press, 2007)

5. John Szarkowski: The Photographer's Eye (The Museum of Modern Art, 1966)

6. John Szarkowski: Looking at Photographs (The Museum of Modern Art, 1974)

7. Weston Naef: Counterparts (Dutton/Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982)

8. Sam Wagstaff: A Book of Photographs (Gray Press, 1978)

9. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952)

10. Walker Evans, American Photographs (The Museum of Modern Art, 1938) (The edition shown here is Errata Editions' facsimile reprint)