Summer Reading List #2
10 more recommendations for great reads on photography
I’ll be using Instagram over the coming weeks to ask some questions as part of a forthcoming article for this newsletter, and would very much appreciate your input. If you’d be willing to contribute, please follow me there and keep an eye on my stories to stay in the loop.
I enjoyed putting together last year’s reading list so much that I’ve decided to make it an annual feature of the newsletter — and so here’s this year’s iteration. As with last year, I’ve curated a list of ten of my favourite recent or not-so-recent reads (well, it’s nine books and a film) related in some way to photography, the life of the photographer, or visuality in general. All of these books go into the soup of my thinking around photography; I’m drawing on all of them whenever I write.
Memory was an unintended theme of this year’s list. Writing on photography often seems to go hand-in-hand with thinking around memory, its slipperiness and inconsistencies, but it felt particularly prominent in these ten works. Two of the writers on this list agree that photography destroys memories, supplanting them entirely. Three of them use photographs as the occasion for memoir (though not all of these three include photographs in the books themselves). As often seems to happen with writing on photography, some of these books adopt slight, fragmentary forms, mirroring the medium they’re exploring. Two of the books deal explicitly with what photography can teach us; three speak to the political responsibilities of the artist. As with last year, none of these works is a photobook; as with last year, I’ve tried to avoid the obvious.
I’d love to hear what your own favourite books on photography are — write and let me know!