Book Reviews

Each issue we’ll review a book or two—not always new ones—that we think worthy of note. Some will be how-to books, but most will be the work of photographers we think are especially engaging. Sometimes we may wander off the path a little and review a work such as Simon Schama’s magnificent biography of Rembrandt and Rubens, Rembrandt’s Eyes, but for the most part we’ll stick to books we think would be valuable to the instructor or that ought to be in a school or professional library.

Joel Sternfeld. Stranger Passing, New York: Bulfinch/Little Brown, 2001. If Sternfeld's name is not familiar to you, many of the images from his six or seven previous books should be, and several here will be. The 60-some large-plate color portraits are of apparently ordinary Americans, taken over the last 15 years. All are memorable, not so much because of their faces, but because of the total environment—their tattoos and jewelry, their clothes, vehicles, houses, what they are sitting on, leaning on, working at, walking from. The subjects seem perfectly natural—at ease, as though you had just encountered them in a stroll through the neighborhood; but the portraits are perfectly composed, so we ought to know better. The images seem less contrived than Newman's work, less polemic than Avedon, less categoric than Sander, certainly not hostile as Arbus usually is, more sympathetic than Frank. One could learn something from every image here. I bought the coffee-table book because the publisher—Bulfinch—invariably makes superbly designed and printed volumes, but I'll treasure it because of Sternfeld's images.

David Hurn and Bill Jay. On Being a Photographer: A Practical Guide. Fourth Edition. Anacortes, WA: Lenswork Publishing, 2005. This slim volume is loaded with provocative ideas and, as the subtitle says, practical guides. Little will come as a surprise to serious photographers— “just wandering around looking for pictures, hoping that something will pop up and announce itself, does not work”—worth emphasizing for those who don't do photography every day—and even we need to be reminded of that now and then. Hurn's attitude is stated bluntly throughout, e.g., “most teachers, classes, workshops, books, whatever, imply that how the picture is made, what techniques were employed, why it looks different and artistic, is more important than the subject matter. Yet the photographer is primarily a subject-selector. Much as it might offend the artistically inclined, the history of photography is primarily the history of the subject matter.” Jay, whose columns appear regularly in Lenswork is the interlocutor, with Hurn responding based on his experience for Magnum. That's a bit unfortunate, as Jay is exceptionally thoughtful and is here confined to a minor role.

John S. Kiewet. Gone to Sanctuary: From the Sins of Confusion. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1997.This is a celebration of the old, the worn, the rusted, and the abandoned. The 120 mostly color images here, taken mostly off the beaten path in the west, are paired with notes from the author's journal or with very apt quotations. There are more useful ideas and examples here than in any book I've read about composition. His perspectives are usually fresh—even his shot of that iconic subject, Rancho de Taos, in New Mexico is different. The gentle arc of a hill behind a barn in Elgin, Oregon, the cold winter light on two weathered buildings in Bodie, California, and the intersecting geometries of a cluster of barns in Basalt, Colorado will stay with you long after you've forgotten the photographer's name. Even a novice might find himself saying, "I could do that," as he leafs through the book—a novice, that is, who had the patience to put away his camera in the middle of the day and wait until a setting sun warmed the scene. If I were teaching a course in composition, there is no book I would select ahead of this one.

George Tice. Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album. Godine, 1998 (revised edition).
New Jersey photographer George Tice is best known as an urban romantic, the title of one of his later books. But Fields of Peace is an elegiac work, focusing on the Amish and Mennonite peoples of Lancaster County. There are portraits and landscapes and churchscapes and dozens of simple domestic scenes, all beautifully printed. This revised edition is largely early work, mostly shot in the mid-to-late 1960s, supplemented by 39 additional photographs, including five shot in 1990; the text by Millen Brand is unaltered from the 1970 edition. A few of the images have become icons, instantly recognizable; many others are less known but no less powerful.
     There are no captions, and the text does not explain any of the images; few need any explanation anyway. Collectively they tell a story, and that story is not ours. So little has changed in those communities that only one photograph, of a young man in sunglasses riding a horse, was identifiable by me as a contemporary image. The text is a sympathetic, candid and enlightening description of the Amish and Mennonite peoples, usually erroneously called "Pennsylvania Dutch."

John Szarkowski. The Idea of Louis Sullivan. New York: Bulfinch Press, 2001.
Growing up in Minnesota in the 1950s I occasionally traveled with my father to some of the small towns in the southeastern part of the state. In Owatonna I was attracted to a bank building much different from any bank or small office building I had ever seen; it was both modern and decorated, but the decorations weren't just stuck on as an afterthought to embellish an entrance or a window. I haven't seen the building in more than 40 years (I hope it's still there), but it leaped from the pages of this book. The architect was Louis Sullivan, a name that would have meant nothing to me then. Sullivan was a 19th century architect, most identified with Chicago; Frank Lloyd Wright worked as his chief draftsman and referred to him as "the master."
     The book should be of interest to anyone interested in architecture or in photographing architecture. There are few people who have done it any better. Szarkowski was the longtime Director of Photography for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, author of many other books, including a beautiful one on Eugene Atget which came out a couple years ago, and, clearly, a very fine photographer in his own right. This superb book is a re-issue of the 1956 edition.

John Campbell. The Prairie Schoolhouse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1996.
Every few years an author and publisher combine to get a book exactly right, and this is one of those books. There are 60 black-and-white photographs of prairie schoolhouses, an odd dwelling or two and a grain elevator. They were built in the areas covered by the Western Homestead Act of 1862, which included Montana and the Dakotas, western Nebraska and Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and the plains areas of eastern Washington and Oregon. The first real settlers on these lands were farmers, who were given title to a 160 acre section of land, with the requirement that they build residences and farm the land for a period of five years. The bulk of the settlers arrived sometime after 1885 and peaked about 1915. Germans and Norwegians, with, surprisingly, some Russian and Bulgarians settlers populated these lands. Railroads were the lifelines, and small towns sprouted as fast as the wheat fields; "for ten, twenty, or forty miles beyond each town stretched the farms, dotting the prairies with their houses and barns and one-room schools."

The school was homemade. Professional carpenters were scarce and architects were practically unheard of, but most of the homesteaders had basic knowledge of carpentry and masonry. . . . Architectural variations resulted from builders' idiosyncrasies or their ethnic derivations. But the two major varieties of the prairie schoolhouse . . . were determined largely by climate, and the availability, or lack thereof, of construction materials.

Ninety-eight percent of the one-room schoolhouses have disappeared, and those that remain were mostly emptied when the Great Depression wiped out a generation of farmers; all the rest were abandoned by the 1950s. Their students now are dead, or graying, but the images in the book offer a chance for immortality. The photography is exceptional, and the design and reproduction equally so. This is one of my favorite books. The last image is of a woodframe school, built about 1900 in Douglas County, Washington. The door is gone, as are the windows, carried away for other uses. Written on the side of the building are two words, "Remember us." We will.
                                                                                                                                     —FLG

Many people have a favorite photography book—often one that you feel is too little known. If you'd like to tell us about it—perhaps even write a review, we'll put your comments on our Forums page, and if we're confident it is of merit to a larger audience, we'll print your review here.