Photobook Flip Through: Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Elliott Erwitt
Photobook Flip Through: Eugene Richards, Susan Meiselas, Elliott Erwitt
Book titles and descriptions below. Follow us on Instagram for more: https://www.instagram.com/the.curious.society/
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The books in order are:
“Americans We” by Eugene Richards.
Published by Aperture in 1994. This is one of the few Eugene Richards books you can find at a used bookstore for less than $50. The subtitle is “Photographs and Notes by Eugene Richards.” Both are exceptional.
From the inscription:
“For Janine, and, of course, Robert Frank.”
From the opening text:
“I didn’t sleep well the night before going away. I lay awake for hours and listened to the undefined rumbling and thumping of our Brooklyn neighborhood, and to Janine’s and Sam’s breathing. My confidence had gone. Inexplicably, after all these years, I’m still a shy, doubting, anxious child when I have to go out and confront people I don’t know. It’s a rough trip however I travel. I drove to Ralph Timmerman’s farm in South Dakota in a fall blizzard that lifted the road into waves of ice and very nearly gave me the reason I wanted to turn back. On the way into the Tennessee mountains to visit Letta Casey, a warm, greasy, too-invasive rain fell like thick syrup. I could have gone home. I cursed petulantly that there was too damn much sun overhead to photograph the afternoon I trailed Ed Foran and his family onto a beach in Cape Hatteras. Tonight, the fog, the drizzle, and the trucks going slow on the grades make for tough going.
Having driven through the night to reach West Virginia, I’m exhausted, singing to myself to stay awake. Here I am… on the road… middle-aged… and lost again.”
“On the Frontline” by Susan Meiselas
Published by Thames and Hudson and Aperture (shown here) in 2017. There’s a lot to learn from this book, from Susan’s powerful pictures to her wise words throughout.
From Sean Sheehan, LensCulture:
“In a poignant interview embedded in the pages of her new book, On the Frontline, photographer Susan Meiselas makes a revealing and incisive remark about her practice: ‘From the outset, the idea of a narrative that extended beyond the single frame lay at the heart of my work.’ This compulsion forms the core of Meiselas’ work, and it is visible throughout the 100+ images (including 77 in color) that are reproduced in the volume.
On the Frontline is a compilation of some of Meiselas’ most classic photographs as well as other, rarely published work; interspersed with the pictures is text drawn from interviews with editor Mark Holborn. These interviews offer the reader a glimpse into Meiselas’ mind as she works: however much the construction of a single image absorbs her, and ‘despite the pleasure of making a photograph…’ she says, ‘I still need to stitch it and weave it into something more.’ It is this ‘something more’ that Meiselas has steadfastly pursued throughout her career, and this desire fuels her commitment to documentary photography as a social and political force.”
“The Private Experience: Elliott Erwitt” by Elliott Erwitt with text by Sean Callahan.
Published by T. Y. Crowell in 1974 as part of the “Masters of Contemporary Photography” series. It’s 96 pages of wisdom and pictures from one of the most celebrated photographers in history.
From Sean Callahan page 11:
“Like Erwitt himself, many of these photographs project a wit, a smile at the edge, that adds a universal charm to their incisiveness, lifting them into a realm where they seem to to tell us something of the entire human experience by looking at small slices of the world.”
From Elliott Erwitt page 26:
“My absolute conviction is that if you’re working reasonably well, the only important thing is to keep shooting. Commercial or fine art, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter if you’re making money or not. Keep working, because as you go through the process of working things begin to happen. Nothing happens when you sit at home.”
From Elliott Erwitt page 17:
“There was always something that bothered me about Stryker, though. He always thought in terms of stories. To this day, I’m not really sure I know what a picture story is, because a story is not what a photographer does. A story is an editor’s concept. I could go out and make him some nice pictures, but it was up to him to structure the story. When I did my refinery for him, he said one or two were ‘wonderful pictures’ but where’s the story?”
