I haven't actually finished yet, but am pausing halfway. I love the way this book is set up, relatively chronologically by photographer, with a sampling of excellent photos and discussion. ( )

I just finished reading Ian Jeffrey’s How to Read a Photograph: Lessons from Master Photographers. Huh... Lots of issues with this book. First of all, don’t get this book for the second part of the title. The book is really not about the lessons you can learn from great photographers - most photographs are printed way too small for that, although the overall quality of reproduction is excellent. The photographers are very rarely allowed to speak for themselves and the reader is subjected to often quite far fetched and quite subjective musings on individual photographer’s work. The book reminded me of my high school philosophy textbook where each chapter ended with “The Marxist view of....” section. In this case you are subjected to “The Jeffrey’s view of...” As amusing as that is, it wasn’t always very enlightening or even factually correct. For example, Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa were quite misrepresented, in my opinion.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that this is a very useful overview of the history of photography. It is heavily slanted towards anglo-saxon photographers and there are, I think, significant omissions. Nonetheless, it is as good a survey of photography up to the mid 20th century as any out there and its worth a read. Get it from the library, though. ( )

Found this book at the Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach at the Ansel Adams/Georgia O'Keefe exhibit