The Photography Book

This little book contains entries for 500 photographs from around the world (heavily weighted toward the European, esp. the UK) and throughout the 150 year history of the medium; arranged alphabetically by photographer, each gets one page that contains one photo and a couple paragraphs of text, with information about the the artist and the historical context of the picture.While famous events and people are depicted, most of these photographs are not famous, but depict historic moments, beautiful landscapes, sports, wildlife, fashion or extraordinary places. The entries are brief, but the selection is wide in terms of geography, history and style, and one will find much pleasure in leafing through the pages of this delightful little book.Also included is a glossary of photographic terms and an international directory of museums and galleries which display photographs. No good index, but a delight nonetheless.

I wanted to learn more about photography as an art and this book is proving to be my best friend. The 500 photographs included here cover the history of photography from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century and represent a wide variety of photographic styles. The paper and printing is very good. The paragraph of text that accompanies each image is insightful and small enough not to distract from the image itself. Many of the images included are classics in their own right, but the best use of the this book is as a jumping off point from which to explore more of the work of the photographers represented.

If you take your time to read all the reviews, you might find this information on someone else's post. You dont even have to read all reviews, just look at the product's dimention on especifications... but if you didnt read it, like i didnt, its not necessary to guess you didnt read all reviews, so lucky you to be reading this one: *IT IS A POCKET BOOK* that said, it has many excelent pictures not much Ive seen like "experimental" pictures just a collection of good pictures, many BeW produced without sophisticated effects, no blurred or confusing pictures that will demand a lot on your will and patience. The best point is that it is a good resouce to look further elsewhere, the 2 thumbs down- the size- most of them are a bit smaller that standart postcard picture ( 30% ), phaidon should really make an efford to produce books ( like this and the art and architecture etc..) a bit bigger. Would it hurt to make it 50% bigger, the size of a regular book? The costumer would benefit soooooo much on seeing experience by this little change.

I absolutely love this little book. It contains encyclopedic entries of hundreds of famous photographers throughout photo history, as well as a small index of the development of photo technologies and techniques. Each entry is a page, and has a short paragraph about the photographer, as well as a sample photo from their ouevre. Really useful as a quick, pocket reference guide, or for budding photographers interested in learning the history of the craft, or of learning about new styles, etc, to inspire them in their future work.

I have a photography class that requires us to share and write a paragraph on 10 photographers for each project we do and my teacher recommended checking this book out. Later he said we can just post on tumblr about 10 photographers instead and find stuff digitally but I had already bought this book. Must say it is okay though, this book lets me just flip through and see tons of pictures and choose which photographers to look up quickly. Definitely worth checking out if you like to just see the vast amount of photographers out there shooting great stuff.

The spine was broken when it arrived and I have not yet had time to deal with the problems of returning it. For a hardbound book this heavy, a broken spine is a significant problem.

First of all, read Donald W. Mitchell's review of the book. It contains a lot of information on the book itself. I strongly agree with his comments on the text which does little more than tell you what school the photographer belongs to and, rather often, how they died violently. Not at all informative, rarely relevant to the actual photograph and much more suitable to a book about photographERS than photographs. Pity.My main quibble was in the selection of the photographs themselves. For reportage and especially war photos the overage is excellent. There is also a good selection of montage images. I found the portrait selection to be OK. I'd have been more happy to have seen fewer pictures from the FSA (Farm Security Administration ), which, although uniformly good, seemed to crowd out other sources. I suspect Ian Jeffrey got a good deal on this set of photos.I was surprised to see very little 'fine art' photography, especially still life. It seemd that the editor felt that pictures ought to make a statement, and that therefore a picture of a typical person or a strange juxtaposition is superior to a simple, beautiful work. Even the picture of Marilyn Monroe is an odd one; technically only average, revealing little about her, the text invites us to consider the meaning of the chair beside her. I would have liked to have seen more photographs that are there because they look beautiful.I also, frankly, got very tired of seeing pictures of railway bridges and miscellaneous uninteresting shots from the 1800's. Yes, these were important. Yes, they give an indication of the technology of the day, but do we really need to see so many sepia photographs that do not inspire? Again, I had a sneaking suspicion that maybe they had been chosen because their copyright had run out ..So, the text is pretty much a waste of time and I wasn't keen on the selection criteria. Why do I give the book three stars? Becasue I have to agree with Donald Mitchell. Many of the photos are very significant, the production quality of the book is great and, with 400 photographs, it's hard not to find something you like every four or five pages.

Good read, Useful foundation of Photographic Art. Nice Small book too.

Tiene una excelente recopilacion de imagenes, y buena informacion que las acompaña. Cuando hagas tu pedido solo recuerda de checar muy bien el tamaño del libro, por error yo pedi la version de bolsillo de manera que leerlo es realmente un poco de pesadilla, y las fotos en defintiva me hubieran gustado verlas mas grandes, pero bueno, eso fue error mio, el libro como tal es buenisimo!

Good

El libro es una compra obligada tanto para fotografos amateurs como profesionales. Las imágenes espectaculares y la descripción de cada toma y fotógrafo breve y concisa. Stunning!!!!! Lo he comprado de segunda mano por Amazon , no doy 5 estrellas porque el embalaje fue malo y el libro llegó con algunas marcas, sin embargo el estado general del Libro en sí es muy bueno.

Das Buch wurde sehr schnell geliefert. Sehr empfehlenswert !!! Es liegt bei mir zusammen mit dem ARTBOOK auf meinem Tisch, jeder Besucher ist darüber erstaunt