In this season’s photo book selection, we look at early color photographs by urban street photographer, Mitch Epstein; Elaine Mayes’s portraits of hippies and oddballs at the height of Haight-Ashbury’s counterculture scene; a reprint of William Eggleston‘s famous Chromes; whimsical portraits of Swedish farmers and villagers from the early 20th century; and a special edition of Kikuji Kawada‘s Chizu (The Map), one of the most sought-after photo books of all time.

Mitch Epstein, Silver + Chrome – 112 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

Related: Walker Evans’ American Photographs, and five other photobooks worth checking out

Mitch Epstein was one of the first photographers to champion the use of color film in the 1970s, at a time when “art photography” was B&W. A former student of Garry Winogrand, he once asked his mentor, “Why not color?” to which Winogrand apparently had no good response. With his blessing, Epstein began working with Kodachrome.

His work was first exhibited in 1977, in New York, and he was immediately seen as a serious photographer. This new book shows the transitional period when he was shooting both B&W and color, with photos from 1973-1976, many of which have never been seen before. They highlight the energy and effervescence of cities like New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, the sexual liberation occurring at the time, and reactions to the Vietnam war.

Elaine Mayes, The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967-1968 – 96 pages, hardcover (Damiani)

The Summer of Love in San Fransisco lasted just one season. It started in 1967, and quickly went downhill as people from around the United States flocked to the city to take part, motivated by press accounts of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that were freely available.

Freelance photographer Elaine Mays, who was living in the Haight-Ashbury district of the city—which was ground zero for the counterculture—had photographed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and began photographing the hippies and other counter-culture oddballs around her the following year. Instead of just taking street photographs, she took portraits of the people she encountered, asking them to pose naturally.

“Natural” was different for each person, and this collection of portraits shows a wide range of people and how they presented themselves to the camera during this pivotal time for American youth culture. The wide range of subjects in this book is a window on the type of people who gravitated to San Francisco in this time, some of whom may still be there.

William Eggleston, Chromes – 432 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

This three-volume set from William Eggleston’s early career was shot between 1969 and 1974. First released in 2011, it went out of print fairly quickly. The contents of the set were curated from a collection of more than 5,000 slides, including photographs made on both Kodachrome and Ektachrome, many of which had never been published before.

Eggleston’s approach to photography was “democratic,” which, to him, meant that anything could be a subject. As such, some may find his photos simplistic and boring, but when looking at a collection of his work, you can see how he views the world, and how his framing of subjects makes sense.

He spoke of these photos as “poetic snapshots.” And the combination of the unexpected compositions with the saturated colors of the photos—most of these photos were printed using the dye transfer process—makes them jump off the page. Eggleston’s work is an acquired taste, but anyone who appreciates these photos should get this book now, because it’s unlikely to be reprinted.

John Alinder, Portraits 1910-1932 – 256 pages, (Dewi Lewis)

Every now and then, an unknown photographer is discovered whose work went overlooked in their lifetime. A recent example is Vivian Maier. Her mesmerizing street photographs spanning the 20th century weren’t uncovered until shortly after her death in 2009. However, she is now recognized as an important photographer.

John Alinder was the son of a farmer in Sweden and a self-taught photographer. In the 1980s, a curator discovered more than 8,000 glass plates of photographs he took between 1901 and 1932 of people in his village. The subjects are mostly dressed in their Sunday best, unsure of how to pose for a camera, and there is a sense of whimsey in many of the photos, as people stand on chairs or logs, some making funny poses, and others looking very serious. Somewhat like August Sander‘s portraits of everyday people, these photos lack pretension and show a glimpse of a world that is on the cusp of the past and modernity.

Kikuji Kawada, Chizu (Maquette Edition) – 272 pages, (Mack)

One of the most sought-after Japanese photo books has long been Chizu, which means “The Map.” Photographer Kikuji Kawada first visited Hiroshima in 1958, photographing the dome that remains as a memorial from the atomic bomb explosion in 1945. Over the next few years, he continued to photograph the site and was notably moved by the stains on the walls and ceiling of the dome.

On August 6, 1965, Chizu was published, the book featuring photos of these stains, along with photos of Japanese war memorabilia. The current edition is a reproduction of the original maquette (the pre-production dummy), in two hardcover volumes, together with a paperback volume, which discusses the history of the book, and includes an interview with the photographer.

In The Photobook: A History, Volume 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe Chizu as, “the ultimate photo-book-as-an-object,” adding that, “no photo book been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative.”

The style of photos and the unconventional crops give the book an abstract quality. This is especially true of the original edition, which included fold-out pages. The maquette edition is much simpler, without the gatefolds, but it still shows how powerful this book is.

The post Portraits from the Summer of Love, and four other photo book picks appeared first on Popular Photography.

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David duChemin is a photographer, author, and educator, known for both his humanitarian work as well as his nature and wildlife photography, both on land and underwater. As with most image makers who travel to create their work, COVID-19 put the brakes on many of his projects, but also gave him time to rethink how he approaches photography—and change camera systems.

For a photographer who travels to other countries several times a year, the pandemic must have been a big shock. How was this period for you?

It was a good time for me to sit back and look at what I have done, look at what I like to do. All of a sudden, a lot of the unnecessary things that filled my days fell away. Things like planning for trips, and all the nonsense that goes on when you’re constantly heading out the door. I had this quiet two years where I could concentrate on looking back at my work, looking at where I was going, tidying some things, and getting clearer about my photographic voice.

Related: How landscape photographer Erin Babnik captures epic photos without leaving a trace

And I asked myself questions like, what if I can’t travel for the next five years, what am I going to be exploring with my camera? What is the thing that I’m going to be doing photographically rather than just opportunistically, taking a picture here and there? So it was quiet, but it was productive.

On the other side of it, I think I’ve always been a very intentional photographer. I’ve always taught the value of intention and photography, but I think over [the past few years], I became even more intentional about what I wanted to do with the time and energy I have moving forward.

‌When I interviewed Michael Kenna, he said that early on in the pandemic, he looked back into his archives and ultimately ended up developing a body of work from the 1980s. For him, it was partly a way of filling the time but also, rediscovering older images.

I think there’s tremendous value in doing multiple edits on your work. And by edits, I mean selecting down to your keepers. When you come back from a trip, you do a reactionary edit that’s based on your feelings, your emotions, that one experience where you were waiting for something to happen and it finally happened. It’s all very much affected by that kind of emotion.

And you’re also looking for certain things. So, for example, I might have been looking, when I came back from Kenya, for a body of work that was in color, and that was warm and active. I was focusing on interactions and relationships. So I was making my edits based on looking for those specific things. But four years from now, when I revisit that work, there may be images [I love] that I outright rejected because they didn’t fit that particular filter at the time—will I come out of it with a completely new body of work? Very possibly, even very likely. So, yes, I did go back into my archives, and I didn’t come up with any new big body of work, but I came up with new images.

I always say to students that there are two ways to make photographs. One is with your camera, and the other is to go back through what you have already. The equivalent would be a writer who’s written some rough drafts and got some ideas in a file somewhere, and goes back and discovers them and suddenly, it’s not the unfinished novel that they thought it was, but it’s a great short story. And suddenly, they’re coming out with a new thing that they never expected. So I think there’s a tremendous value in going back and looking through your archives with fresh eyes. It’s one of the reasons I never delete anything, because I don’t trust my first instincts, and I know that future me will be very grateful that I didn’t just bin everything that didn’t conform to my expectations.

‌Did you learn anything about yourself looking back in the archives?

I don’t know if it’s anything that I could articulate. But, certainly, when I look back through my archives, I see it confirms what I believe about my photographic voice, the things that I am, my preferences, my tastes, the things I’m drawn to, and the things that I want to say things about. I think when you’re more aware that there’s a “refining” that goes on, it allows you to move forward, maybe more confidently, with that particular recognition that, yes, I do have a voice.

‌You have a slogan in your books and articles, “gear is good, but vision is better.” And yet, you went and bought new gear this year? What prompted you?

(Laughs) Looking at the work that I’ve done over the last few years, and looking forward to the work that I want to continue to do, I realized that, while I have become known as a humanitarian photographer, increasingly my work is not with human beings, but is underwater, with bears, with wildlife safaris and that sort of thing. The system I was using was Fujifilm and I loved it. I love the old-school ergonomics. It’s great on the streets of Venice and India. But I don’t see myself doing a lot of that work in the near future.

But I can do wildlife photography here in Canada without getting on an international flight and increasing my carbon footprint. So I looked at what I was photographing, looked at the gear I was using, and its weaknesses. Fujifilm just wasn’t developing the longer, faster lenses that a wildlife photographer needs. So I asked one of my buddies, and he recommended the Sony system. The one thing I don’t like about it is the ergonomics, but you can learn anything, the muscle memory will eventually kick in.

I feel like I jumped forward 10 years technologically. The autofocus is astonishing. For wildlife, the gear gets out of the way faster. And it allowed me to consolidate. I was using Fujifilm on the streets, I was using Nikon underwater, and reluctantly used my Fujifilm gear for wildlife—but I sold everything and now I only shoot the Sony system. So I can use one camera and lens underwater and use the same camera and lens for terrestrial wildlife. And I can put my beloved little 21mm lens onto the Sony body with an adapter and walk around the streets. I have no illusions about the fact that this will not make my work any better. But it will make it easier if you can focus on a moving animal and not lose the tracking. If you’re not fighting with the gear in your hands, you can spend that energy being creative and thinking about composition and storytelling.

‌When it’s easier, you don’t have the friction that might prevent you from doing other things.

That’s right. There’s always friction in the creative process, but I think we need to eliminate that friction where it’s unnecessary, so that we can concentrate on engaging that friction where it is necessary, where it’s questions of, how do I compose this? And what kind of story do I want to tell? Those are the things that will make our photography better. If the gear gets us to that place sooner, if we fight with it less, I think that’s a good thing.

‌So you finally got back on the road and you went to Kenya after two years.

It was amazing to be back, and when my little plane sat down in the Masai Mara, I had tears in my eyes. I was starting to think I was never going to see it again. The whole experience was suffused with this gratitude, and I think because of that, my photographs are more sensitive. They feel to me like a photographer who’s shooting more with his heart than with his head.

‌The photos on your blog from Kenya have a feeling of serenity, especially the two photos of the man holding a spear.

I think that’s actually the perfect word for it. It reflected my state of mind while I was there. The man in the photo was my driver and my guide, and it was actually shot at the edge of the infinity pool at the safari lodge. It’s a beautiful location. There’s one shot there where he’s got his spear in one hand, I think wondering how long this was going to take, and he pulled out his cell phone. It’s the perfect photograph for me because it was unexpected, even though it was partly planned. And I love the juxtaposition. He’s very much a traditionalist, he’s a Samburu warrior, a man anchored in the past, but in one hand he’s got his spear and in the other hand, he’s probably checking his Facebook feed. And then there’s the initial reflection of him, so I called the image between Between two worlds. I don’t normally title my images but I really enjoyed that one.

So what’s next?

I live in an extraordinarily beautiful place, so I will probably spend more time in the next couple of years, just throwing my gear in the back of my vehicle and taking off for three or four days, seeing what I can find, photographing sea otters and killer whales and that sort of thing. The more I do this, the more convinced I am that with most creative pursuits, there needs to be a healthy dose of solitude to really get through the chatter and to calm and focus on what you’re doing. And more so when you bring wildlife into the mix because you have to sit for a long time and you have to be quiet.

For more of duChemin’s work (and wisdom) check out his newsletter and podcast.

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David Ulrich is a photographer, writer, and teacher. He worked as an assistant to Minor White, drank with Ansel Adams, and crossed paths with many of the great photographers of the late 20th century. His life was changed when he witnessed the Kent State shootings in 1970, which led him to change his path from photojournalism to fine art photography. His latest book, influenced by his Zen practice, is The Mindful Photographer.

One of the defining moments of your life was when you witnessed the shootings at Kent State in 1970. How did this affect you?

I was a 20-year-old photojournalism student in 1970. There were campus-wide protests against the Vietnam War. At first, it was a rather festive protest. People brought their children, there were peace signs, and so on. On the evening of May 2, somebody burned down the ROTC building, and activists from around the country started coming to Kent State. On May 3, the governor called the National Guard, things started getting a bit violent. They were using gun butts on unarmed students.

By May 4, the protest was quite large, and a lot of national guardsmen descended on the campus. What we didn’t know at the time was that they had live rounds in their rifles. The students were getting a little rowdy. The National Guard tried to quell the protests by throwing tear gas into the crowd, and the crowd picked the tear gas up and threw it back. At no point were the guardsman closer than half a football field away from the students. And at some point, somebody gave the order to fire.

Related: Cig Harvey explores grief and death through the quiet beauty of floral life

They shot indiscriminately into the crowd. Thankfully, many of the guardsmen couldn’t do it. They aimed above or below the students. But some aimed at the students. Four students were killed, and a number were injured. It was a wake-up moment for me; I had never been in contact with death and violence before.

I left photojournalism. I realized that to be a photojournalist, you had to make your primary commitment to the social order. I believed that the only element that could change things for the better was an expansion of consciousness in the individual, and by extension, society. And that art and creativity, I believed, had the capability to engender a consciousness. So I dropped out of college and took a menial job delivering flowers. I then met and began to work with the photographer Minor White.

‌Minor White is not a name one hears a lot these days, but he was hugely important in photography at the time.

He was the co-founder and editor of Aperture for more than 20 years. His mission, in the broadest possible sense, was to teach people how to see. He was a Zen practitioner, and he brought a lot of Zen exercises into the classroom. We would meditate on a regular basis. He viewed photography and art exactly as what I said before, as a means of expanding one’s conscious awareness. It was a very powerful six years. It was life-changing. It put me on the path of a seeker. And it’s colored my attitude toward photography to this day.

In the intro to The Mindful Photographer, you say, “For me, photography is many things: a means of interacting more deeply with the world, a path of personal growth and transformation, a challenge to strive toward becoming more whole and attentive, a catalyst for stimulating creative expression, and a vehicle for insight and understanding.” That’s a lot.

It is a lot. But it is all those things. Any creative art, not just photography, if it’s approached deeply, can bring you into greater contact with yourself. It assists in the aim of self-knowledge. But photography, especially, is a pathway into the world. I love the alternating nature of photography. On the one hand, I’m looking within; the standard definition of mindfulness is that I am aware of myself, I’m aware of my bodily posture, my breathing, my heartbeat, my emotions, I see my thoughts pass.

But many people stop there. Mindfulness is also about being attentive to what’s in front of you and your surroundings. So it’s a dual attention. Some of my attention goes back to me, half of my attention goes out to the world, and there’s a relationship there. And that’s the power of photography, the relationship between our internal dynamics, and everything in the outer world.

You say that “Photographers often spend a disproportionate amount of energy thinking about and even obsessing over tools and equipment.” At the same time, you stress how important it is to really know how your camera works.

I have nothing against gear. In fact, I love gear. And I think that our lust for gear can actually help us as photographers. But I don’t think it should stop there. I think that’s a phase we need to move beyond. Because photography is, above all, a medium that communicates. The viewer really doesn’t care what kind of lens we use.

What sort of gear do you use?

For much of my career, I used a 5×7 Deardorff view camera. Nowadays, I’m mostly digital.

‌There’s a really big difference in the slow photography of working with a view camera. How much did you have to change the way you think when you went from that camera to digital?

One thing I really wanted when I was working with a view camera was the ability to snap my eyes and take a picture that I could keep. And now we have that with cellphones. So, to a certain degree, I found it freeing to go to a handheld camera. Let’s not forget that view cameras are for young people. They’re incredibly heavy. I would hike long distances in the field, carrying 40 or 50 pounds of equipment.

Related: Peter van Agtmael grapples with chronicling the post-9/11 era

‌If you look at Joel Meyerowitz, whose first work was handheld, when he went to Cape Cod with a view camera, everything slowed down, his way of looking, his way of photographing. We can see this in his book Cape Light.

It did, completely. I value both. I value the reflexive, handheld process, where you can bring a camera up to your eye in a moment’s reaction to the scene. And I also value the contemplative, patient process with a view camera. I feel they both have their place.

I think that photography is infected with a sameness today. We’re all using the same camera. We’re all using a rectangular format, digital SLR or mirrorless camera, or a cellphone, very few people are using a square canvas, like a twin Lens Reflex or Hasselblad. Very few people are using panoramic cameras, and very few people are using cameras that have a different aspect ratio, generally, than the SLR rectangle. I find the sameness to be a little disturbing.

‌We live in a world where everyone has relatively powerful cameras in their pockets. As a teacher, what sort of preconceptions do your students have about photography?

I’m sorry to use this phrase in this way, so I’m going to apologize in advance. But the first challenge that I have as a teacher is to break down what I call the “popular photography aesthetic,” and to move them away from cliches to something more authentic. The biggest problem I have with today’s beginning photographers is they’ve seen so many pictures.

‌You point out the importance of looking at photobooks to learn about photography. One of the difficulties is that they’re often expensive to acquire. So what do you recommend to students?

The way I looked at other photographers’ work when I was growing up was by looking at prints, going to galleries, and going to museums. Every city, more or less, has museums that show photography these days.

When I was young, you could call up the Museum of Modern Art [in New York City], and you could say, “Can I come in and look at this collection?” At the time when I was working with Minor White, I wanted to look at the Edward Weston master set. So I called up MoMA and made an appointment, And I sat down with white gloves and boxes of 800 Weston prints that I could handle on my own.

As I was in the room, John Szarkowski came in. He was the director of photography, and he was meeting with Doon Arbus, Diane Arbus’s daughter. They were making decisions about which pictures would be in the Diane Arbus monograph. They looked through all the proof prints. When could that happen today? That a young nobody could go into a major museum and look at work like that, much less have the director and Diane Arbus’s daughter coming into a book editing session right next to you.

When I was growing up, it was a small, intimate community. I got to know Minor White, of course; I got to know Robert Frank. Ansel Adams, Judy Dater, Imogen Cunningham, the list goes on and on. Because everybody knew everyone. And they would say, “Oh, you work with Minor White. Come look me up when you’re in California.” Ansel Adams invited me to cocktails at his house overlooking the Pacific. And he could drink me under the table.

‌That was a privileged period. Because you were revolving around one of the key photographers in the United States at the time, that opened all sorts of doors for you.

Yes, it did. But even without Minor, when I was in undergrad and grad school, many of these photographers came to talk to our classes. It was an intimate community. And that’s where the privilege was, in that intimacy.

Another quote from your book that I like is “A photograph lives in the space between it and a viewer where a response takes place.”

Absolutely. The intent of a photographer is important. But in the end, the meaning of the picture is what the viewer takes away. I would argue that not all art is subjective. You can take a picture apart, you can talk about the frame, the light, the moment, color, etc. And you can talk about the use of these things, whether they’re effective or not.

‌Zen teaches that the real world is an illusion and that we create the world with our consciousness. A photograph, in some ways, freezes what our minds have created, and I find that an interesting paradox.

I’ve struggled with that question. The other question I’ve struggled with in Zen is the relationship between emptiness and form.

I think there are different levels of our experience. We live in a dual world, a world of phenomena, a world of heat and cold, of light and dark. And that world exists on one level. We all have moments where we may experience the unity of life, we experience a profound silence, or profound emptiness that you could say is non-dual. So we’ve penetrated to a deeper layer. In that layer, you could say that phenomena are an illusion. We live in both worlds. I think at the deeper layers of experience, we recognize the emptiness, the silence, the ground of being. But we also live in the world of material reality. And we have to balance those things; we have to have one foot in both worlds.

The post David Ulrich: How to be a more mindful photographer appeared first on Popular Photography.

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This month’s photobook selection includes a collection of photos of pairs by Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti; Thomas Hoepker’s look back at his 1963 road trip; Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb’s lockdown project of photos from Cape Cod; a collection of Bob Kolbrener’s B&W Californian landscapes; and a groundbreaking trilogy of photobooks by Ralph Gibson from the early 1970s.

Pentti Sammallahti, Me Kaski – 200 pages, hardcover (Atelier EXB)

Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti is known for his quirky photos of people and animals. This book, Me Kaski (Us Two), collects photos shot over forty years that present “the fortuitous encounter, the strange closeness, the presence in the world of two beings.” Two people, two birds, two dogs; all these photos show living beings meeting briefly. Some of the photos are shot in the street, some in fields, and some on roads. Sammallahti uses a variety of aspect ratios; rather than accepting what his film imposes, he crops in many ways, which makes a series of his photos seem dynamic, and also adds an element of uniqueness.

Thomas Hoepker, The Way it Was, Road Trips USA – 192 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

In 1963, the then 27-year-old Thomas Hoepker was commissioned by the German magazine Kristall to photograph the USA, to discover America through his camera. He made a Kerouacian road trip across the country, and his B&W photos, published in five issues of the magazine, show an America akin to that of Dorothea Lange or Robert Frank (whose book, The Americans, Hoeoker discovered shortly before leaving on his American odyssey). He photographed the streets, the poor, factory workers, cowboys, and more. His photos presented those elements of America that stood out to a European. As Freddy Langer says in his introductory essay, “Hoepker’s images are ultimately characterized by skepticism rather than longing.“

In 2020, he set out on a new road trip to find the American present. This book features hundreds of his original B&W photos from 1963 alongside new color prints shot on the recent trip. These new photos provide an interesting counterpoint to the America of the 1960s, but they also show that some things haven’t changed. The juxtaposition says a lot about America, as well as about Hoepker’s interpretation of what he saw there.

Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb, Waves – 108 pages, hardcover (Radius Books)

The husband and wife team Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb were sequestered on Cape Cod from March 2020 through May 2021 and developed a lockdown project. Alex photographed the waves of the sea, and Rebecca photographed the light in the sky reflected in windows. Alex writes, “I followed the subtle movements of time and tide, wind and water. Meanwhile, Rebecca photographed the waves of light as they washed through our house of many windows—and wrote spare text pieces to try to emotionally navigate this unsettling time, when so many we know have been caught in its undertow.” The resulting photos are calm and quiet and mask the anxiety of isolation during the pandemic. And the double-page photos of the vast panoramas of the sea draw you into the scale of the landscape.

Bob Kolbrener, California – 78 pages, hardcover (Nazraeli Press)

Bob Kolbrener’s photos of California owe a debt to Ansel Adam’s, and it shows. He first discovered Adams’ photos in 1968 by chance, then studied with the master, and eventually worked with him through the 1970s. Kolbrener shoots and processes photos in the “old-fashioned way,” with large format cameras, using fiber-based paper and selenium toner, to create photos with a depth that is only available with film. This book contains a selection of 60 of Kolbrener’s favorite photos of the wild landscapes of California. Stunning photos of landscapes and plants, the mountains, the desert, and the ocean highlight the beauty of California.

This video shows Kolbrener with one of his students in the field, and in the darkroom. “What I want to try to show people in my photography is something that they don’t already know. You have to find out some way to […] make a photograph that is more than just something that exists.”

Ralph Gibson, The Black Trilogy – 198 pages, softcover (University of Texas Press)

Ralph Gibson first studied photography in the US Navy, and then went on to work as an assistant to Dorothea Lange, as well as Robert Frank (on two films). In New York City in the late 1960s, he discovered French new wave cinema, and nouveau roman fiction, which influenced him as a photographer. He founded his own publishing company, Lustrum Press, in order to control the way photobooks were made. In 1970, his first photobook, The Somnambulist was “A dream sequence in which all things are real. Perhaps even more so.” as he said in a brief introduction. This book was later followed by Deja-Vu (1972), and Days at Sea (1974), which, together, form the Black Trilogy.

In these grainy, B&W photos, the influence of that period of French cinema can be seen, as well as the vagueness of the nouveau roman. Many of the photos show the influences of surrealist painters, such as De Chirico and Magritte, but also modernist photographers like Edward Weston and Aaron Siskind. This important trilogy shows a photographer early in his career, setting standards for the photobook in the decades to come.

The post Thomas Hoepker’s ’63 road trip, plus four other fantastic photobooks to get you inspired appeared first on Popular Photography.

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Rankin has photographed many of the big names in fashion, music, and society. Known for his portraits of Kate Moss, David Bowie, and Queen Elizabeth II, he is also at the head of a creative agency with dozens of employees. When lockdown hit in March 2020, and Rankin could no longer work in his studio, he set up a camera in a spare room of his country house and started photographing dandelions. Then he started setting them on fire.

You lead a very busy life at your agency. When lockdown hit, was it a big shock?

It was a really big shock. I don’t think I was unusual in my experience of it. I was very anxious. I didn’t think I’d spend a day of work on my own for 25 years. And suddenly, I was on my own, in my spare room, taking photographs of flowers.

I had tried to photograph flowers so many times and had never been really that successful. And then suddenly, they were the only things I could photograph, apart from my wife.

‌Why did you choose dandelions to photograph?

During the lockdown, I first started photographing dead flowers, but I’d been looking at dandelions for so long… I live in the country and they’re everywhere; I’d started to see how many different versions of dandelions there were, and I’d begun to become a little obsessive about them.

I didn’t really think of it as a project, I just thought of how incredible nature is, but at the same time how fragile. [Dandelions] sum that up in a really brilliant way. It’s almost the most efficient natural machine that you could ever make. If you pick one up and blow it and you see the seeds flow, it’s absolutely extraordinary the way it works.

I was two or three weeks into lockdown. I started to look at them and wonder how I could bring them into the photos. I started taking pictures of them as they aged. And then I tried to burn a few and film them. It was really hard to do and make it look good. So I devised a way of shooting them. I was photographing these things at peace. They were very peaceful, almost morbid in a sense, quite celebratory of life, and very reflective of how I was feeling about aging.

The first time I photographed one, and it blew up, it looked like a nuclear explosion. And I just thought, ‘this kind of reflects how my feeling is about the world at the moment.’

On a moral level, I didn’t feel very good about destroying something that’s absolutely perfect in nature. But I did feel really good about how it symbolized so many things, about how I was feeling, and how I think a lot of people were feeling.

‌So this was a kind of liberation for you personally?

Related: Cig Harvey explores grief and death through the quiet beauty of floral life

Yes, through taking the pictures immediately, because there’s something very visceral about it, but also through [creating] the set of images. When you see them big, they’re amazing. Some of them are six feet by four feet.

It was really strange for me to do something so repetitive. I don’t normally do that. I jump around a lot, I am not somebody that is easy to pin down as a photographer because I love photography so much. I decided very early on that having one style of photography would be very limiting. I really get bored doing the same thing. Whereas with this, that was what was amazing about it. I must have photographed 500 of these dandelions. It was almost addictive because it really released something in me.

How exactly did you shoot these photos?

I was in the spare room and I was using natural light. I was shooting on a Canon EOS-1Ds at the highest shutter speed I could get. The ISO was always 100 because I wanted to blow them up really big. I was shooting about 12 frames a second.

When I’d tried doing flowers before, I’d always been trying to put jeopardy into them in some way. So I sometimes had them in vases on the edges of plinths, or I had them leaning up against walls, trying to put drama into them. Within a week, I was thinking about them as people. I was creating characters, I was giving them names, talking to them. That really got me excited because I was taking what I would do in a portrait session and bringing it to these photographs of the flowers.

‌If you take flower photos, you can approach them as you do with portraits because they’re like faces, and you work with lighting in the same way.

That’s exactly what I did. I got that idea really early on. And it was so natural, I didn’t force it. It just came from me not photographing people and suddenly changing what was in front of my camera.

The British call the dandelion seedhead a “clock.” Did you think of that time element when making these photos?

Photographers can’t not think about time. For me, personally, it’s there on my shoulder all the time. I think in fractions of a second and capturing fractions of a second with the intention of having them hopefully live forever.

A photograph is a slice of time, but in these burning dandelions, you have the dynamism of the fire knowing that it started and it’s going to end.

Absolutely, this is what the flowers embodied for me early on: the passing of time. That’s why I started with the almost dying flowers with petals that looked like decrepit skin, because the lifespan of the flower was really obvious to me. I was very aware of it at this moment when all our lives were being turned upside down.

I’ve always been obsessed by flowers, like every photographer, [but] I’d always had a bit of a love for the dying and the drying of a flower. And there’s a beauty in that. When that was happening, they had a pertinence that was underlining what we were all going through. And then I started to think that this is the best representation of how I’m feeling as a human being.

With dandelions, it’s a kind of destruction of time, like a nuclear explosion, like how within an instant something can go from being completely alive to be not alive. And you can see life being lost in the pictures. That’s, a powerful metaphor, but at the same time, it is visually stunning.

See more of Rankin’s work here, and pick up a copy of “An Exploding World” here.

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In this month’s photo books selection, we take a look at an expansive annotated selection of Alec Soth’s work; a collection of images by famous photographers all shot on “the other film” (Polaroid); flowers in contemporary photography; Antigone Kourakou’s surrealist B&W images of women and nature; Curran Hatleberg’s photos of the dog days of summer; and the classic monochrome photos by Bill Brandt.

Alec Soth, Gathered Leaves Annotated – 720 pages, softcover (Mack)

In 2015, Mack published Gathered Leaves, a collection of four “mini-facsimile” books by Alec Soth, together with 29 large-format postcards. This new book, Gathered Leaves Annotated, brings together five of Soth’s books, with annotations. Printed in color on newsprint, it’s not a good-looking photo book, but rather a working copy for people who want to go deeper. This is like a director’s commentary to the DVD box set of official releases, outtakes, demos, and b-sides. It includes notes, handwritten comments, emails, articles, and much more.

You discover the stories behind Soth’s photos and subjects and learn about original titles from the books—Sleeping by the Mississippi was initially going to be called From Here to There. There’s also a full-color map with pushpins showing the locations where he shot his photographs. This is less a photo book than a book about making photos, and photographers who admire Soth’s work will want to peruse this to learn more about his ideas and motivations.

Barbara Hitchcock, The Polaroid Book. 40th Ed. – 456 pages, hardcover (Taschen)

Related: Polaroid Go offers instant fun & convenience with a few small caveats

Known by many as “the other film,” Polaroid served generations who wanted instant gratification from their cameras. This book, now updated in its 40th edition, presents selections from the Polaroid Corporation’s photography collection, which contains more than 23,000 images from hundreds of photographers.

The Polaroid attracted photographers such as Ansel Adams, Judith Black, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, Barbara Crane, Eliot Erwin, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, and so many others. In particular, the SX-70, released in 1972, was used by artists like Andy Warhol, Linda McCartney, and Wim Wenders, to provide instant photos in a robust format. A chapter on the history of Polaroid cameras traces the evolution of this unique form of instant photography.

William A. Ewing & Danaé Panchaud, Flora Photographica – 272 pages, hardcover (Thames & Hudson)

If there’s one perennial subject for photographers, it’s flowers. With their brief lives and glorious hues, flowers are the perfect muse. They can be treated like still lives, like portraits, or like explosions of color, as Cig Harvey did in her latest book Blue Violet.

Flora Photographica looks at the history of the flower in contemporary photography, with works by more than 120 photographers, such as Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Vik Muniz, Valérie Belin, Viviane Sassen, and Martin Schoeller. In thematic chapters, such as Roots, Arrangement, In Full Bloom, and Reverie, author William A. Ewing explores the vast genre of flower photography that ranges from simple studies of flower arrangements to surrealist compositions where flowers add to complex montages.

Antigone Kourakou, Transfiguration – 120 pages, hardcover (Skeleton Key Press)

There’s a timelessness to the photos in Antigone Kourakou’s Transfiguration, as if they could be by Edward Weston or Bill Brandt. These often stark images alternate between people—mostly women—and shots of the natural world. Subjects are often posed in a theatrical way as if they seem to want to take root in the earth.

Many of the photos in this book feature an element of surrealism or fantasy, a feeling that things are slightly askew, where subjects function as symbols, and where natural elements take on more power than they appear at first glance. The photos are sequenced in this book as if there is a hidden narrative that repeated explorations will reveal. As the photographer says, “these images are thoughtfully arranged and sequenced throughout with depictions of water, stone, trees, plants, fire, and dilapidated interiors quietly assisting the book’s poetic arc.”

Curran Hatleberg, River’s Dream – 152 pages, hardcover (TBW Books)

The saturated colors of Curran Hatleberg’s River’s Dream lend a feeling of humidity to these photos, many of which feature water in one form or another. Rivers, swamps, and moisture are all present in this series of photos shot in the dog days of summer.

This series of pigment prints, featured at the 2019 Whitney Biennial, includes photos taken on a number of road trips across the United States, yet they all seem to be the same community. Photos alternate between normal people doing normal things, and odd images of junk and desolation. There is a feeling of immediacy in pictures of people eating together, playing games, and sitting on porches talking. But there is something unsettling in the photos of the beekeeper covered with bees, or the huge snake, first in a marsh, then in a bathtub, then in the hands of a man sitting in a car.

Bill Brandt, Shadow & Light – 207 pages, hardcover (MoMA)

Bill Brandt was born in Germany. He met Ezra Pound in Vienna in the late 1920s, whose introduction led him to assist Man Ray in Paris for several months in 1930. A few years later, he moved to England, where he would make his name photographing the wealthy and the poor, along with many artists.

Brandt’s work, as shown in this exhibition catalog from the Museum of Modern Art, covers several key themes. He photographed London in the 1930s, both the wealthy at home and at play, as well as the working classes in pubs. His photographs in Northern England, from the late 1930s, show stark buildings, grimy miners, and poverty.

During World War II, he photographed the Blitz, both in the streets and in Underground stations where people were taking shelter. In the 1940s, he shot many portraits of famous people; writers, politicians, artists, and others. And his landscape work is memorable for his use of contrast, and his ability to find arresting shapes in the natural world. He also shot many photos of nudes, using stark lighting, exploring the natural distortion of wide-angle lenses, and shooting closeups of body parts. This book is a wonderful overview of the career and varied subjects of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.

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Cig Harvey lives in a farmhouse in rural Maine, where she photographs the people and places around her. Harvey’s photos often feature bright, saturated colors, and a touch of surrealism, as she tries to find the magic in the mundane. Her latest book is Blue Violet, an exploration of grief through flowers and colors.

Your latest book, Blue Violet, features bright, saturated photos of colors, but it’s really a book about grief. How did this project start?

A friend was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at 36, and she went into an isolation unit, where everything is super sterile, for six weeks. It was summertime in Maine, and she was in Boston, and she said, “send me pictures.” So I sent her a picture; it was this wild, voracious bush that was blooming. And she said, “send me more.” I wasn’t going to send her B&W work; I wasn’t going to send her something that wouldn’t bring her joy. So it became this habit of sending pictures every day, and then it grew into its own thing, where it was this idea of celebrating the senses. I worked with flowers because they affect all the senses. Originally, the book was laid out by sense: obviously, sight, but also touch, the way things feel, like lamb’s ears; and then taste, the idea of cooking with flowers and eating flowers. I thought I would have nothing to write about for sound and flowers, but there was so much there that it was actually one of the most interesting chapters.

I wanted to send things to her that were bursting full of life, but then I realized it was not just about her and I and our relationship, it was about trying to live more, trying to appreciate every day more, and spreading that joy to others.

There are 72 photos in Blue Violet. How long did it take to sequence the book? Did you make big prints and small prints; did you lay them out in a big space…?

I have a room at an old school about 10 miles from here, and I keep it really minimal. I make prints continually; prints small enough that I can move things around. Then I sequence the text; I also print out all the texts, so it’s very hands-on analog. I print the text on white Xerox paper, and the prints are 5×7 or 8×10, and then I try to make the jigsaw puzzle of the sequence. It’s a really slow, grueling process.

I often think there can be many sequences, but it also seems like there should just be one. And because the text and image aren’t made at the same time, but I want them woven together, that can be a real headache. But I love all that; I love that conundrum. And I would always sequence my own books rather than have a publisher do it.

We’re still in the midst of COVID-19, and there’s the war in Ukraine going on now. How does art respond to that?

More and more, as I get older, I feel like this is the central theme of why I make work: the idea that we can unite on certain things. Our politics might be wildly different, but we can unite on nature and what is considered beautiful. Years ago, I was on a beach in Florida, on Sanibel Island, and every night around sunset, people gather on the beach, and they clap the sundown. They count it down, ten, nine, eight… It’s just nature doing its thing, but the light and the colors are glorious.

I do feel that art can somehow help create repair. Last year, all through COVID-19 I did projections at night in my town. I was supposed to do it for four days; it was right around election time, and COVID was soaring, and the clocks went back. So I started doing these projections on a 50-foot by 30-foot wall downtown; hot pink flowers and all the work from Blue Violet. It was the emotional highlight of my career because people were driving home—not people who would typically go to an art gallery—and just stop and pull over. It became this event that people would go to at night. I did it for four months, every night. I watched people, and I saw that it somehow helped.

You grew up in a rural area of Devon, England surrounded by nature. How did that upbringing influence you and your interests as an artist?

Related: Todd Hido’s lonely side of suburbia, and 5 other new photobooks worth checking out

I believe that photographers don’t get to pick our projects or what we’re obsessed with photographically, it’s just in us. I don’t know if that’s why, but I know that the natural world is absolutely an integral part of my work. I lived in a city for 10 years, and one picture made it into one of my books. I love the city for many reasons, but I don’t make work there at all. And I’ve tried and tried, but it’s just not what’s in me. I think that Devon, in many ways looks like Maine; it’s a similar landscape. I think of the blueberry barrens here as being related to the moors; that sort of wild landscape that’s so full of metaphor and symbolism.

I found an article with photos of your house, which is beautiful. It looks like a lot of the photos in Blue Violet were taken in your garden around your home.

If they’re not made within a mile of my house they’re very close. There are a few pictures that I’ve made when I travel, but I try to make them look like they could have been made anywhere rather than specific to that location. So there are no palm trees in my last 20 years’ worth of work. I truly believe that if we can live with eyes wide open and in a state of being aware at home, in the same way we do when we travel, when all our senses are firing because things are new; if we can try to live that way, that’s an extraordinary way to live a life. And photography helps me do that. It makes me more aware and more present and more appreciative of the light on a picnic table.

Right now we’ve just hit spring here in Maine, but the forsythia and the magnolias are just about to pop. They’re not exotic flowers, but I think they’re extraordinary. So I do try and make everything at home.

‌Flowers are a popular subject for photographers starting out. But there are some extraordinary photographers who shot flowers, like Imogen Cunningham and Robert Mapplethorpe. Are flower photos considered less serious?

I do think it’s interesting, there is this hierarchy of what can be photographed. That’s snobbism. I definitely think the flowers have fallen into the realm of what is feminine and sometimes, we know that what is feminine is somehow denigrated and not considered as important. I like to turn all that stuff on its head. For me, it’s all about the metaphor and symbolism. If you look at art history, you know that how artists have used the symbolism of flowers throughout the ages is fascinating and glorious, and the secret history, the secret language of flowers, goes back to Victorian times.

As I mentioned before, this book is all flowers, but it’s not about flowers. It’s about being and dying. My best friend was dying, and this is what I sent to her. That’s about as serious as it gets.

The third printing of ‘Blue Violet‘ is out now.

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This month, we look at a collection of COVID-19 lockdown portraits of mothers and their children, each captured through a pane of glass; a series of subtle B&W photos showing a diverse Parisian quarter; a look at the history of portrait photography, from the Daguerreotype to the selfie; a guide for photographing mindfully; monochromatic photos of the highest peaks of the Alps; and Joel Meyerowitz’s classic Cape Light, which is one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century.

Related: Joel Meyerowitz on making photographs in the street

Lisa Sorgini, Behind Glass – 64 pages, hardcover (Libraryman)

Australian photographer Lisa Sorgini faced COVID-19 lockdown like many other photographers, with her work cut off and with limitations on where she could go and what she could photograph. She decided to approach the new constraint by taking photos of mothers and their children behind windows, to highlight the role of parenting during a period when children could not go to school.

After sharing just one photo, she was contacted by The New Yorker, who wanted to publish the series (which is now available in book form). The photos have the look of old Renaissance paintings, with the chiaroscuro of the rooms behind the windows, the reflections softening the faces and bodies, adding muted colors. This is a moving reminder of what lockdown meant to families around the world.

Thomas Boivin, Belleville – 100 pages, softcover (Stanley Barker)

These B&W photos of the Belleville neighborhood in Paris have the look of classic French street photography, like that of Robert Doisneau. Thomas Boivin moved to this multicultural area in the northeast of Paris and has been photographing people there for more than ten years. He describes the area as “a mixture of beauty and decay, of joyful moments and sadness, the warm feeling of light and the bittersweet sensation that one can experience walking around all day, searching for a stranger’s eyes.”

These subtle photos show the diversity of this neighborhood, but also freeze moments that seem timeless. Shot on film, these photos are weighted toward the middle grays, which gives them an almost palpable softness.

Philip Prodger, Face Time: A History of the Photographic Portrait – 256 pages, hardcover (Thames & Hudson)

Portraiture is probably the most common form of photography. We take pictures of our friends, family, and ourselves. Portraits are used to document our lives, immortalize people, and sell products. In this book, art historian Philip Prodger looks at the history of the portrait, from early Dageurrotypes to selfies. With more than 250 photos of strangers and celebrities, Prodger examines the history of the genre through photos by 19th-century photographers, such as Hippolyte Bayard and Julia Margaret Cameron, well known 20th-century portraitists like Edward Weston, Lee Miller, and Richard Avedon, and today’s photographers, including Newsha Tavakolian, Rineke Dijkstra, and Zanele Muholi. Subjects in the book range from anonymous people to heads of state, actors, and celebrities, proving the vast range of this genre which can be artistic, documentary, or utilitarian.

David Ulrich, The Mindful Photographer – 208 pages, hardcover (Rocky Nook)

Most practical photography books are about the craft of photography: f-stops, focusing, and composition. But as photographers progress, they often want to find more meaning in their photography. David Ulrich, who worked as an assistant to Minor White, discusses how to be more intentional when taking photos. He says, “photography is many things: a means of interacting more deeply with the world, a path of personal growth and transformation, a challenge to strive toward becoming more whole and attentive, a catalyst for stimulating creative expression, and a vehicle for insight and understanding.”

Several dozen short essays, with titles like Fitting into the Flow of Time, The Art of Inseeing, Embrace Paradox, and Creative Intensity, discuss how to take photos that have meaning. He prompts the reader to take photographs “with an inquiring spirit, open to new realizations that can come from the corner of the eye or the depths of the mind.”

Thomas Crauwels, Above – 200 pages, hardcover (Hemeria)

If you’ve ever spent time in the mountains at high altitudes, you know how spectacular rocky peaks above the tree line can be. Buffeted by wind, dusted with snow, these craggy mountains change as the sun moves across the sky, offering a fascinating spectacle. It is also very difficult to get to the right locations, at the right time, to photograph peaks at their finest.

Thomas Crauwels has shot thousands of photos in the Alps, and Above is a collection of these photos. This large-format book immerses you in these serene landscapes, many of which are hard to see in person and require long hikes in harsh conditions. Reminiscent of Ansel Adams’s landscapes, these photos expose the natural beauty of the highest peaks in Europe.

Joel Meyerowitz, Cape Light – 112 pages, hardcover (Aperture)

Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light, originally published in 1979, is one of the most influential photobooks of the 20th century. After shooting B&W street photography, notably in New York City, Meyerowitz moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and starting photographing in color with an 8×10 view camera. Not only was color not yet considered appropriate for fine art photography, but Meyerewitz’s approach of slowing down the process with a cumbersome camera changed the way he worked.

In this photobook, time stands still as Meyerowitz’s serene and contemplative photos, rich in color, paint pictures of the sea, the beach, simple houses and stores, and the people he encounters. The book has influenced many photographers, including Alec Soth, who in a recent interview with PopPhoto shared, “Cape Light was a huge influence on Sleeping by the Mississippi in particular. There’s a way of sequencing, landscape to portrait, and then surprise pictures like that blurry picture, that just felt really fresh to me.”

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In April 2015, Quintin Lake set out to walk the entire perimeter of the coast of Great Britain, photographing the edges of the land where it intersects with the sea. He didn’t plan to do this uninterrupted, but in sections up to two months, after which he would return home for a while. This 11,000-kilometer (6,835-mile) journey ended in September 2020, after injuries, COVID-19 lockdowns, and plenty of terrible weather. His project is called The Perimeter.

Why did you choose such a daunting project?

I guess I just felt really inspired. As a photographer, inspiration is the thing where, if you feel you’re struck by it, you don’t want to let it go. I felt really inspired by all the intertwined layers of history and geography on the coast of Britain, which makes it hard to define. I felt really inspired by that ambiguity, and I wanted to see more of it and to understand what made this island what it is, because I’ve previously always found inspiration in kind of exotic places, like the Arctic, or deserts, or [places like] Iran. This was me going back to my roots, trying to understand what home is.

Related: Before color photography, there was the Lippmann process

What is your main genre as a professional photographer?

I pay the bills mostly by being an architectural photographer. My background was as an architect, and that’s how I earned a living for many years. I would use that money to buy time to do interesting trips, such as going to the Arctic. Now, I think more strongly as an art photographer, at least, that’s how it feels.

‌How much time did you spend preparing before you started your walk?

I guess with any kind of big project like this, you can’t think about it too much, because there are so many problems and difficulties. I think there was a two-week period between having the idea and starting. I thought, in a way, the stakes are quite low; if it doesn’t work, I can just stop.

I was really surprised because I thought no one would care about this project until there was a book or other physical object. But there was something about it; I had a BBC interview after two weeks of walking, and all I was doing was tweeting. And when that happened, it led to other people being interested. And then I felt, I’ve really got to finish this now! I felt people were rooting me on. I thought it would be just a private thing for me for years.

What did you tell people you met as you were walking? Did they believe that you were planning to walk 11,000 kilometers around the coast?

It sounds crazy. But the beautiful thing here in Britain is that everyone said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. I’d love to do that.’ No one said crazy. Sometimes I got mistaken for a vagrant, many times I got mistaken for being a bird watcher, because of my long lens, and there were some misunderstandings. But when I was talking to people, and I told them what I was doing, they were really positive about it.

I think the British just love the coast. And most people have some connection with walking or enjoy that for recreation. And everyone knows a bit of the coast from their childhood or a special holiday. And the idea of just keeping on going, I think appeals to people. Though some people I met thought it would be all sandy beaches and ice cream!

‌What about gear? You’re someone who is used to hiking and walking, and you’re in good physical condition but you still had to carry a lot of gear. How much did all of your gear weigh?

My backpacking gear was was light in England; six to eight kilograms (13.2 to 17.6 lbs) without food and water. But then my photography gear was four to five kilograms (8.8 to 11 lbs) extra, depending on what I took. As I got fitter, as the journey went on, I actually ended up taking more gear, bigger tripods, and I took a drone. In the north of Scotland, with heavy winter gear, it was about 20 kilograms(44 lbs) base weight, and with food and water, that could go up to 25 kilograms (55 lbs). In England, it was more like half of that.

(Here is a detailed breakdown of all Quintin’s summer gear, with precise weights.)

What sort of camera did you use?

I used a Canon EOS 5DS R, which, at the time, was the highest resolution full-frame camera that was weather sealed. I took a 70-300mm lens, and I think around half of my pictures are on the longer end of that telephoto. I also took a 16-35mm wide zoom.

‌All your photos are in a square format. Why did you choose square?

What I’m interested in is a kind of geometry and serenity and stillness. I’ve done a couple of other projects, following the Thames and the Severn rivers, in that square format, and I found that was really inspiring. It was good for me in terms of interpreting the landscape that way. With the coast, because one generally thinks of horizontal seascapes, that seemed kind of perverse, and it helped me look at look at things creatively with a constraint that was a bit fresher.

‌When I look at your photos, they don’t feel like the seaside. They feel like they’re reducing the landscape to a detail rather than trying to show the whole vastness of the landscape.

I think that detail, or that abstraction, can actually reveal more about the subject and then the whole, and I think it helps the viewer focus and helps focus me as well. This week, I’ve been editing the Forth Bridge, the iconic bridge next to Edinburgh in Scotland; it’s probably one of the most photographed subjects in Scotland. It’s fantastically beautiful and interesting, but I’ve been trying to find a very pared-down image of it. It’s a different way of looking at the subject, and I find that approach helpful, especially on a well known subject like that.

‌Is this approach partly influenced by you being an architectural photographer?

A portfolio of images I’d give to an architectural client would have 20 images, probably five of those would be detail shots; I would see that as part of the story of any given building. And I guess I’m interested in materials and geometry, and I tend to look for that, whether it’s a landscape or a human-made object.

‌I imagine that as you walk along the coast, you spend hours each day, and you see iconic locations in the UK where people shoot photos, such as Durdle Door in Dorset, or the white cliffs of Dover. But it looks like every half mile or so you found an incredibly interesting thing to photograph. And it makes me realize that if photographers just look carefully, there are always interesting things to photograph around them. They don’t have to be the iconic bits of the landscape.

I agree. There is beauty and interesting things wherever you happen to look, if you open your eyes and do look, but I was surprised that every single day had glimmers, sparks of beauty and interest. And some days were like an opera of joy. I did think, at the beginning, there would be some days where I wouldn’t produce any images, but even on days where there was maybe a storm all day, there would be a moment where the storm would lessen. And some of these images turn out to be quite good, they sort of look like tracing paper, layers of gray in Scotland, and that was quite interesting in its own way.

‌You really had two journeys. One was the journey of yourself, enjoying the walking and the other was the journey of the photographer.

Yes, that’s right. I did have quite a few injuries and problems. I had a torn tendon, I had shin splints, and the constant challenge of hypothermia, because I walked through all the seasons and it’s often very wet. I got slightly traumatized by the rain in the northwest in the winter. There was so much rain, and it was so cold all the time, that you had to keep moving to not get cold. And then when I came back down south, and it rained, I braced myself for being cold and wet for two days nonstop. And of course, it’s not like that, because it just blows away.

‌Not many of your photos have people in them. Why is that?

I tried to photograph someone most days, so there’s a bit more at the end but I often didn’t see anyone for days at a time, let alone photograph them. But I don’t think it’s my strength as a photographer. Also, for me, the mystery and the stuff of interest of what makes Britain Britain is the landscape. It’s misunderstood and often stereotyped in a kind of butter packaging way of rolling hills. I’m interested in the power stations next to the disused factories, all that kind of stuff as well as the ancient mythologies. I think if you get an interesting landscape, and you put someone in it, the person is always going to be more interesting. The human form and the human face are so compelling that it means that you can’t see the landscape. So for what I wanted to do, which was an exploration of the pure landscape, I consciously didn’t have people in it most of the time.

So you’ve been in the editing stage for quite some time. How many photos do you have altogether?

It was 454 days of walking, and that equates to 179,000 images. So each day was around 300 or 400 images, most of which were bad. I would normally edit that down to around 20 that I think are okay, and every few days there’s a really special one. Each day of walking takes between one and three days of editing. I finished editing day 364 yesterday, which is well over three-quarters of the way; I’ve got 90 days left. The whole project will take seven years: five walking and two editing.

Sometimes, everything synchronizes: the subject, the light, my energy levels, and I got really strong images. I’m thinking now of Knoydart, which is a very wild, uninhabited part of Scotland, where I shot a rainbow in a storm. It seemed like a different season every few minutes; it was just so extraordinary and exciting. I think I spent about a week, in terms of hours of editing just that one day’s images, because I felt there’s so much material there. Conversely, if it’s been a very rainy day, I might be able to edit it in a few hours, because there are only three images that come out. And then once I’ve edited [the images], I put it on my on the blog and share it, and then that will be the source material for what happens next.

So what’s next?

I won’t be finished editing till the summer. When this is finished, it will be publishing a book, and producing an exhibition. Financially and psychologically I doubt I could do a project like this again as it’s been such a labor of love. I’m a bit fearful of how I will feel when that last image is exported from Lightroom and the project is finally finished. Exploring the world with a tent is in my DNA, and I will never stop that as it stimulated my creativity and makes me feel the most alive.

See more of Quintin Lake’s photos and buy prints at ThePerimeter.uk.

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This month, we look at a wide range of photobooks. Mika Horie’s cyanotypes present the world in blue; Stephen Shore’s memoir looks back on his long career; Zora J Murff explores Blackness in America; Stephen Gill’s photos of birds on a pillar present a new take on wildlife photography; a presentation of 3D images from the dawn of photography hints at what might have been; and Walker Evans’ classic photos of Americans in the depression remain timely.

Mika Horie, Trees, Water and light — 120 pages, softcover (IBASHO & the(M) éditions)

Cyanotypes are one of the oldest photographic techniques. Using iron salts, these prints are exposed from ultraviolet light rays and develop very slowly. Light and shadow are displayed in gradations of monochromatic blues. Photographer Mika Horie’s book is constructed from Japanese paper she has made by hand, and, with an original print on the cover, each copy of the book is different. 

Horie says, “Blue has the effect of escaping from time and material possessions that float past, present and future. I believe this is the only color that allows you to escape from yourself and enter your world of poetry and the memories deep down in your heart.” The monochromatic blue cyanotypes suggest rather than show; printed on handmade, rough-hewn paper, the photos take on a hazy earthiness, one of speculation rather than firmly fixed images. 

Read how Horie makes her paper. 

Stephen Shore, Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography — 224 pages, hardcover (Mack)

While Modern Instances contains photos, it isn’t exactly a photobook. It is a memoir, a collection of reflections and interviews, and a look back on Stephen Shore’s long career as a photographer. Shore is well known for his images of everyday objects and banal scenes, and in this book, he discusses his influences, his experiences, and what photography means to him. 

Shore says, “One of the reasons I have been drawn to photographing everyday life is because the everyday world is fertile ground for communicating the experience of living with attention. A dramatic event acts upon you. To attend to the quotidian requires you to act.” In this book, he explains how he sees the world, and we can learn from him to see the world with fresh eyes. 

Zora J Murff, True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) — 256 pages, softcover (Aperture)

True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) is “a chronicle of survival,” which combines Murff’s photos with found and appropriated images, and a number of texts commissioned for the book. Described as “a manual for coming to terms with the historical and contemporary realities of America’s divisive structures of privilege and caste,” this book catalogs the Black experience and juxtaposes contemporary images with historical photos, advertisements, and more. 

Murff asks, “What does it mean to be engaged in this act of photograph that has been used to denigrate me?” A former social worker, he brings his experience working with juveniles on probation to this exploration of Blackness in America.

Check out the PDF playlist for the book.

Stephen Gill, The Pillar — 224 pages, hardcover (Nobody Books)

Sometimes the most arresting photobooks are based on very simple premises. Stephen Gill set up a camera looking at a pillar, which was next to a stream in a flat, open landscape in Sweden, near his home. You see the open fields, houses in the distance, and the subtle vanishing point of the stream. The seasons change, the weather comes and goes, and the light varies. All the while, birds come to perch on the pillar.

Gill says, “The pillar had funneled the birds from the sky offering them a place to rest, feed, nurse their young, and look around. I was captivated. The images were often chaotic, the birds offbeat and awkward like contortionists, but the shapes and soft lines made by their bodies and wings were arresting.”

The pillar attracted many different kinds of birds: sparrows, eagles, owls, egrets, and more. These aren’t just bird photographs, not the type of images you see on calendars or postcards, but birds caught still or in half-flight with a camera triggered by a motion sensor. The Pillar, now back in print, is filled with these chance moments caught by the camera, which look much more alive and dynamic than most bird photographs. These photos are about the changing landscape and the creatures that live in it as they come and go, sharing our world.

Denis Pellerin and Brian May, STEREOSCOPY – The Dawn of 3-D — 216 pages, hardcover (London Stereoscopic Company)  

In the early days of photography, two types of images battled for supremacy: flat images and stereoscopic 3D images. The latter used a sort of porto-virtual reality goggle (the stereoscope) that held two slightly different photos (the stereogram) together. These give the viewer the illusion of depth. First theorized by Charles Wheatstone in 1832, before the dawn of photography, the stereoscope became popular when David Brewster invented a portable viewer in the 1840s. In the following decades, these devices helped to popularize photography, though their use faded over time. 

This book, written by art historians Denis Pellerin and Brian May, explains the process and technology behind 3-D photos. It also presents photos from May’s collection. The book comes with an OWL stereoscope, designed by May, who also has a PhD in astrophysics, to view some of the 150 stereoscopic images it contains. 

Walker Evans, American Photographs — 208 pages, hardcover (Museum of Modern Art)

First published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1938 to coincide with one of the museum’s earliest photo exhibitions, Walker Evans’ American Photographs is a classic of its time. In the forward to the second edition of the book, published in 1962, Monroe Wheeler, the museum’s Director of Publications, wrote: “It revealed a new master of the camera who expressed the tragic sense and troubled conscience of that period of economic depression and political change, although in mood and style it was reflective rather than tendentious.”

These photos—portraits, street photography, photos of houses and towns—show America during the depression, and many of them became symbolic of that era. Over the years, as America has moved on from this difficult period, these photos bear witness to the starkness of the times. The juxtaposition of photos showing the homeless sleeping in front of buildings with photos of couples on a day out at Coney Island highlight the disparities Americans faced, some of which have not changed since then.

The post Walker Evans’ American Photographs, and five other photobooks worth checking out appeared first on Popular Photography.

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