Pictures are better than wordsProbably one of the best photography books I have ever looked at /read. The celebrity photos weren't really to my interest, but seeing normal people in their everyday lives and key moments in history attracted my attention. A simply laid out book, and knowing the back stories of the photographers who took some of the most powerful photos I've ever seen, makes this a beautiful book.
The Great Life PhotographersThis is full of classic photographs and is amazing value for money. There are over 600 pages so p&p was clearly going to be fairly high but worth every penny.
It is more of a picture book but at least that means that you can pick it up and put it down at will without losing the plot. It also means however that these extraordianry photographs, whilst an inspiration in their own right could benefit from a little background. One thing that is apparent - particularly with respect to the photographs of world conflict - is that there is nothing new and we do not seem to learn from the past.
Captured: compassion and compositionsOn page 558 of this stunning photo book there is a studio shot taken in 1960 by Bill Sumits of thirty-eight Life photographers, surely the only time in history that so many great photographers have been together in one place and it is amazing to think that the ninety-nine featured in the book were all on the staff of this one publication.
The book is arranged alphabetically and each photographer gets between five and eight images plus their photo and short hundred or so word biography. Now it's possible to see who took so many images that defined a moment and became classic examples of photojournalism and also to see other examples of their great work. John Loengard's introduction does not say so but I assume all the photos did appear in Life and they cover the years from 1936 (when the title started) to 1997. The book is well designed with mostly one photo per page (well printed in 175 dpi) and a caption and nicely some photos get longer captions where a photographer reveals some background detail about their images.
There are a lot of news type photos here, especially from the Second World War years but equally as many taken from the photo-essay style work that Life became famous for. Others show celebrities and ordinary folk going about their lives. These photos are so good that you have to stop and really take notice of what they are telling you. I think this wonderful book is a strong visual reminder of how great Life was.
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