reading notes

organized by Douglas R. Nickel (for SFMOMA)
ISBN: 0918471451
The pictures in this book are fascinating. They are not “art.” That is, they are not art in a self-recognized or self-promoted way because weren’t taken by “professional” photographers. Whatever the intentions and motivations were behind the the making of these images are now lost– the people who [...]

by John Berger
ISBN: 0394739078
I was eager to read more of Berger after reading Ways of Seeing. That was a collection of essays that had more of a point to make than these do, at least taken as a whole. Individual essays in this collection have their issues to (sometimes pointedly) address — the way animals [...]

by Crab Scrambly
ISBN: 0943151902
One of the latest offerings from Slave Labor Graphics, this book isn’t quite a graphic novel, but an illustrated story. What is the difference? Type that is set and not in panels is the shortest, clearest answer. I’m tempted to say images that, well, illustrate the story rather than drive the narrative [...]

by Robert Adams
ISBN: 0893816035

This book is a collection of essays in which each does its part to explore why people photograph. Adams manages this without coming across as didactic, heavy-handed, or reductionist. In doing so, he has helped to expand the language I have for thinking about and writing about photography.
Adams is not talking about [...]

by Eric Foner
ISBN: 0809097052
I suprised myself by picking this up. In no way do I consider myself a history buff. I recoil at the memory of U.S. History classes in high school, do not understand the Civil War reenactment thing, or the romance surrounding the American Revolution. (I will, however, admit to a fondness [...]

by Tom Gilling
ISBN: 0141002018
The Sooterkin is set in and near Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land in the early 1800s. (Around the same time and place as Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish.) For a story set among convicts, near-convicts, hostile geography, and unforgiving odors, it is quite charming.
A sooterkin is a fantastic creature supposedly born to [...]