Top ten photography books I want but can’t afford
It’s not only old photography books that are rare, out of print and expensive. By their nature and cost, most modern photography books are produced in small runs. They may at first remain unsold and end up in bargain bookshops for a few pounds. They eventually get bought, and become rare. Then the price increases.
1. Infra by Richard Mosse (2012)
Apparently we saw this for sale new at one of his early exhibitions for £25. I can’t quite remember but obviously now it’s like $1000.
2. Cardiff After Dark by Maciej Dakowicz (2012)
Hilarious and tragic pictures of hedonistic nights out in Cardiff.
3. Satellites: Photographs from the Fringes of the Former Soviet Union by Jonas Bendiksen (2006)
Jonas Bendiksen has been in the news recently with his confusing conceit where he hoodwinked the photography establishment with his The Book of Veles, which sold out immediately. Bendiksen created fake photos of fake people making fake news in the Macedonian town of Veles, temporarily famous in 2016 for being a hotbed of fake news production supporting Donald Trump, apparently helping him win the election.
Anyway, his first book, Satelittes, took some seven years to create and shows the “scattered enclaves, unrecognized mini-states, and other isolated communities that straddle the southern borderlands of the former Soviet Empire”. Just stunning.
4. I Want to Take Picture by Bill Burke (1987)
Hard-hitting pictures of South East Asia. The Twin Palms reprint is more reasonably priced than the original.
5. Ravens by Masahisa Fukase (1986)
Often described as one of the most important photobooks ever, this one occasionally gets reprinted in small print runs and sells out immediately.
6. Quarries: by Edward Burtynsky (2007)
“The concept of the landscape as architecture has become, for me, an act of imagination. I remember looking at buildings made of stone, and thinking, there has to be an interesting landscape somewhere out there because these stones had to have been taken out of the quarry one block at a time. I had never seen a dimensional quarry, but I envisioned an inverted cubed architecture on the side of a hill. I went in search of it, and when I had it on my ground glass, I knew that I had arrived. I had found an organic architecture created by our pursuit of raw materials. Open-pit mines, funneling down, were to me like inverted pyramids. Photographing quarries was a deliberate act of going out to try to find something in the world that would match the kinds of forms in my imagination.” – Edward Burtynsky
7. Pillar by Stephen Gill (2017)
Birdlife as you’ve never seen it before.
8. Photographing in Color by Paul Outerbridge (1940)
Expect to pay way over £100 for this classic of colour photography, including his striking, erotic nudes.
9. The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1952)
An obvious choice and even if that once decisive moment has long been and gone, still a wonderful book, with a cover by Henri Matisse. It’s only been reprinted once, in 2014, and that now goes for £500. If you want the original you’ll need to double that price at least.
10. Subway by Bruce Davidson (1986)
Davidson’s look at the New York subway system in the 1980s goes for over £200 nowadays.
If you’re wondering why there’s no books by William Eggleston. Bill Brandt, Martin Parr, Robert Frank or Max Pam, it’s probably because I already own them.
Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money
Top ten photographers