**A Look Back at My Top 10 Books of Photography for 2015**

As I sit here reflecting on the past year, I am reminded of the countless books that I've had the pleasure of reading and discovering new works by photographers who are pushing the boundaries of the medium. In 2015, I was particularly excited to share my top 10 picks with you all, and I'm thrilled to revisit those selections once again. From established masters to newcomers making a name for themselves, these books showcase the diversity and richness of photography as an art form.

**Number One: "The Decisive Moment" by Henri Cartier-Bresson**

One book that was a particular favorite of mine in 2015 was Henri Cartier-Bresson's "The Decisive Moment". Published originally in 1952, this classic work is considered one of the greatest books on photography ever written. As an artist and activist, Cartier-Bresson was known for his innovative approach to documentary photography, and this book showcases his unique vision and expertise. The reissue by Steidl, which I have had the pleasure of experiencing firsthand, features stunning black and white images that are a testament to Cartier-Bresson's skill as a photographer.

**The Problem with Original Editions**

What's interesting about "The Decisive Moment" is its complex history. The original editions were released in the 1950s, but they suffered from poor printing quality, which often resulted in the glue letting up and causing the book to come apart. This made them difficult to work with, even for those who wanted to study and appreciate the images within. As a result, these books have become highly sought after by collectors and enthusiasts, making their reissue all the more significant.

**Why "The Decisive Moment" is Essential Reading**

Despite its problematic history, I believe that "The Decisive Moment" is an essential reading for anyone interested in photography or art. The book contains images that are widely regarded as some of the most iconic and influential in the medium, and Cartier-Bresson's writing offers valuable insights into his creative process and philosophical approach to documentary photography. As a work of art, "The Decisive Moment" is also remarkable for its beauty and simplicity, making it a book that I would highly recommend to anyone looking to expand their knowledge or simply enjoy some wonderful images.

**Another Obscure Photographer: Riccati**

In addition to Cartier-Bresson, another photographer who was new to me in 2015 was Riccati. His work "Since the Decisive Moment" is a fascinating exploration of documentary photography that explores the human condition through his lens. While not as widely known as some other photographers, Riccati's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of art and politics. The images are powerful and thought-provoking, offering insights into themes such as identity, community, and social justice.

**The Power of Photography**

For me, photography has always been about more than just taking pictures – it's about telling stories, capturing moments, and sharing our experiences with others. Riccati's work is a testament to the power of photography to inspire empathy and understanding. By exploring the human condition through his lens, he offers us a reflection of ourselves and our world, making him an essential figure in the history of documentary photography.

**My Sponsor for This Episode**

Before I move on, I want to take a moment to thank my sponsor, Lynda.com, for their support of this episode. As artists and creatives, we are constantly seeking ways to improve our skills and learn new techniques. For me, there's no better resource than Lynda.com, which offers an incredible range of online tutorials and courses on topics from Adobe InDesign to book publishing. They also have a special deal for my viewers – simply use the link lynda.com/AOP in your browser to get 10 days of free unlimited access to their entire website.

**Shoutout to Sara DG**

Finally, I want to give a big shoutout to my friend Sara DG, who recently came to visit me at the studio. We spent an amazing day working on filming for her Creative Spaces series, and I'm so grateful to have had the chance to collaborate with her. If you're interested in learning more about Sara's work or checking out some of her latest vlog posts, be sure to check out the show description or link to her channel – she shares some great insights into her creative process and inspires us all to get out there and make art.

**Artist Series**

I'm also excited to announce that we're launching a new Artist Series here on the show, made possible by the generosity of my wonderful viewers. This series will feature interviews with talented artists from around the world, exploring their work, inspirations, and creative processes. It's going to be an incredible journey, and I'm honored to have such amazing support behind me.

**That's All for Now**

And that's all for this episode – I hope you've enjoyed my take on some of my favorite books from 2015. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning, and always keep your cameras handy!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso welcome to the final show of 2015 this has been an amazing year on the art of photography and I feel like the community aspect of it has been what has been so special to me there's a lot of really neat things that are coming up in 2016 that I can't wait to get to the artists series is in progress so we should start filming on that in the next couple weeks and I'm really excited about some of the things that are coming up and of course that entire thing was made possible with funding from you guys and I just want to say thanks again for that I really appreciate it and for the last show of the year today I want to do something that I don't normally do on here but somebody suggested that I'd do a recap of my top 10 favorite books of this year and as most of you know I do a lot of book reviews on this show photography monographs I think are so important to learning to the appreciation of photography and to really they represent a lot of my passion and that's why I like to share so many of those here on the show so this was hard to whittle down to ten there's a lot of books that I bought this year and I want to say that not all of these books were published this year and that's very important to note these were just books that came into my collection this year and some of them I've shared on the show with you guys and some of them I haven't so let's get right down to it so this is my top 10 picks of my favorite books for 2015 so in no particular order here I'm just gonna go through these my first pick is Magnum contact sheets which is a really special book this is one I did an entire show on earlier this year and contact sheets are fascinating to me and what they've done with this book is they've taken some very well-known photos by Magnum photographers and you get to see the contact sheets and all the selects and everything that was on the film roll as you go through here and what's really amazing to me about this and just I think it's something that is really special about to the era of when everybody used film for photojournalism is that you get to see something that's very personal that goes into the making of a photograph or the final select you get to see the thought process and the creative process behind the image in a lot of cases and you typically you know with a lot of these you'll see variations of the image that could have been selected you'll see variations in exposure and just trying to get things just right and being able to study some of these contact sheets it's not often that you get to do that a lot of artists are very protect of something like that because it shows that process and it's a little like looking through somebody's underwear drawer sometimes I suppose but it's this book is so well done and it is highly recommended I think of all these books just from a learning standpoint if you're into photojournalism or street photography this is absolutely essential to your collection next up is a monograph by Lewis far and Lewis far is a more obscure photographer but he was part of what we've come to know in the last 10 to 20 years is this rediscovery of New York Street photographers in the 1950s 1960s so he was a contemporary of Saul Leiter Richard poo sent dart is another gentleman that I did a show on earlier this year Louis Farr is amazing and it's really interesting that at the time this was the you know as a collective of photographers who did a large amount of personal work and they were just photographing New York in that era and these photos are absolutely wonderful in here this is not an expensive book and even for an obscure photographer he has such a wonderful style of personalizing images and just doing some wonderful things and it's really well done so that is my second pick is Luis Farah my third pick is from uncertain to blue and this is a book that I have not featured on the show before but I have featured the photographer Keith Carter before Keith is one of my favorite photographers I think he is one of the more important living photographers today and this is an early book of his this was actually a gift I got for my birthday this year for my parents so special in that regard too but from uncertain to blue is as I mentioned an early work and so a lot of the things that we know now in Keith's style some of the whimsical nature and some of the mystical nature these are more straight-ahead raw images so you're not going to see much that's moving in more of an artistic direction or a conceptual direction and these so much but the whole story behind this book and it's really wonderful is that Keith and his wife at one point decided to go on a trip and they were considering exotic locations and of course Keith lives in Texas and they were looking at a map one day and kind of realizing how funny a lot of little Texas towns the naming is and so they decided to plot out all these funky name to Texas towns and actually do a road trip and I think it lasted actually several years where they would come and go from the road trip but uncertain is the name of a town in Texas and so is blue and some of the stories that unravel and as Keith mentions in this book and the in the notes that it was really more difficult than he imagined that would be to shoe because you go out there and there's no landscape that Ansel Adams would go after there's no you know street photography like you'd find in New York that this was a very different landscape that was very Texas in nature but you know Keith is a fan of the mysticism and the magic that comes from Texas as a state and that is represented in this book and it's a very early work and I think the other reason I am so fascinated with this book is if you have followed key throughout his career he is one of those rare artists who continues to evolve he doesn't land on one thing and then just continue to produce that the rest of his career he actually every set of images is a little bit different and moving in a different direction on what he did before and his images that he's doing today are completely different than this but I think this is a wonderful insight into Keith's work and this is such a beautiful book so from uncertainty blew by Keith Carter my fourth pick is builder levees monograph builder levee photographer and builder is a really interesting photographer he's somebody that I have not really talked about on the show much before this is a book that I recently was given and he is amazing he's probably best known if you have seen his work for a series of images that he did in Appalachia and he has a very interesting style that is very street photography in nature I think it's more social documentary you probably want to call it and he has this wonderful way of capturing humanity and he has several books out and there is a book just specifically on the Appalachia project but what I really love about this book is it also covers other locations as well as Appalachia so you see some images from New York there's some images from Mongolia and also from Cuba and I think it's interesting because when you have a photographer that is probably best-known and associated with a certain place or a certain style of imagery and when you see how that adapts itself to other cultures and other civilizations as well these great horse images that are in here and builders a wonderful photographer and I will talk more about him coming up in 2016 and I really recommend this book the Appalachia book is fabulous as well but I'm picking this one because I think it just shows a little bit more diversity I love this image on the cover with this flock of birds going over the top brilliant photographer and I think he's one of the important greats next up is a book that I didn't know about until fairly recently when somebody tweeted that they had purchased this and I got very interested and I have talked about a Lexie Tedder renko on the show before this but it's his new book it's called the city as a novel and Aleksey is an extremely important photographer he's in his mid-50s he was born and raised in Russia and lives in New York now but the work that I was familiar with of his was done in the mid 90s and is absolutely brilliant I've showed you guys a lot of those images on the show and like the image on the cover here with this group going up the staircase which kind of evokes this black smoke to it and he does a lot of these long time to exposures and he really is comfortable with long exposures and a lot of his work is evocative of that in some way shape or form and so this one also has some newer images as well which is why it's a big pick of mine and there's some images from Havana in here which is interesting that I was just talking about builder levy as well from Venice also New York City and you see in all these images you know this this whole idea of time and motion blurring people moving through the images and so it gives the it's almost like treating the street is like a movie set in a way and when you see these ghost-like apparitions of blurry people moving through them it creates a way of telling a story is very unique and very original and I absolutely love tedder anko's work and I highly recommend the city as a novel of course most of you know that I have talked about Chris macaw quite a bit this year he was involved in an exhibition that I saw at the Getty earlier this year on contemporary photographers and pushing the envelope of what the medium will do and Chris macaw is amazing he's a california-based photographer and if you haven't seen his work before I will link that episode up in the show notes he works with these really huge homemade cameras and shoots large format on to photographic paper and his whole technique involves these really long exposures capturing the Sun in motion and so literally what will happen is the same effect that you get from a magnifying glass when you are able to like actually create fire and burn a hole in something that's what the lens does to the paper so the Sun moves and it's really hard to tell from a reprint you have to see these in person it actually physically burns a hole into the medium and it also has this solarization effect so if you shot straight to photographic paper it would come out as a negative and what happens is when it's exposed to the Sun this long and uses older expired papers it does have a solarization effect where it's kind of starts splitting into a positive as well Chris is amazing photographer he is well known professionally as a palladium printer as well and I think the world of Chris and so sunburn is still available as far as I know just came out I believe this year and it is a fabulous book number seven is a book that is very special because this one comes from somebody who watches the show and this is my friend David Brooke over and David is a beautiful photographer he lives and works in Jackson Hole Wyoming he shoots landscapes and he owns a gallery there and I believe another one in Santa Fe and what I love about David's working I did a whole show on this which I will link up in the show description as well but you don't get rehashed Ansel Adams in here his work is very unique it's very original it's very beautifully done I love his interpretation of landscape and then the other thing that's just utterly impressive is his whole talent for printing and what you're able to see here and you know shooting these like these snow scapes and I mentioned this one when I did a show on this earlier this year you know this is kind of something that we see Michael kind of doing a lot of and he doesn't copy Kenna he does his own thing and I think David is an absolutely fabulous and underrated photographer and his approach to shooting the American landscape is very original it's very unique and is so well done and I really think the world of David so this is David's book it's called the road actually have two copies of this this is the the black covered version and then I have a red one that's a clamshell version as well that I showed and so I'll link up to that episode as well next up is Rothko Sugimoto and this is a book that I covered earlier this year but I found this to be so fascinating this was an exhibition that paced gallery in New York did and it was a combination of Rothko's black paintings mixed with Hiroshige Sugimoto seascapes and so it's a really interesting comparison between the two and you have two people who are not of the same generation but did very similar work in a minimalist style so this is one of the Rothko black paintings where you see basically the horizon in the middle and of course this pairs up so beautifully with with Sugimoto seascapes and there is some text in here that talks about the fact that Sugimoto wasn't exactly influenced by Rothko although he did appreciate his work but there is such a beauty in seeing the correlation between this black era of paintings and then Sudha Moto's work which is very typically out-of-focus landscape work and then this entire series that he did years ago with seascapes and there are hundreds of these photos where he shot all these variations with the horizon right down the middle and if you're in a minimalist work and you're into the the relationship between photography and painting between two of probably the greatest living artist of all time hero she's super mojo and rock mark Mark Rothko easy for me to say I highly recommend this book my 9th pick is Heinrich Kunz the perfect photograph and I've talked about Cohen on the show several times he is normally associated with the pectoralis movement and Koons work is very unique and that he worked quite a bit in a process known as autochrome which you see on this image on the front and autochrome was one of the first commercially available color processes these were glass plates that you would purchase that were made essentially with potato starch that used a dot pattern to create different basic fields of color and so it has a really interesting look to it the grain is absolutely beautiful in these images he worked extensively with autochrome so there's an enormous amount of photographs that exist and they all kind of have this surrealistic look to them some of them have this strange swirl to them and you know the way the blur works in that but also the the way the color saturated is very unique to this process it's interesting because after covering Heinrich Cohen on the show I've had more people email and asked me it is their way to do autochrome today I think it's something that has a really interesting look to it unfortunately there's really not it required a pretty intense mechanical process to actually make the make the plates and so it's something that's a bit of a loss process but as you can see in Koons work is absolutely intensely amazing what's interesting is I remember the first time I saw some of Kunz prints in person was a couple years ago when there was an exhibition at Howard Greenberg gallery in New York and it was there was some black and white pieces in the show as well and some of the materials they were printed on like Japanese tissue paper it was just it was alternative process it was vintage photography and it just all came together in this amazing way so anyway that is my pick for Heinrich Cohen the perfect photograph number 10 is saw lighters early black-and-white which was published by steidel and association with Howard Greenberg gallery and they've done several volumes of books together the first was saw lighters early color book that came out several years ago the second in this series is Saul Leiter early black-and-white which is actually a two volume set Volume one is called interior and the second book is called exterior and they deal with that exactly it's interior photos in the first and outdoor shots in a second Saul Leiter is one of the most important photographers in the street style in New York City of capturing that moment in time in the 1950s through a Saul shot up into the 1980s was pretty obscure most of his life until Greenberg discovered an exhibition of his work and really brought him to the public attention Saul Leiter is fabulous I've covered him on the show many times and I think this book is an absolute essential to have steidel are doing some really important work in terms of publishing monographs and I think that the their work is outstanding but particularly this combination of Howard rainberge working with steidel the next in the series as I've heard is going to be a book on Sid Grossman who is also representative of that time and another name that's a little more obscure today he was a photographer and activist in the 1950s who was responsible largely for the photo League and also because of his interesting communism caught the eye of the federal government and that created problems for both him and his career but anyway saw lighters early black and white is absolutely essential I know I said ten books but I don't think this would be complete without an 11th so here's your one to grow on this would be on riccati ever since the decisive moment which I think is one of my favorite books that I've run across and I did a whole show on this a few weeks back and so I'll let you check that out if you're interested in seeing specifics on this book but what's interesting is I have seen some criticism on the print quality and I think the print quality is outstanding here what you have to realize is this is a reissue that steidel did and is a reissue of a book that came out many many years ago so the printing quality that they went for and here actually mimics the type of print quality that you would have on the original versions and so I think for that reason I think it's very important as a historical document and it is absolutely fantastic and it contains images that you can find in a lot of different places but to have this book just as a work of art on its own in fact in many ways there were some problems with the original editions with this with the glue letting up and actually would come apart and so to have a really good quality version of this I think is amazing and on Urquhart aber saw obviously probably one of the great street photographers photo journalists in existence and this is an absolutely fantastic reissue this book of course it comes with with notes and a whole behind the scene so if you're interested from a historical perspective and I think if you're only gonna buy one book this year I think this is definitely a classic it's it's it's amazing if you guys are interested in book publishing or have even considered doing a monograph of your own work you might want to check out our sponsor this week or the awesome folks over at lynda.com lynda.com have one of the most extensive online libraries of training tutorials that you're gonna find anywhere and if you're interested in learning more about publishing your own book through a service like blurb or if you're interested in Adobe InDesign or illustrator and how to make your images look amazing in print Linda are probably the place to check out and they have a deal for art of photography viewers right now where you can get ten days of free unlimited access to the entire website what you want to do is use a special link you want to use lynda.com slash AOP is Linda with a white comm /a Opie that lets Linda know I sent you and that will give you a 10 day free unlimited trial to the entire website so go learn something new I want to give a special shout out and thanks to the folks at lynda.com for once again sponsoring another episode of the art of photography that was my top 10 book pix plus one for 2015 and this was actually kind of difficult to do because I wanted to include some of the greatest hits of things that we've talked about already this year but I also wanted to include a couple things that I haven't shown yet to give you a little bit of a taste of what's coming up in 2016 we're gonna do a lot of photo let episodes that are coming up I'm very excited about plus we have the whole artist series which is made possible thanks to the generosity of you guys so I'm really excited as we fire that up in the next few weeks the last thing I want to mention today is my friend Sara DG who I talked about in this show a few months ago as an extremely talented photographer and filmmaker and all-around creative person and she came over to the studio earlier this week and we spent a day working on filming for her creative spaces series and I'm really excited and honored to be a part of that and she talks a lot about that in her latest vlog post that she did and so I will link to that wherever you guys are watching this look for in the show description or up here and anyone go check that out she's got a couple little teasers in there and I'm really excited to have been a part of this and Sara is absolutely wonderful and I can't wait to see what she comes up with this if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always subscribe so you'll be up to date on all the awesome things that we're gonna be doing here in the new year until the next video and until 2016 I'll see you guys laterso welcome to the final show of 2015 this has been an amazing year on the art of photography and I feel like the community aspect of it has been what has been so special to me there's a lot of really neat things that are coming up in 2016 that I can't wait to get to the artists series is in progress so we should start filming on that in the next couple weeks and I'm really excited about some of the things that are coming up and of course that entire thing was made possible with funding from you guys and I just want to say thanks again for that I really appreciate it and for the last show of the year today I want to do something that I don't normally do on here but somebody suggested that I'd do a recap of my top 10 favorite books of this year and as most of you know I do a lot of book reviews on this show photography monographs I think are so important to learning to the appreciation of photography and to really they represent a lot of my passion and that's why I like to share so many of those here on the show so this was hard to whittle down to ten there's a lot of books that I bought this year and I want to say that not all of these books were published this year and that's very important to note these were just books that came into my collection this year and some of them I've shared on the show with you guys and some of them I haven't so let's get right down to it so this is my top 10 picks of my favorite books for 2015 so in no particular order here I'm just gonna go through these my first pick is Magnum contact sheets which is a really special book this is one I did an entire show on earlier this year and contact sheets are fascinating to me and what they've done with this book is they've taken some very well-known photos by Magnum photographers and you get to see the contact sheets and all the selects and everything that was on the film roll as you go through here and what's really amazing to me about this and just I think it's something that is really special about to the era of when everybody used film for photojournalism is that you get to see something that's very personal that goes into the making of a photograph or the final select you get to see the thought process and the creative process behind the image in a lot of cases and you typically you know with a lot of these you'll see variations of the image that could have been selected you'll see variations in exposure and just trying to get things just right and being able to study some of these contact sheets it's not often that you get to do that a lot of artists are very protect of something like that because it shows that process and it's a little like looking through somebody's underwear drawer sometimes I suppose but it's this book is so well done and it is highly recommended I think of all these books just from a learning standpoint if you're into photojournalism or street photography this is absolutely essential to your collection next up is a monograph by Lewis far and Lewis far is a more obscure photographer but he was part of what we've come to know in the last 10 to 20 years is this rediscovery of New York Street photographers in the 1950s 1960s so he was a contemporary of Saul Leiter Richard poo sent dart is another gentleman that I did a show on earlier this year Louis Farr is amazing and it's really interesting that at the time this was the you know as a collective of photographers who did a large amount of personal work and they were just photographing New York in that era and these photos are absolutely wonderful in here this is not an expensive book and even for an obscure photographer he has such a wonderful style of personalizing images and just doing some wonderful things and it's really well done so that is my second pick is Luis Farah my third pick is from uncertain to blue and this is a book that I have not featured on the show before but I have featured the photographer Keith Carter before Keith is one of my favorite photographers I think he is one of the more important living photographers today and this is an early book of his this was actually a gift I got for my birthday this year for my parents so special in that regard too but from uncertain to blue is as I mentioned an early work and so a lot of the things that we know now in Keith's style some of the whimsical nature and some of the mystical nature these are more straight-ahead raw images so you're not going to see much that's moving in more of an artistic direction or a conceptual direction and these so much but the whole story behind this book and it's really wonderful is that Keith and his wife at one point decided to go on a trip and they were considering exotic locations and of course Keith lives in Texas and they were looking at a map one day and kind of realizing how funny a lot of little Texas towns the naming is and so they decided to plot out all these funky name to Texas towns and actually do a road trip and I think it lasted actually several years where they would come and go from the road trip but uncertain is the name of a town in Texas and so is blue and some of the stories that unravel and as Keith mentions in this book and the in the notes that it was really more difficult than he imagined that would be to shoe because you go out there and there's no landscape that Ansel Adams would go after there's no you know street photography like you'd find in New York that this was a very different landscape that was very Texas in nature but you know Keith is a fan of the mysticism and the magic that comes from Texas as a state and that is represented in this book and it's a very early work and I think the other reason I am so fascinated with this book is if you have followed key throughout his career he is one of those rare artists who continues to evolve he doesn't land on one thing and then just continue to produce that the rest of his career he actually every set of images is a little bit different and moving in a different direction on what he did before and his images that he's doing today are completely different than this but I think this is a wonderful insight into Keith's work and this is such a beautiful book so from uncertainty blew by Keith Carter my fourth pick is builder levees monograph builder levee photographer and builder is a really interesting photographer he's somebody that I have not really talked about on the show much before this is a book that I recently was given and he is amazing he's probably best known if you have seen his work for a series of images that he did in Appalachia and he has a very interesting style that is very street photography in nature I think it's more social documentary you probably want to call it and he has this wonderful way of capturing humanity and he has several books out and there is a book just specifically on the Appalachia project but what I really love about this book is it also covers other locations as well as Appalachia so you see some images from New York there's some images from Mongolia and also from Cuba and I think it's interesting because when you have a photographer that is probably best-known and associated with a certain place or a certain style of imagery and when you see how that adapts itself to other cultures and other civilizations as well these great horse images that are in here and builders a wonderful photographer and I will talk more about him coming up in 2016 and I really recommend this book the Appalachia book is fabulous as well but I'm picking this one because I think it just shows a little bit more diversity I love this image on the cover with this flock of birds going over the top brilliant photographer and I think he's one of the important greats next up is a book that I didn't know about until fairly recently when somebody tweeted that they had purchased this and I got very interested and I have talked about a Lexie Tedder renko on the show before this but it's his new book it's called the city as a novel and Aleksey is an extremely important photographer he's in his mid-50s he was born and raised in Russia and lives in New York now but the work that I was familiar with of his was done in the mid 90s and is absolutely brilliant I've showed you guys a lot of those images on the show and like the image on the cover here with this group going up the staircase which kind of evokes this black smoke to it and he does a lot of these long time to exposures and he really is comfortable with long exposures and a lot of his work is evocative of that in some way shape or form and so this one also has some newer images as well which is why it's a big pick of mine and there's some images from Havana in here which is interesting that I was just talking about builder levy as well from Venice also New York City and you see in all these images you know this this whole idea of time and motion blurring people moving through the images and so it gives the it's almost like treating the street is like a movie set in a way and when you see these ghost-like apparitions of blurry people moving through them it creates a way of telling a story is very unique and very original and I absolutely love tedder anko's work and I highly recommend the city as a novel of course most of you know that I have talked about Chris macaw quite a bit this year he was involved in an exhibition that I saw at the Getty earlier this year on contemporary photographers and pushing the envelope of what the medium will do and Chris macaw is amazing he's a california-based photographer and if you haven't seen his work before I will link that episode up in the show notes he works with these really huge homemade cameras and shoots large format on to photographic paper and his whole technique involves these really long exposures capturing the Sun in motion and so literally what will happen is the same effect that you get from a magnifying glass when you are able to like actually create fire and burn a hole in something that's what the lens does to the paper so the Sun moves and it's really hard to tell from a reprint you have to see these in person it actually physically burns a hole into the medium and it also has this solarization effect so if you shot straight to photographic paper it would come out as a negative and what happens is when it's exposed to the Sun this long and uses older expired papers it does have a solarization effect where it's kind of starts splitting into a positive as well Chris is amazing photographer he is well known professionally as a palladium printer as well and I think the world of Chris and so sunburn is still available as far as I know just came out I believe this year and it is a fabulous book number seven is a book that is very special because this one comes from somebody who watches the show and this is my friend David Brooke over and David is a beautiful photographer he lives and works in Jackson Hole Wyoming he shoots landscapes and he owns a gallery there and I believe another one in Santa Fe and what I love about David's working I did a whole show on this which I will link up in the show description as well but you don't get rehashed Ansel Adams in here his work is very unique it's very original it's very beautifully done I love his interpretation of landscape and then the other thing that's just utterly impressive is his whole talent for printing and what you're able to see here and you know shooting these like these snow scapes and I mentioned this one when I did a show on this earlier this year you know this is kind of something that we see Michael kind of doing a lot of and he doesn't copy Kenna he does his own thing and I think David is an absolutely fabulous and underrated photographer and his approach to shooting the American landscape is very original it's very unique and is so well done and I really think the world of David so this is David's book it's called the road actually have two copies of this this is the the black covered version and then I have a red one that's a clamshell version as well that I showed and so I'll link up to that episode as well next up is Rothko Sugimoto and this is a book that I covered earlier this year but I found this to be so fascinating this was an exhibition that paced gallery in New York did and it was a combination of Rothko's black paintings mixed with Hiroshige Sugimoto seascapes and so it's a really interesting comparison between the two and you have two people who are not of the same generation but did very similar work in a minimalist style so this is one of the Rothko black paintings where you see basically the horizon in the middle and of course this pairs up so beautifully with with Sugimoto seascapes and there is some text in here that talks about the fact that Sugimoto wasn't exactly influenced by Rothko although he did appreciate his work but there is such a beauty in seeing the correlation between this black era of paintings and then Sudha Moto's work which is very typically out-of-focus landscape work and then this entire series that he did years ago with seascapes and there are hundreds of these photos where he shot all these variations with the horizon right down the middle and if you're in a minimalist work and you're into the the relationship between photography and painting between two of probably the greatest living artist of all time hero she's super mojo and rock mark Mark Rothko easy for me to say I highly recommend this book my 9th pick is Heinrich Kunz the perfect photograph and I've talked about Cohen on the show several times he is normally associated with the pectoralis movement and Koons work is very unique and that he worked quite a bit in a process known as autochrome which you see on this image on the front and autochrome was one of the first commercially available color processes these were glass plates that you would purchase that were made essentially with potato starch that used a dot pattern to create different basic fields of color and so it has a really interesting look to it the grain is absolutely beautiful in these images he worked extensively with autochrome so there's an enormous amount of photographs that exist and they all kind of have this surrealistic look to them some of them have this strange swirl to them and you know the way the blur works in that but also the the way the color saturated is very unique to this process it's interesting because after covering Heinrich Cohen on the show I've had more people email and asked me it is their way to do autochrome today I think it's something that has a really interesting look to it unfortunately there's really not it required a pretty intense mechanical process to actually make the make the plates and so it's something that's a bit of a loss process but as you can see in Koons work is absolutely intensely amazing what's interesting is I remember the first time I saw some of Kunz prints in person was a couple years ago when there was an exhibition at Howard Greenberg gallery in New York and it was there was some black and white pieces in the show as well and some of the materials they were printed on like Japanese tissue paper it was just it was alternative process it was vintage photography and it just all came together in this amazing way so anyway that is my pick for Heinrich Cohen the perfect photograph number 10 is saw lighters early black-and-white which was published by steidel and association with Howard Greenberg gallery and they've done several volumes of books together the first was saw lighters early color book that came out several years ago the second in this series is Saul Leiter early black-and-white which is actually a two volume set Volume one is called interior and the second book is called exterior and they deal with that exactly it's interior photos in the first and outdoor shots in a second Saul Leiter is one of the most important photographers in the street style in New York City of capturing that moment in time in the 1950s through a Saul shot up into the 1980s was pretty obscure most of his life until Greenberg discovered an exhibition of his work and really brought him to the public attention Saul Leiter is fabulous I've covered him on the show many times and I think this book is an absolute essential to have steidel are doing some really important work in terms of publishing monographs and I think that the their work is outstanding but particularly this combination of Howard rainberge working with steidel the next in the series as I've heard is going to be a book on Sid Grossman who is also representative of that time and another name that's a little more obscure today he was a photographer and activist in the 1950s who was responsible largely for the photo League and also because of his interesting communism caught the eye of the federal government and that created problems for both him and his career but anyway saw lighters early black and white is absolutely essential I know I said ten books but I don't think this would be complete without an 11th so here's your one to grow on this would be on riccati ever since the decisive moment which I think is one of my favorite books that I've run across and I did a whole show on this a few weeks back and so I'll let you check that out if you're interested in seeing specifics on this book but what's interesting is I have seen some criticism on the print quality and I think the print quality is outstanding here what you have to realize is this is a reissue that steidel did and is a reissue of a book that came out many many years ago so the printing quality that they went for and here actually mimics the type of print quality that you would have on the original versions and so I think for that reason I think it's very important as a historical document and it is absolutely fantastic and it contains images that you can find in a lot of different places but to have this book just as a work of art on its own in fact in many ways there were some problems with the original editions with this with the glue letting up and actually would come apart and so to have a really good quality version of this I think is amazing and on Urquhart aber saw obviously probably one of the great street photographers photo journalists in existence and this is an absolutely fantastic reissue this book of course it comes with with notes and a whole behind the scene so if you're interested from a historical perspective and I think if you're only gonna buy one book this year I think this is definitely a classic it's it's it's amazing if you guys are interested in book publishing or have even considered doing a monograph of your own work you might want to check out our sponsor this week or the awesome folks over at lynda.com lynda.com have one of the most extensive online libraries of training tutorials that you're gonna find anywhere and if you're interested in learning more about publishing your own book through a service like blurb or if you're interested in Adobe InDesign or illustrator and how to make your images look amazing in print Linda are probably the place to check out and they have a deal for art of photography viewers right now where you can get ten days of free unlimited access to the entire website what you want to do is use a special link you want to use lynda.com slash AOP is Linda with a white comm /a Opie that lets Linda know I sent you and that will give you a 10 day free unlimited trial to the entire website so go learn something new I want to give a special shout out and thanks to the folks at lynda.com for once again sponsoring another episode of the art of photography that was my top 10 book pix plus one for 2015 and this was actually kind of difficult to do because I wanted to include some of the greatest hits of things that we've talked about already this year but I also wanted to include a couple things that I haven't shown yet to give you a little bit of a taste of what's coming up in 2016 we're gonna do a lot of photo let episodes that are coming up I'm very excited about plus we have the whole artist series which is made possible thanks to the generosity of you guys so I'm really excited as we fire that up in the next few weeks the last thing I want to mention today is my friend Sara DG who I talked about in this show a few months ago as an extremely talented photographer and filmmaker and all-around creative person and she came over to the studio earlier this week and we spent a day working on filming for her creative spaces series and I'm really excited and honored to be a part of that and she talks a lot about that in her latest vlog post that she did and so I will link to that wherever you guys are watching this look for in the show description or up here and anyone go check that out she's got a couple little teasers in there and I'm really excited to have been a part of this and Sara is absolutely wonderful and I can't wait to see what she comes up with this if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always subscribe so you'll be up to date on all the awesome things that we're gonna be doing here in the new year until the next video and until 2016 I'll see you guys later\n"