February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

Art Photography Now – Susan Bright

  From Amazon: This revised and expanded edition of Art Photography Now builds on the hugely successful first edition (2005), which traced the developments in art photography since the mid-nineteenth century and profiled world-famous artists such as Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin and Martin Parr. The book retains its seven themed sections – Portrait, Landscape, Narrative, […]

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February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

Between the Eyes – David Levi Strauss

 From Amazon: David Levi Strauss is a writer whose visual and intellectual sensibilities are both acute and expansive. His trenchant writings on photography and photographers have been collected for this volume from a broad range of magazines, including Aperture, Artforum and The Nation. In Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, Strauss tackles subjects as diverse […]

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February 23, 2026 - British / Great Text Book / Writer

Fifty Key Writers on Photography – Mark Durden

 From Amazon: A clear and concise survey of some of the most significant writers on photography who have played a major part in defining and influencing our understanding of the medium. It provides a succinct overview of writing on photography from a diverse range of disciplines and perspectives and examines the shifting perception of the medium […]

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February 23, 2026 - German / Great Text Book / Writer

How You Look At It- Photography of the 20th Century – Thomas Weski

From Amazon: This collection explores the various ways in which photography shaped our view of the 20th century, at the same time providing a record of the radical changes undergone by our towns, landscapes and private lives. Carefully juxtaposed with photographs the are paintings and sculptures.

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February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

Inverted Odysseys – Shelley Rice

 From Amazon: An “odyssey” through historical, theoretical, critical, and literary perspectives on the three artists. Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sherman were born in different countries, in different generations; Cahun in France in 1894, Deren in Russia in 1917, and Sherman in the United States in 1954. Yet they share a deeply theatrical obsession that […]

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February 23, 2026 - American / Curator / Great Text Book / Writer

Looking at Photographs – John Szarkowski

 From Amazon:  ‘This is a picture book, and its first purpose is to provide the material for simple delectation’, wrote curator John Szarkowski in this first survey of The Museum of Modern Art’s photography collection. Since 1930, when the Museum accessioned its first photograph, it has assembled an extraordinary and wide-ranging collection of pictures for […]

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February 23, 2026 - American / Curator / Great Text Book / Writer

Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 – John Szarkowski

 Whe whole book is available on the MOMA web site here:  https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2347_300062558.pdf NOTES: The following handwritten notes are from my MFA research notebook. This book was one of my favourite sources. The handwriting is almost illegible and the spelling worse!  

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February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

New Documents, 1967 – Sarah Hermanson Meister

 From Amazon: In 1967, The Museum of Modern Art presented New Documents, a landmark exhibition organized by John Szarkowski that brought together a selection of works by three photographers whose individual achievements signalled the artistic potential for the medium in the 1960s and beyond: Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. Though largely unknown at the […]

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February 23, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

On Photography – Susan Sontag

  From Waterstones: Susan Sontag’s groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the ‘insatiability of the photographing eye’ has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia […]

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February 22, 2026 - American / Great Text Book / Writer

PHOTOGRAPHY A Very Short Introduction – Steven Edwards

Review by Amazon Photography: A Very Short Introduction examines the definition, importance, and meaning of photography by combining a sense of the historical development of photography with an analysis of its purpose and meaning within a wider cultural context. Photographs are everywhere, in print and online. They are an integral part of our daily lives […]

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RESOURCES

This is where I keep the research — over 200 studies of the photographers, writers, curators and exhibitions I’ve found most compelling. Each entry offers a summary of their practice together with a few examples of their work, where copyright permits.

FOCUS


Browse by genre (use the hamburger menu above on mobile) — Street, Fashion, Landscape, Documentary and others. Most of these categories took shape during my MFA studies and many of the people here appear in multiple categories.

NATIONALITIES

View landmark exhibitions like New Topographics and The Family of Man alongside individual studies of Magnum photographers and many others, like the "Terrible Three", who have shaped the way we see.