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

Photography Changes Everything – Marvin Heiferman

 From Amazon: Photography Changes Everythingdrawn from the online Smithsonian Photography Initiative offers a provocative rethinking of photography’s impact on our culture and our lives. It is a reader-friendly exploration of the many ways photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world. At this transitional moment […]

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

Photography Today – Mark Durden

 From Amazon: A lively and accessible survey of photography as art since the 1960s, exploring how, in the hands of some of the world’s greatest photographic artists, it has developed into a respected and versatile artistic med

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

Photography: A Critical Introduction – Liz Wells

 From Amazon: Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides […]

Read More
February 23, 2026 - Great Text Book / Italian / Writer

Photoshow- Landmark Exhibitions –  Alessandra Mauro

  From Amazon: From photography’s earliest days, the thrill and immediacy of the new medium were defined at the first public exhibitions. Half art, half science, photography captured the attention of everyone from eager technophiles to curious painters: the art of representation was about to change. This is the first book to study the history of photography […]

Read More
February 23, 2026 - Great Text Book / Writer

Recommended Reading List for MFA

The list below is mostly from the MFA course and I cant say I read all of them – many were available in the library at Ulster University and I ddi try to dig in to as many as I could – I sometimes struggled to find the balance between research and work on the […]

Read More
February 23, 2026 - All nationalities / British / Great Text Book / Writer

Street Photography Now – Sophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren

  From Amazon The definitive anthology of contemporary street photography across the globe Get up close and personal with the world’s best street photographers as they capture the drama of everyday life at 1/125 of a second. Rub shoulders with high-rollers, street vendors and dog walkers. Prowl sidewalks and back alleys, encountering comic absurdities, small […]

Read More
February 23, 2026 - French / Great Text Book / Writer

The Mind’s Eye – Henri Cartier-Bresson

 From Amazon: Henri Cartier-Bresson’s writings on photography and photographers have been published sporadically over the past 45 years. His essays―several of which have never before been translated into English―are collected here for the first time. The Mind’s Eye features Cartier-Bresson’s famous text on “the decisive moment” as well as his observations on Moscow, Cuba and China […]

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

The Photograph as Contemporary Art – Charlotte Cotton

  From Amazon:  This book, now updated and expanded, is a profusely illustrated survey of the use of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s. It features the work of more than 170 of internationally renowned and up-and-coming artist-photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Richard Billingham, Jürgen Teller, Thomas Demand, Christopher Williams, Sherrie […]

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

The Photographers Eye – John Szarkowski

 From Amazon: The Photographer’s Eye, available again after some years out of print, offers a guide to the medium’s visual language through works by such early masters as Atget, Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Strand and Weston. In this re-issue, 172 illustrations reveal the extraordinary range of the photograph from the early days of the medium’s development to the […]

Read More
February 18, 2026 - British / Great Text Book / Writer

The Pleasures of Good Photographs – Gerry Badger

  Review by Aperture:   The Pleasures of Good Photographs is an intellectual and aesthetic excursion led by Gerry Badger, one of the field’s eminent critics and popular writers and the author of more than a dozen books including both volumes of The Photobook: A History. In this new volume of essays, Badger offers insight into some […]

Read More

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.