The Photo Review

As both an art form and a universal language, the photograph has an extraordinary ability to connect and communicate with others. But with over one trillion photos taken each year, why do so few of them truly connect? Why do so few of them grab our emotions or our imaginations? It is not because the images lack focus or proper exposure; with advances in technology, the camera does that so well these days. Photographer David duChemin believes the majority of our images fall short because they lack soul. And without soul, the images have no ability to resonate with others. They simply cannot connect with the viewer, or even—if we’re being truthful—with ourselves.

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In The Soul of the Camera: The Photographer’s Place in Picture-Making, David explores what it means to make better photographs. Illustrated with a collection of beautiful black-and-white images, the book’s essays address topics such as craft, mastery, vision, audience, discipline, story, and authenticity. The Soul of the Camera is a personal and deeply pragmatic book that quietly yet forcefully challenges the idea that our cameras, lenses, and settings are anything more than dumb and mute tools. It is the photographer, not the camera, that can and must learn to make better photographs—photographs that convey our vision, connect with others, and, at their core, contain our humanity. The Soul of the Camera helps us do that.

Jay Maisel, hailed as one of the most brilliant, gifted photographers of all time, is much more than that. He is a mentor, teacher, and trailblazer to many photographers, and a hero to those who feel Jay’s teaching has changed the way they see and create their own photography. He is a living legend whose work is studied around the world, and whose teaching style and presentation garner standing ovations and critical acclaim every time he takes the stage. Now, for the first time ever, Jay puts his amazing insights and learning moments from a lifetime behind the lens into a book that communicates the three most important aspects of street photography: light, gesture, and color. Each page unveils something new and challenges you to rethink everything you know about the bigger picture of photography. This isn’t a book about f-stops or ISOs. It’s about seeing. It’s about being surrounded by the ordinary and learning how to find the extraordinary. It’s about training your mind, and your eyes, to see and capture the world in a way that delights, engages, and captivates your viewers, and there is nobody that communicates this, visually or through the written word, like Jay Maisel. Light, Gesture & Color is the seminal work of one of the true photographic geniuses of our time, and it can be your key to opening another level of understanding, appreciation, wonder, and creativity as you learn to express yourself, and your view of the world, through your camera. If you’re ready to break through the barriers that have held your photography back and that have kept you from making the types of images you’ve always dreamed of, and you’re ready to learn what photography is really about, you’re holding the key in your hands at this very moment.

A set of bold theoretical reflections on how the social photo has remade our world. With the rise of the smart phone and social media, cameras have become ubiquitous, infiltrating nearly every aspect of social life. The glowing camera screen is the lens through which many of seek to communicate our experience. But our thinking about photography has been slow to catch-up; this major fixture of everyday life is still often treated in the terms of art or journalism. In The Social Photo, social theorist Nathan Jurgenson develops bold new ways of understanding photography in the age of social media and the new kinds of images that have emerged: the selfie, the faux-vintage photo, the self-destructing image, the food photo. Jurgenson shows how these devices and platforms have remade the world and our understanding of ourselves within it.

First published in 1992 to wide critical acclaim, Pictures From Home is Larry Sultan's pendant to his parents. Sultan returned home to Southern California periodically in the 1980s and the decade-long sequence moves between registers, combining contemporary photographs with film stills from home movies, fragments of conversation, Sultan's own writings and other memorabilia. The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. Simultaneously the distance usually maintained between the photographer and his subjects also slips in an exchange of dialogue and emotion that is unique to this work. Significantly increasing the page count of the original book, this MACK design of Pictures From Home clarifies the multiplicity of voices - both textual and pictorial - in order to afford a fresh perspective of this seminal body of work -- Provided by the publisher.

"Use This if You Want to Take Great Photographs is packed with fun photography prompts and inspiring images by master photographers so you can get creative with your camera. Create your own highly personal photobook by sticking in your pictures with the adhesive corners provided or simply dip in and out when you're stuck for ideas. Whatever your specific interests - street, studio, still life, landscape or portrait photography - you're free to interpret the prompts in any way you want"--From publisher's website.

Learn to take great photos with your iPhone—the camera you always have with you!

Imagine if someone took the same photographic techniques, principles, and tools used by high-end and professional photographers, but applied them to shooting with an iPhone. Imagine the type of images you’d be able to create using those same ideas. Well, finally, somebody has.

The world’s #1 best-selling photography techniques author is about to break all the rules as he shows you how to apply the same techniques today’s top pro photographers use to make stunning images. You’re going to learn exactly how to use these techniques to create images that people will just not believe you could actually take with a phone (but with the quality of the iPhone’s camera, you absolutely can!).

Scott leaves all the techno-speak behind and, instead, treats the whole book as if it were just you and he out on a shoot with your iPhones, using his trademark casual, plain-English writing style to help you unlock the power of your iPhone to make the type of pictures you never thought could be done with a phone. You’ll learn:

• Which tools to use to make pro-quality portraits in any lighting situation.

• How to create stunning landscape shots that people will swear you took with an expensive DSLR or mirrorless camera.

• Proven posing techniques that flatter your subject and make anyone you photograph look their very best in every shot.

• How to organize and edit your photos like a pro!

• The pros’ top tips for making amazing shots of everything from flowers to product shots, from food photography to travel shots, and everything in between.

Each page covers a single concept, a single tool, or a trick to take your iPhone photography from snapshots to shots that will make your friends and family say, “Wait…you took this?!”

The Magazine of Photography and Ideas. As the United States navigates a political moment defined by the close of the Obama era and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter activism, Aperture magazine releases "Vision & Justice," a special issue guest edited by Sarah Lewis, the distinguished author and art historian, addressing the role of photography in the African American experience. "Vision & Justice" includes a wide span of photographic projects by such luminaries as Lyle Ashton Harris, Annie Leibovitz, Sally Mann, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis, as well as the brilliant voices of an emerging generation―Devin Allen, Awol Erizku, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deana Lawson and Hank Willis Thomas, among many others. These portfolios are complemented by essays from some of the most influential voices in American culture including contributions by celebrated writers, historians, and artists such as Vince Aletti, Teju Cole, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Margo Jefferson, Wynton Marsalis and Claudia Rankine. "Vision and Justice" features two covers. This issue comes with an image by Richard Avedon, Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader, with his father, Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, and his son, Martin Luther King III, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963.