Stone Junction

From The Shelf - Michael Ormerod - States of America A lovely...

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:38:00 -0400

From The Shelf - Michael Ormerod - States of America

A lovely book that deserves a lot more attention. It chronicles, Ormerod’s travels across the US in the late 1980s. Shades of Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand and Lee Friedlander are all here - with a British slant on it. Sadly Ormerod was killed in a roadside accident in 1991 while photographing in Arizona. Get this book if you can. It’s topnotch.

4th April 2013

Recent Buy - Mitch Epstein - Work A collection of different...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:07:37 -0400

Recent Buy - Mitch Epstein - Work

A collection of different stuff from Epstein’s career. The cover shot is taken from the series Family Business, based on Epstein’s father’s real estate company which crumbled and eventually failed in the early 1990s.

16th March 2013

From The Shelf - Leroy Grannis - Surf Photography of the 1960s...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:36:03 -0400

From The Shelf - Leroy Grannis - Surf Photography of the 1960s and 1970s

A Christmas present from my mother-in-law from a few years gone back. I’ve never been surfing but I definitely love a surf photo book. Grannis was the super-daddy surf photographer of his era and this is a lovely selection of his work. I would really recommend this for flicking through on a cold winter evening, when all you fancy doing is hopping on a flight to California. Hang-ten dudes!

12th February 2013

Recent Buy - John Phillips - Bled to the Gutter It’s a...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:25:00 -0400

Recent Buy - John Phillips - Bled to the Gutter

It’s a little bashed but I bought this book on the strength of the title. I picked it up at one of my favourite second hand shops - The Keel Row Bookshop in North Shields. It’s worth a visit if you are in the area.

Phillips’ biography tells stories of being a “reporter-photographer” from the mid 1940s through to the 70s mostly for Life Magazine. There are some amazing tales of wartime liberation and meeting world leaders like Tito and Kruschev. I think this book must actually have been owned by Phillips as it has the sticker inside addressed “Sender : John Phillips, 23 Via San Maurilio, Milano”…classy address John.

12th January 2013

From The Shelf - Tom Wood - Bus Odyssey I picked this up a few...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:15:00 -0400

From The Shelf - Tom Wood - Bus Odyssey

I picked this up a few years ago at the great Camden Lock Books which actually isn’t in Camden but is under the roundabout in Old Street, London. It’s a reprint of the classic Tom Wood book All Zones Off Peak. This version is published by Hantje Cantz. I’m not sure about the glossy cover but the work inside is great. Get it if you can.

15th Dec 2012

Recent Buy - Young Meteors - Martin Harrison I picked this up,...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:50:00 -0400

Recent Buy - Young Meteors - Martin Harrison

I picked this up, hidden at the back of a pile of books at Olivers Book Shop in Whitley Bay, Newcastle for £5. It’s a collection of the ground breaking 60s British photographers who pioneered the new world of Sunday magazine supplements. There is much from the well known suspects here..David Bailey, Don McCullin, Terence Donovan. However it’s the lesser known who fill out the story.. Graham Finlayson, John Bulmer, Roger Mayne and Nigel Henderson. Softback only but a nice book nonetheless.

1st October 2012

Recent Buy - Illuminance - Rinko Kawauchi Another success from...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:29:00 -0400

Recent Buy - Illuminance - Rinko Kawauchi

Another success from the Japanese photographer Kawauchi. The usual mix of the ephemeral and the obscure. Dead deer, walks in the park, raw meat, butterflies, boxing..whatever! A delicately printed book but maybe not as good as The Eyes, The Ears, another of her collections I like.

20th September 2012

Recent Buy - The Last Years of Walker Evans - Jerry L...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:10:00 -0400

Recent Buy - The Last Years of Walker Evans - Jerry L Thompson

Thompson was Walkers assistant in the last years of his life and this absorbing biography brings much more than the usual hagiography of a great life. I get the feeling that Thompson, a talented photographer in his own right, took on more than he bargained for when he began this role helping Evans. The account includes work on his great Polaroid portraits but also details his sad and somewhat lonely demise right up till his death in 1975. I picked up this book up at the great second book shop, Photobooks International. Definitely worth a visit, if you’re in the Kings’ Cross, London area.

5th July 2012

Recent Buy - Woody Guthrie, A Life - Joe Klein Great biography...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:56:00 -0400

Recent Buy - Woody Guthrie, A Life - Joe Klein

Great biography of America’s hillybilly singer laureate. Klein, a Rolling Stone writer at the time, penned this in 1980 before achieving great success with his anonymous book Primary Colors in the Clinton era. Guthrie’s life has been much covered but this super biography gained great exposure when Bruce Springsteen mentioned it several times during the Born in the USA tour. As Woody said, “This is Land is Your Land”…it sure is!

4th May 2012

Recent Buy - Easy Riders - Peter Biskind Biskind dishes the dirt...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:32:00 -0400

Recent Buy - Easy Riders - Peter Biskind

Biskind dishes the dirt on the 70s Hollywood elite, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicolson, Dennis Hopper et al. Great book and great cover from one of the UK’s best cover designers, Will Webb. Managed to pick up this rarish 1st edition hard cover through Abe.com. Worth a read if you’re into the ‘flicks’

10th March 2012

Train Books

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:35:00 -0400

I’ve been riding the rails a lot this past two weeks up and down the UK for various reasons and it set me thinking about the train books I have. The glamour of train travel is hard to muster these days when you’re stuck in commuter hell but it wasn’t always like that. As Johnny Cash, the biggest train enthusiast of all put it, ”I’m gonna climb aboard and ride until I learn to smile, I’ll be knockin out the blues while I’m knockin out the miles”

14th January 2012

Train Books - The Call of Trains - Jim Shaughnessy While the...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:19:00 -0400

Train Books - The Call of Trains - Jim Shaughnessy

While the reputation of celebrated American train photographer, O Winston Link has risen to dizzying heights since his death in 2001 (he even has his own museum), that of his colleague, Jim Shaughnessy seems to have remained underground. I picked this book up in a bargain sale for £2 and the images of US train yards and working crews throughout the 1950s are wonderful. Much less posed and lit than Link’s work they give a great insight into the dying days of steam. It’s verging on the dreaded coffee table format with a rather glossy dust jacket and design that is no great shakes but I like it. Nice work Jim.

14th January 2012

Train Books - RFK Funeral Train - Paul Fusco This is surely the...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 18:00:00 -0400

Train Books - RFK Funeral Train - Paul Fusco

This is surely the most celebrated photobook about trains ever published. The book is actually about only one train and there isn’t even a picture of it. The book charts the passage of Robert Kennedy’s coffin from New York to Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C on a specially commissioned train journey in 1968. Fusco turned his camera outwards towards the people who line the rail route, all standing in dignified silence to honour the murdered presidential candidate as the train passed. RFK was a symbol of great hope in the US before his death in 1968 and the vacant expressions on the faces of the mourners gives a feeling of a nation utterly bewildered by what has happened.

The book was first published as a print on demand title by the Photographers Gallery in London to accompany an exhibition in 1999. Subsequently, as shown here, it was published by Umbrage editions in 2001 and finally was reprinted by Aperture in 2008. One of my all time favourite books.

14th January 2012

Train Books - East is East/Go East - Klavdij Sluban I liked this...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:40:00 -0400

Train Books - East is East/Go East - Klavdij Sluban

I liked this book so much I bought it twice. Although they have different covers, different titles and different publishers, East is East and Go East are the same book within. Two years after buying them, I’ve just realised this! Anyway, although it’s not about trains, the book features photographs by Slovenian photographer, Sluban as he travels to the East of Russia along the Trans-Siberian highway, surely with his Leica. Lots of gritty shots of stations, with gloomy shadows to match. To me it feels like a take on Robert Franks, The Americans but on the rails rather than the road and certainly a lot darker. Maybe that’s a down point because a little smile here and there might have lightened the tale a little. Anyway I still like it - twice!

14th January 2012

Recent Buy - The Hitcher by Chris Coekin This book charts the...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:16:00 -0500

Recent Buy - The Hitcher by Chris Coekin

This book charts the travelling life of Coekin as he moved around the UK, hitchiking over a six year period. It’s a modern take on the Jack Kerouac, On the Road spirit, a life that is fast disappearing. Coekin was born in the same year as myself and I did my share of hitching in my youth. One of my most memorable days involved getting picked up 14 times on my way north from Blackpool to my parents house in Highland Perthshire. A great record Chris.

14th November 2011

Recent Buy - Tafanelli le charbonnier by Jonathan Robertson One...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:57:00 -0500

Recent Buy - Tafanelli le charbonnier by Jonathan Robertson

One of my favourite finds of recent years, maybe because I picked it up from a pile of books in a skip. It’s a little worn around the edges and the design is quite dated but it is a fantastic simple French photobook showing the life of an elderly charcoal maker. The pictures are great in a 1980s Nat Geog style by Jonathan Robertson, who I can’t seem to find anything about. There’s a nice inscription too, “to David, a message from another land and another time with a handshake, Jonathan. 20.11.80”

18th Sept 2011

Recent Buy - Téte D’Or - Jean-Luc Mylayne Another bargain...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:28:00 -0500

Recent Buy - Téte D’Or - Jean-Luc Mylayne

Another bargain buy in a second hand sale for £3. I’ve looked through this book a few times and I can’t make out what it’s about. Lots of shots of decaying fruit, birds, arid landscapes, vibrant colours coupled with some complicated text and a poem to top it off. Obscure but interesting.

1st August 2011

Recent Buy - Desert Magazine, June 1960 Magazine of the Outdoor...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 11:19:00 -0500

Recent Buy - Desert Magazine, June 1960

Magazine of the Outdoor South West

I picked this up on the internet from the wonderfully named Walter Lambardo who runs The Nevada Mineral and Book Company in Orange California. There are great stories of life in the deserts of South West USA and a super travel feature on Baja California, which at that time was very unchartered. The small ads and classified sections are interesting as always..”For Sale. Eight claims, large deposit low-grade tungsten, north end of Death Valley. Price $5000” I wonder if they are still available.

20th June 2011

When You Travel in Iceland You See a Lot of Water Roman Signer...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:33:00 -0500

When You Travel in Iceland You See a Lot of Water

Roman Signer and Tumi Magnusson

A recent £1 purchase from a second hand stall. It is described as a ‘Travel Book’ although it appears to be a collection of images from by Magnusson shot throughout Iceland with a focus on water. These are combined with conversation between Magnusson and Swiss artist Signer. A most unusual book but fun and quite wet!

Custom Kicks by Maki I picked this up on a recent trip to Tate...

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:21:25 -0500

Custom Kicks by Maki

I picked this up on a recent trip to Tate Britain. Its all about different customized trainers. I like the format of the book and some of the great designs shown. Although I like a pair of vintage trainers as much, or even more than the average Joe, I somehow don’t think I’ll be taking the spray paint to my Puma Pele Brasil’s any time soon.