THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTO BOOKS.

Mornings when having my early wakeup coffee I love to look at photo books, it keeps me away of the never ending Facebook pages and Facebook stories. Photo books give me a lot of inspiration for new projects and motivates me to go out with my camera.

My photo books are still traveling in a container back to Belgium and I can tell you I miss them a lot in the mornings and during the day. I am not always in the mood to read a book 📖 Photo books 📚 were published for the first time around 1843 short after the birth of Photography in 1839.

My first photo book I received as a present from a famous Albanian photographer and painter Leon Cika based in Tirana, this book made me buying and discovering other great photo books.

My second book was from the American street photographer Vivian Maier that I heard of thanks to a Belgium radio program. I was so impressed by her story whose work was discovered and recognized after her death. She worked for about 40 years as a nanny, mostly in Chicago's North Shore, while pursuing photography.

Third book was of course from the American photographer Ansel Adams who spent his entire life photographing nature and mainly the Yosemite National Park.

A good book from Ansel is 400 Photographs where his main work is presented.

The photographs are arranged chronologically into five major periods, from his first photographs made in Yosemite and the High Sierra in 1916 to his work in the National Parks in the 1940s up to his last important photographs from the 1960s.

A very good photo book but hard to find is La Strada. La Strada is a collection of street photography from Italy of various Photographers. The pictures are all around world war II or post WWII. This is a very beautiful collection and one of the reason the price of the book went high in the sky and is now a very essential book. On amazon UK you can purchase it for 260 Pound.

Other iconic photo book is Genesis from the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado who lives in Paris. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Salgado calls GENESIS “my love letter to the planet.” The GENESIS project, along with the Salgados’ Instituto Terra, are dedicated to showing the beauty of our planet, reversing the damage done to it, and preserving it for the future. It is a beautiful art work of black and white picture from the Galápagos, Antarctic, South Atlantic, Africa and Brazilian nature and animals.

Magnum contact sheets will teach you a lot how photographers decide which picture to publish and the others picture not being chosen. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum Co-founder, used contact sheets as an alibi to visit his future wife "I want to come and see your contact sheets".

Henri Cartier-Bresson the legendary french photographer has of course published many books but one worth buying is the one from the autor Clement Cheroux. It is the first major retrospective since the photographer's death in 2004. Cartier was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947. "In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv." quote from Henri Cartier.