Still Life: Black and White Photography : Developing Style in Creative Photography

by Terry Hope

Book by Hope, Terry

Genres: Photography

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 2001

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was rummaging through my old photo technique books and this is one of the few volumes that recaptured my imagination. The book’s backbone is a varied portfolio of (monochrome) still life pictures, mainly by British and American photographers. There are some big names - Ralph Gibson, Kenro Izu, Roger Fenton - but most of the artists will be less well known. However, the quality of the pictures is very good and they cover a wide range of settings and approaches: studio, travel, street, nature, objet trouvé, … Each picture is accompanied by a pertinent commentary in which the photographer describes why and how the picture was made. Many images were captured with film-based medium or large format cameras. No mention is made of digital cameras so some of the technical details will strike many readers as outdated. Separate sections of the book focus on composition, tone and texture, location, close-up, printing and processing. The book has been very stylishly designed, with plenty of air around the pictures and a very elegant typeface. So it is able to successfully occupy a middle ground between a technical manual and a coffee table book. The companion volume on landscape remains an similarly attractive resource.