Readings

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Course Readings

Required Textbooks

Coles, Robert. Doing Documentary Work. New York, NY: Oxford Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780195124958. [Preview in Google Books.]
The compilation of a series of lectures the Harvard psychiatrist and documentarian gave at the New York Public Library.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador USA, 2001. ISBN: 9780312420093. [Preview in Google Books.]
This is a seminal work about photography, and if you are going to photograph, you must be (painfully) familiar with it.

Ang, Tom. Fundamentals of Photography: The Essential Handbook for Both Digital and Film Cameras. New York, NY: Knopf, 2008. ISBN: 9780375711572.
A truly excellent "how-to" book that will serve as your technical text.

Krause, Jim. Photo Idea Index. New York, NY: How, 2009. ISBN: 9781600610431.
As the cover blurb boasts, "not your typical 'how to' book." This really is a book crammed full of ideas intended to expand your way of seeing, and shooting, from how to capture action, to thoughts about visual hierarchy and using space in your photos.

Boot, Chris. Magnum Stories. New York, NY: Phaidon Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780714842455.
This is a massive collection of work by 61 past and present members of Magnum, the world's premiere photo agency/collective.

Highly Recommended Textbooks but not Required

Phaidon, eds. The Photo Book. Boston, MA: Phaidon Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780714836348.
This overview in photos of the history of photography is a must-own.

Deveney, Kaylynn, and Hastings, Albert. The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. ISBN: 9781568987040.
If this book doesn't inspire you — sell your camera. It is a little jewel, a successful marriage of art photography and pure documentary photography, and demonstrates how the simplest of ideas can produce a sublime project.

Hintlian, Michael. Digging. Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions, 2004. ISBN: 9781889833927.
The Big Dig as you have never seen it or thought of it.

Any and all the books of Eugene Richards, arguably the greatest living American documentary photographer. These books include Dorchester Days; The Fat Baby; The Knife and Gun Club; Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue; and Americans We.

Frank, Robert. The Americans. Zurich, Switzerland: Scalo Publishers, 1998. ISBN: 9783931141806.
The seminal work by a Swiss photographer who took a road trip across the U.S. in the late 1950s.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003. ISBN: 9780393325126.
Selections from the seminal work by the inventor of the modern photo story — if you are not inspired by this, sell your camera.

Page, Tim, and Horst Faas. Requiem: By The Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina. New York, NY: Vintage/Ebury (Random House), 1997. ISBN: 9780224050586.
This is a truly magnificent collection of combat photographs by, as the title makes clear, photographers who did not survive the combat they were covering.

Bowman, Robin. It's Complicated: The American Teenager. Brooklyn, NY: Umbrage Editions, 2007. ISBN: 9781884167690.
A young photographer took a Polaroid camera, created a questionnaire, and set off across the country to create portraits of teenagers and to ask them to answer her list of questions.

Griffiths, Philip Jones. Vietnam Inc. London, UK: Phaidon Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780714846033.
Magnum photographer as flat-out advocate. A powerful, classic photobook.

Mark, Mary Ellen. Exposure. London, UK: Phaidon Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780714846262.
A career retrospective by an outstanding documentary photographer and teacher.

Anything by Bruce Davidson. This includes East 100th Street, England/Scotland 1960, Circus, Time of Change, and anything else you can find.

Horenstein, Henry. Close Relations. Brooklyn, NY: powerhouse Books, 2007. ISBN: 9781576873274.
I'm not sure why I am so drawn to this book of photos by Horenstein, a long-time faculty member at RISD. The book is a collection of images Horenstein made of friends in Cambridge, and family members in Newton, when he himself was a student in the early 1970s. It's captivating — and it has an introduction by one of the "Car Talk" guys.

Galassi, Peter. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2006. ISBN: 9780500286425.
This is the ultimate collection by the man who 'invented' 35 mm photography, helped found the great photo agency/collective Magnum, and who coined the term, "decisive moment."

Nachtweys, James. Inferno. London, UK: Phaidon Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780714838151.
An overwhelming collection of anti-war photographs of combat and its ultimate results. A book that will weigh as heavily on your conscience as it will on your lap.