Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Three Photobook Reviews

Say, Is This the U.S.A. by Erskine Caldwell & Margaret Bourke-White

The Quake of '89 by News Staff of the San Francisco Chronicle

Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America by Nancy Buirski

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These three books sum up the span of photojournalism pretty well, both in time and stylistically. I am not so much an art photography person, nor someone who likes books of just photographs without captions, even if I am a big fan of the photographer. For me, the captions offer the context that make the image more meaningful to me. Say, is this the U.S.A. is a collaborative tour through the USA in 1941, with Margaret Bourke-White providing some great photographs and Erskine Caldwell writing […]

“This brilliant darkness, with which I am coming to terms.”

This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers by Jeff Sharlet

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I love photojournalism so I was intrigued by this when I saw it at a photography museum bookshop. This Brilliant Darkness is a mix of photographs, interviews, and memoir. It covers a gamut of “frightened and frightening people,” with Sharlet talking to the homeless, queer people in Russia, violent homophobes, an abortionist in Kenya, and many more people. He has a good eye for a story while remaining respectful and thoughtful. Sometimes projects like this can feel exploitative or extractive, but this one didn’t really […]

“I looked and listened:” Two Photojournalism Books

World Press Photo 2021 by World Press Photo Foundation

Below the Line: Living Poor in America by Eugene Richards

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World Press Photo 2021 was an interesting one for me because it made me think a lot about what I like about photojournalism and why this particular volume wasn’t clicking for me. There’s a bit in the book where they talk about how the field has switched to focusing more on the photographer having a particular personal vision and trying to capture a photo that sums up some sort of larger issue or event, versus earlier photographers who were trying to capture an exciting photo […]

Great Photography and Pivotal Days in History Captured for Posterity

A Day in the Life of Israel by David Cohen and Lee Liberman (Project Directors)

A Day in the Life of China by David Cohen (Project Director)

A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union by David Cohen and Rick Smolan (Project Directors)

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I stumbled across this series in a thrift store and picked up a couple because I love photojournalism and concept books like this. The Day in the Life series was apparently a big hit in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which passed me by completely somehow (in fairness to myself, I was either not born or a baby during this time). For each book, they would send a bunch of the world’s top photojournalists, as well as the best photographers from the host country, out on […]

A Brief Collection of Great Photographs

The Photo Essay: Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark by Mary Ellen Mark

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CBR15Bingo: Africa (contains images and information about the Ethiopian famine of 1985) I love photojournalism / photo stories so I was interested to get this book of Mary Ellen Mark’s work. This is a series of books that the Smithsonian did of “photographers at work,” with this volume containing an interview with Mark and a variety of her photographs. I am a big Mary Ellen Mark fan so I was excited to get more insight into her process and how she approaches photography. The selection […]

“Photojournalists were swept along by the firestorms of change:” A Look at 1989 by the NPPA

The Best of Photojournalism Vol.15 by presented by The National Press Photographers Association and The University of Missouri School of Journalism

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I love photojournalism a lot and so have collected the majority of this series. These books came out from the mid 1970s until the early 2000s, and the Best of Photojournalism contest still goes on although they seem not to do the physical books anymore. This 15th volume covers the 1989 competition, which was a very strong year in terms of world events — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tienanmen Square protests and massacre, the overthrow of Ceausescu, etc. The book is split […]



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