Customer Reviews

Book of 101 Books, The: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century

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This is an extraordinary book, both for its content and design. The book provides a wonderful view of 20th-century photography and photographic books, reproducing several double-page spreads (at reduced size) from a well-chosen list of 101 great photographic books. There is so much to see and think about here.

The catalog entries, luminously written by Vince Aletti and David Levi Strauss, provide a fairly detailed description, history, and analysis of each of the photographic books. And there are several essays on the history and techniques of photographic publishing; these essays are informative, smart, learned.

This is one of the best-designed books in recent years. The typography, layout, and printing quality are just perfect, at the very highest level of excellence. Andrew Roth and Jerry Kelly did the book design; Sue Medlicott supervised the printing which was done superbly at the Stamperia Valdonega.

In the last few months, I have seen 3 extraordinary visual books that powerfully demonstrate just how wonderful books can be:
(1)The Book of 101 Books by Andrew Roth and colleagues
(2)The Atlas of Oregon (2nd edition) by William Loy, Stuart Allen, Aileen R. Buckley, and James E.Meacham
(3)Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000: The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, by Robert Flynn Johnson and Donna Stein, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Now this is something special! As a publication designer I can appreciate the care and thought that went into this stunning and unique book. Andrew Roth, in the introduction, explains his brilliant idea, 'The basis for my selection was simple. Foremost, a book had to be a thoroughly considered production; the content, the mise-en-page, choice of paper stock, reproduction quality, text, typeface, binding, jacket design, scale - all of the elements had to blend together to fit naturally within the whole'. I would agree with all of that (I have eight of the 101) and also his selection of the photographic books which mostly exemplify what he was searching for.

Not all of these criteria apply to each book though. The author has wisely included all the covers to his selection and I don't think there is a single book jacket shown that I would class as excellence in design, that is, the title and image working together as one to sum up the contents for a potential purchaser. Mostly they are the usual publishers' marketing department output, a single photo or image with some (bland) typography added. Strangely the cover to 'The Book Of 101 Books' is rather dull and typographically conservative.

Another area where, I think, many of the books fall short of the author's criteria is the lack of captioning. Many of the reproduced spreads clearly just have the photos on the page with no information for the reader. Why do publishers (and possibly even the photographers) think that beautiful, imaginative and stimulating photos don't need some textual explanation on the same page? I recently bought 'Dream Street' by Eugene Smith, an excellent collection of photos taken in 1955 of life in Pittsburgh, virtually all of the photos make me ask "What's going on here" and I have to constantly turn to the back of the book to read a caption, even more annoying because there is plenty of space on each page for them. This lack of a caption on the same page as the photo seems a common fault with many photographic books.

The author says his goal was not to compile a selection of rare or precious books, just great ones and the 101 chosen reflect that vision, starting in 1907, with the twenty volume 'The North American Indian' and ending in 1996 with David LaChapelle's 'LaChapelle Land', these two books are a world apart but nevertheless have elements in common that the author was searching for. The other ninety-nine books show the amazing diversity that a photographer's eye, light and chemicals can do to the world. As well as the spreads from the books there are six essays dealing with photographic book publishing, all of them interesting and thought provoking, Richard Benson (no relation) writes a very succinct explanation of book printing techniques over the last hundred years.

Handling this sumptuous book, turning over the pages of the beautiful paper it is printed on, looking at the images (printed with a screen well over two hundred dots to the inch) it is a good example of why books will not vanish in this expanding digital age.

BTW: another reviewer has commented that 'The Book Of 101 Books' is one of the best designed books of recent years, beautiful as it is I don't think I would go that far and I'll not be adding it to my Listmania: 'My favorite well-designed books'. Editorially I think there are a couple of errors, firstly, in the bibliographic details there is no mention of a books pagination, and secondly, all the text about a book is in one paragraph, clearly a mistake when some of the pieces are several hundred words long. I also think the layouts have an annoying fault, each of the 101 books starts on a spread and the left-hand page displays the books cover within a text wrap of two columns, this second column frequently looks a line short because the writer's initials are ranged right on the last line instead of occupying a new line or even hanging them in the margin, in bold face, for instance.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

The amount of impact a single photo can have is well known. What hasn't been as clearly shown before is how much power collections of photographs can (and have) had. The gathering together of photographs related by theme or time or geography or other subject makes an artistic statement of its own. You have to love books as much as photographs, and be open to the idea that the making of books is an art form, to love this book.

This book is undoubtedly a good reference, but you should not consider it a comprehensive one.

With a decidedly American slant, the book ignores the rich photography cultures of Japan, Russian constructivists and even of Europeans after 1945. Even on the topics which the book does cover, there are a few glaring ommissions. But I'm still glad to see this book come out and the author certainly makes no claims that the books list is a comprehensive one, just a seminal one.

There are many good books about the history of photography, there some excellent books about the history of photography and there are a few fantastic books about the history of photography--this is one of the fantastic books. Well written, expertly designed and beautifully printed. This book is a classic.