Customer Reviews

Collecting Photography

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I found this brilliant book during a research of reading materials for my university's "Art and technology" class. It is not only a good resource for the photo collecting industry, but also a good read for those who are interested in exploring how people's perceived value towards an image is affected.

Content wise, the book is broken roughly into two halves. The first half of the book is a discussion on collecting photographs, how to build a collection, thoughts on value of photographs and a discussion of collecting trends and strategies. The discussion is pragmatic and the author shares good insights to anyone looking to become a collector no-matter what their budget. The reader will come away well informed about what photography collection is all about and what to look for in selecting a photograph. This section is illustrated throughout with numerous examples of collected photographs, most of which are from the 20th century. These cover many different genres with some of them being famous whilst others are more obscure. You can spend a long time just browsing at these photos and getting inspiration from them.

The second half of the book is text only and it contains a series of appendices including: a chronology of photographic history, a glossary of photographic terms and techniques (detailing the many numerous chemical processes that have been used in photographic history), a list of famous photographers and a list of places to buy photos internationally. All these act as valuable references.

This book would be appreciated by anyone who has an interest in photography as an art, a collectable, or just something beautiful to look at. Overall, I found this really enjoyable to read as well as educational and it has inspired me to buy the odd photograph on-line.