Customer Reviews

Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews

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Just received this small paperback book entitled Thoughts on Landscape by the photographer Frank Gohlke. If you make photographs, regardless of the content, you should have this book. Gohlke does a wonderful job of expressing what's on his mind when he trips the camera shutter, and what goes on before and after. The writing is down to earth, articulate, and insightful from a photographer that has been involved in making photographs for most of his life. If you have passion for photography, get this book. If you don't have passion for photography, this may begin to move you in that direction.

Ron Evans
Charlottesville, Virginia

It's great to track a photographer's career through his own words, especially when, for the most part, the person can write well. Gohlke's book is a time travelogue that provides a personalized window on the progress of photography from marginalized art and personal passion in the early 1970's to full fledged museum-worthiness today. Illuminating and very worthwhile to anyone interested in contemporary photography.

Frank, you were right to question the fattening up of this collection. Three hundred pages might have been two. Though, when you do realize return on your academic investment, the depth of your considerations finds wonderfully adroit expression. A reader might begin this book with the last section; "Stories in the Dirt, Stories in the Air" then wander backwards and stop at moments like "Looking for Lee Friedlander". It is a book through which to cherry pick. (There is too much redundancy to call it clearly or succinctly comprehensive, but what is good really plumbs deep.)