If you want to become a professional photographer and live from this, it is important that you study the greats and these 8 photography catalogs helped me a lot in my beginnings.
8 photography catalogs that changed my vision
These are the 8 photography catalogs that I want to talk to you about today and that completely changed my vision.
- Sumo.
- A Different Vision On Fashion Photography.
- Beneath The Roses.
- The Americans.
- Vivian Mayer.
- Hidden Spain.
- Fullmoon.
- Expanding Universe.
Vices
When I started making a living with my first photographic commissions, more than 25 years ago, I had two clear “vices”. Music and photography catalogs. At that time I had not yet set up my first studio and therefore I was not yet aware of the meaning of “living to pay”.
My only investments were records and what is boudoir photography catalogs. And the truth is that I did not consider aspiring to do much more. He was happy with so little or… with so much, depending on how you look at it. In fact, when I mentally recall some passages from my earlier youth, I can still clearly relive that almost orgasmic feeling of ripping off the plastic wrap and discovering the interior design of a CD by Mike Oldfield or Wim Mertens. Or the photographs in a catalog of Duane Michals, Jan Saudek, or Helmut Newton.
Normally, this scene used to take place on a train on the way home. After liquidating a large part of my income in music stores and bookstores in the capital and I think my ecstasy was more than evident because when looking around me it was not strange to meet someone who was looking at me as if I were the same Gollum engrossed with his “treasure”.
What has happened to the pleasures of life?
They are pleasures that today have almost disappeared from my life. Not because you can’t do the same as before, but because the sensations are no longer, not even remotely, the same.
With music, it’s been a long time since I subscribed to an online platform from which I access everything I want to listen to, and now it would be impossible for me to find published in any physical format. I have quite particular musical tastes and if before it was already difficult for me to get hold of some discs in CD format, now it is practically unfeasible outside of Internet channels.
I could say that thanks to online platforms I now “swim in abundance” in terms of my desired music, but without a doubt, that same abundance, in which everything is available, has also made me lose the charm of that process that consisted of listening to a melody on the radio, become obsessed with it, search for it, discover the album and its author, get on a train and wander around the city’s music stores until you find the object of your desire and come back with the prize and the satisfaction of having fulfilled successfully with a vital mission.
My first photography catalog
With photography books and catalogs there is still enough of all that. The best way to enjoy them is still in their printed format. Therefore, the pleasure of unpacking them and discovering their content still has something of that “anxiety”, although the times and oneself are different.
Before, I bought them in a specialized bookstore, such as the Railowsky Bookstore in Valencia (Spain). A veteran who is still active and now with online sales. You could also spend a good afternoon in the book section of the FNAC, leisurely looking through copies before choosing, although her cultural vocation has been diminishing considerably over the years.
Now, without a doubt, the Internet is the best option to access those photography catalogs, either through large online sales platforms, as well as other more modest ones (bookstores, publishers…) where you can find some edited jewels originally anywhere in the world. Not to mention the second-hand market, where you can get some out-of-stock and well-preserved editions, albeit too often at exorbitant prices, especially if they are limited, special editions, or part of the exquisite group of legendary publications on the photograph.
the gaze of others
Yes. The best way to learn to look for a photographer is to investigate the language of photography, which is not a straight line at all. The technique can be acquired and practiced with greater or lesser skill, but the look, no matter how much some have an innate gift, is exercised by discovering what the look of “the others” is like. Each one with its own way of perceiving and understanding the photographic act and its processes.
I have learned to look at the work of my true influencers: Duane Michals, Chema Madoz, Helmut Newton, Erwin Olaf, etc. But also, thanks to their published photography catalogs, I have learned a lot about the laborious process of selecting and transferring an author’s photographic work to an editorial project, with its formats, design and layout, and its reproduction quality with respect to the original images.
Some publications can become authentic works of art in themselves and coveted pieces for collectors.
So let’s go with the first selection of photographic catalogs. Some of them are still available, especially through online sales. Others, unfortunately, are already out of print, although due to their relevance they are well worth a review. Without ignoring some of those publications that have made exclusivity their main attraction, only available to people with a certain purchasing power (this is not my case, although it weighs me…).
1# Helmut Newton Sumo
And we start with the titan of edited photography catalogs. And the titan thing is not in a figurative sense because acquiring one of the 10,000 copies that were published by Sumo in its limited edition was, practically, like taking home a bound private exhibition. Not only because of the set of works but above all because of their size, printed with quality standards typical of an original art piece.
The Taschen Publisher
We are talking about the feat (and extravagance) of the Taschen publishing house, which in 1999 broke all imaginable records with the publication of this legendary photographic retrospective of Helmut Newton in 464 pages in a 50 x 70 cm format, including a lectern designed by Philippe Starck himself. . Something perfectly understandable, not only because of the size of the book in question but also because of the 35 kilos of the weight of each copy.
All this for the modest price, according to the web review of the same publisher, of €17,500, earning on its own merits being considered the most expensive book published in the 20th century.
The bad news is that, if for one of those you have plenty of pasta and you want to expand the furniture of the house with such an investment, Taschen has already hung the sold-out sign for this article years ago. In fact, the 10,000 copies of Sumo flew in a short time after its first edition.
Helmut Newton
The good news is that, for the rest of us mortals, you currently have the low-cost edition on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the original publication, in a less pretentious format (27×38 cm) and at a much more earthly price, €100 ( even less with some online offers ).
This reissue contains the same content published at the time, with its 464 pages, revised and updated by June Newton, wife of Helmut Newton until his death in 2004. And it is complemented by the making of the original Sumo project.
In addition, we are talking about the Taschen publishing house, synonymous with exquisiteness and the maximum quality in all its publishing projects, whether they are normal size or that of a stretcher table.
