Useful libraries and bookshops in London

I haven't shared this Google Map for a while, so here it is again.... There are a few updates in the Shoreditch area (where else?). There will be a few more updates soon I think, once I get hold of a copy of The Eyes (as the new edition is a special on London). Please share anything I have overlooked.


View Useful London Libraries & Bookshops - Photography and Film in a larger map

Film theory - the most borrowed books

Back in April, I did some research to determine which were the most borrowed books in the area of Photography theory.  You can see the results here.

I thought it was about time to redo the exercise - this time focussing on film.  So, here is the list - the ten most borrowed books in film... (in the past three years).

The list starts with the most borrowed item first this time.  You can also take a look at the books on Library Search in A-Z order.

Bordwell, D. Film art; an introduction [various editions]. McGraw-Hill.

Braudy, L. and Cohen, M. (eds.). Film theory and criticism; introductory readings [various editions]. Oxford University Press.

Cook, P. The cinema Book [various editions].  BFI.

Bordwell, D. (1986). Narration in fiction film. Routledge.

Andrejevic, M. (2004).  Reality TV: the work of being of being watched.  Rowman & Littlefield.

Metz, C. (1982). Psychoanalysis and cinema; the imaginary signifier.  Macmillan.

Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: sound on screen. Columbia University Press.

Mill, B. (2005). Television sitcom. BFI.

Mcabe, J. and Akass, K. (2007). Quality TV; contemporary American television and beyond. I. B. Tauris.

Rees, A. L. A history of experimental film and video; from the canonical avant-garde to contemporary British practice [two editions].  BFI.

Photography theory - which are the most borrowed texts?

I recently ran a report to see which of the photography theory books are most frequently borrowed from the library.  The following list shows the top twenty for the previous two years.  Camera lucida came top.

See all the books (in A-Z order) on Library Search here.


Family snaps : the meaning of domestic photography
Jo Spence; Patricia Holland
London : Virago 1991

Photography theory
James Elkins
London : Routledge 2007

The art of interruption : realism, photography, and the everyday
John Roberts (John Charles)
Manchester; New York : Manchester Universtiy Press 1998

Light matters : writings on photography
Vicki Goldberg
New York : Aperture 2005

The photograph as contemporary art
Charlotte Cotton
London : Thames & Hudson c2004

Why photography matters as art as never before
Michael Fried
New Haven : Yale University Press 2008

Spectral evidence : the photography of trauma
Ulrich Baer
Cambridge, Mass. ; London : MIT 2002

The spoken image : photography and language
Clive Scott
London : Reaktion 1999

Over exposed : essays on contemporary photography
Carol Squiers
New York : New Press 1999

Photography and cinema
David Campany
London : Reaktion 2008

Stillness and time : photography and the moving image
David Green; Joanna Lowry
Brighton : Photoworks / Photoforum 2006

Photography : the key concepts
David Bate
Oxford : Berg 2009

The cinematic
David Campany
London : Whitechapel ; Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press 2007

On photography
Susan Sontag 1933-2004
London : Penguin 2002

Art and photography
David Campany
London : Phaidon 2003

Photography : a critical introduction
Liz Wells 1948-
4th ed. London : Routledge 2009

The burden of representation : essays on photographies and histories
John Tagg
Minneapolis, Minn. : University of Minnesota Press 1993

The photography reader
Liz Wells
London : Routledge 2003

Thinking photography
Victor Burgin
London : Macmillan 1982

Camera lucida : reflections on photography
Roland Barthes
London : Vintage 1993, 1981

Some suggestions for guided independent study week...

If you are new to the university and looking for inspiration as to how to spend the next week, here are a few suggestions drawn from Safari Books Online - accessible via Library Search.

Don't be be fooled by the name of this resource, it also includes videos!

Get to grip with a Mac - video

Need to get to grips with the Mac OS fast?  Try this thorough video.

Learn Your Mac: Mac Video Training

Adobe Creative Suite - videos

New to Adobe Creative Suite?  Learn by video with these great videos.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Learn by Video

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Learn by Video Core Training in Visual Communication

Camera guides

Have you spent a small fortune on your DSLR?  Or are you borrowing some superior kit?  Get the best out of it with these guides.  Search Safari Books for other models.

Nikon® D700 Digital Field Guide

Mastering the Nikon D700

David Busch’s Nikon® D700 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

Browse the library

Take Steve Simon's advice in The Passionate Photographer: Ten Steps Toward Becoming Great - also available on Safari Books Online.

Whenever I’m looking for ideas and inspiration, I love going to my library, grabbing a book, and finding inspiration between the covers. Nothing to plug in or charge, the sweet aroma of ink on paper, it’s an intimate experience that lets me get inside the head of the photographer who created it.

Roger Ebert - hero or villain?

My New Year's resolution this year was to watch the hundred films Roger Ebert recommends in his book, The great movies.  I chose this selection in preference to the transparent nationalism of the AFI 100 or the BFI 100 or the encyclopedic selection of David Thomson or of the punchy Sight and Sound polls (which are conducted every ten years - the next one is due this year).  The Ebert list offers a good range of genres, time-periods with nothing too populist (with a couple of exceptions) or too obscure or trendy.  Perhaps its a little dull?

You would think so, anyway, if you read the rebarbative review of Ebert's (admittedly unnecessary) memoir in Sight and Sound in January.  Michael Atkinson decries him as "more of an Everyman's pop-culture figurehead than a critic, in a nation that has little general use for film criticism beyond the crudest consumer recommendations."  Only in America, he suggests, would a newspaper film reviewer, "publish a 400-page autobiography in his autumnal phase."

As well as having recently published a memoir, Ebert is also the subject of an appraisal of his life and work in a new book (see below), which compares him to other prominent critics such as Pauline Kael and John Simon.  One imagines this gives a more balanced appraisal than Atkinson's review.

Further reading

1000 greatest films: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm

Ebert, R. (2004).  The great movies.  Broadway Books.   [You will find this conveniently located with the DVD collection on the second floor]

Haberski, R. J. (2001).  It's only a movie! Films and critics in American culture.  University Press of Kentucky.

Rendleman, T. (2012).  Rule of thumb; Ebert at the movies. Continuum.


Ebert's 100

2001: A Space Odyssey -- The 400 Blows -- 8 1/2 -- Aguirre, the Wrath of God -- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul -- All About Eve -- The Apartment -- Apocalypse Now -- The Apu Trilogy -- Battleship Potemkin -- Beauty and the Beast -- Belle de Jour -- The Bicycle Thief -- The Big Sleep -- Blowup -- Body Heat -- Bonnie and Clyde -- Bride of Frankenstein -- Broken Blossoms -- Casablanca -- Chinatown -- Citizen Kane -- City Lights -- Days of Heaven -- The Decalogue -- Detour -- Do the Right Thing -- Double Indemnity -- Dracula -- Dr. Stangelove -- Duck Soup -- E.T. -- The Exterminating Angel -- Fargo -- Floating Weeds -- Gates of Heaven -- The General -- The Godfather -- Gone with the Wind -- Grand Illusion -- Greed -- A Hard Day's Night -- Hoop Dreams -- Ikiru -- It's a Wonderful Life -- JFK -- La Dolce Vita -- The Lady Eve -- Last Year at Marienbad -- L'Atalante -- L'Avventura -- Lawrence of Arabia -- Le Samourai -- M -- The Maltese Falcon -- Manhattan -- McCabe & Mrs. Miller -- Metropolis -- Mr. Hulot's Holiday -- My Darling Clementine -- My Life to Live -- Nashville -- Network -- The Night of the Hunter -- Nosferatu -- Notorious -- On the Waterfront -- Pandora's Box -- The Passion of Joan of Arc -- Peeping Tom -- Persona -- Pickpocket -- Pinocchio -- Psycho -- Pulp Fiction -- Raging Bull -- Red River -- Schindler's List -- The Seven Samurai -- The Seventh Seal -- The Shawshank Redemption -- The Silence of the Lambs -- Singin' in the Rain -- Some Like It Hot -- Star Wars -- Sunset Blvd. -- Sweet Smell of Success -- Swing Time -- Taxi Driver -- The Third Man -- Trouble in Paradise -- Un Chien Andalou -- The "Up" Documentaries -- Vertigo -- The Wild Bunch -- Wings of Desire -- The Wizard of Oz -- Woman in the Dunes -- A Woman Under the Influence -- Written on the Wind.

Norfolk's 'slow photography' draws on archive

Simon Norfolk talks about his current exhibition at Tate, 'Burke + Norfolk - Photographs from the War in Afghanistan,' on the BBC World Service here.

The exhibition draws on the archive of the nineteenth-century Irish photographer, John Burke, linking the late 19th century anglo/afghan war with the current conflict. For Norfolk this shows the "circularity of imperial history". He talks in this interview about how the photographic process of the time accentuated the racial difference of the Afghans and Europeans.

There are several examples of Norfolk's books in the library collection at Harrow; and the most recent, 'Burke + Norfolk,' is on order.

The exhibition continues at Tate Modern to the 10th July.



Additional resources

Tate Channel: Burke + Norfolk: Photographs From The War In Afghanistan [17 minute video]

http://www.simonnorfolk.com/burkenorfolk/ [introduction, photographs, conversation]

Haven't we been here before? Art and design The Guardian [Ian Jack]

Afghanistan: There is a small corner that is forever England Mail Online [Simon Norfolk]

The "objectness" of art books

According to an article in The Telegraph in November, Steidl have opened a new bookshop in Soho – well not a bookshop, rather a “forum for books.” This is called Q Book but as the website only has a picture of empty shelves, I am not sure whether it has opened yet, so I will need to investigate and report back.

The Telegraph article is well worth a look, as it discusses the recent trend for art books – and specifically photographic art books – to be released in expensive limited editions (see the winner of the Lucie’s for example).

Iwona Blazwick, the director of the Whitechapel Gallery, is quoted as saying:

The pleasure for me is that if you can't afford to buy a work of art, you can afford to buy a book as a work of art. There is an interest in the "objectness" of art books.

As well as Q Book, three other bookshops in London get a mention – Marcus Campbell, Claire de Rouen, and another newly opened one at Somerset House – Rizolli.

References

Beyfuss, Druisilla (2010). 'Speaking volumes; Limited-edition art and photography books are increasingly treasured as works of art in themselves'. The Daily Telegraph, 13 November, 11, 12, 14. Available from Factiva [Online Database] [Accessed 18/12/2010].

See also

Steidl special editions [PDF]

Related posts

Useful libraries and bookshops in London

A manifesto for the book

Bodman and Sowden's book, A manifesto for the book, was published online this year following a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

To quote from the web page cited below, "This project investigated and discussed issues concerning the context and future of the artist’s book, in an attempt to extend and sustain critical debate of what constitutes an artist’s book in the 21st Century".

Bodman, S. and Sowden, T. (2010).  A manifesto for the book.  Impact Press.

Available from: http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/canon.htm

The girl in the picture

There is an article in the most recent TATEetc on the forthcoming exhibition, ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera,’ entitled, ‘What are you looking at?’

In this article there is an un-credited picture of Vietnamese children fleeing the village of Trang Bang, after it had been napalmed by South Vietnamese government planes. Unlike the similar and famous image by Nick Ut, this picture also shows the children being filmed and photographed by journalists. In the context of this upcoming exhibition, the difference between the two pictures is striking.

Kim Phúc – one of the children in the pictures - appears on Radio 4 next week in an episode of 'It’s My Story'.  In this programme – according to the radio 4 website - she explains how “Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph has helped and haunted her in equal measure.”

Today, ITN footage of the bombing and of Kim Phúc and others fleeing the village can be viewed on YouTube.

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera opens at Tate Modern on the 28th May

It’s My Story: The girl in the picture will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Tuesday 18th May at 4pm

A version of the article 'What are you looking at' (without the photograph referred to above) is available on the TATEetc website.

Further reading

Hariman, J. and Lucaites, J. L. (2007). No caption needed: iconic photographs, public culture, and liberal democracy [Chapter 6 ‘Trauma and Public Memory: Accidental Napalm’]. University of Chicago Press.

Are Taschen serious?

You may be forgiven for thinking that the publisher of such titles as The big book of breasts and The big penis book would not have titles that would be of interest to an academic library. However, you would be wrong.

As a recent profile in The Sunday Times attests, Taschen are a very peculiar publisher indeed - “as happy to publish a book of explicit gay cartoons as a perfect facsimile of the Luther bible of 1534.”

The University of Westminster libraries have over 100 titles from Taschen, only a minority of which are racy in any way: the latest acquisition – the complete published works of Karl Blossfeldt.

Search for ‘Taschen’ in Library Collections Search to see what we have, visit taschen.com to read about their history or visit their shop in Chelsea (which I have now added to my google map) and decide for yourself!

Useful libraries and bookshops in London

I have created a google map, showing some useful libraries and bookshops in London for Photography and Film.  As well as the four University of Westminster libraries, it shows the National Art Library and the British Film Institute Library and others, while shops include Cinephilia and The Photographers' Gallery bookshop.  If you have any other suggestions or would like to comment on any of the places listed, please get in touch.


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