The Photographer's Eye

I really don't know why this book is praised so highly. There are one or two good photos, a few I've seen before but to be honest nothing really new or impacting. I was looking for some inspiration and all it has given me is something else to carry to the charity shop....Save your money and buy a book by a well known photographer instead. This author clearly had a limited number of photos to go through and none of them his own !!!This book has been reviewed for years as one of the classics in photography literature and that every photographer worth his salt should read it and own a copy. I have read it but I will not be keeping it.

As the back cover says, the book is an investigation of what photographs look like, and of why they look that way. However, through the description of the five sets of choices the photographer has to make in order to take a photograph, I found in this book a magnificent illustrated guide about how to approach the act of making a photograph (the order here differs from the book chapters):- The thing itself, the subject.- The detail, or what best represents the subject.- The vantage point, or point of view.- The frame, or what to include and where in the viewfinder.- The time.There is a lot to learn about photography principles from this book (I did learn myself), specially from the photographs included in each of the five chapters.

Bought for my son, a designer/photographer, as a Christmas present, my purpose was to give him an inspirational book which would increase his knowledge of ways in which photography developed as an art form, how its early years had been resisted and the ways in which it had been fought against by those who thought it was not creative enough. Today, when almost every adult carries a camera (of some sort), that seems a strange tale to tell.Szarkowski, a leading light in promoting photography as an art, edited and collated this excellent book full of fascinating early images, opinions and historical facts in the first half of the twentieth century.Recommended

This is a collection of B & W photos, mostly taken in the States and dating from the 1860s to the 1960s. They are well produced with interesting comments on the development of photography over the period. Many of the pictures show historical events and people I have not seen elsewhere. Monochrome seems a strength rather than a shortcoming, getting to the 'soul' of the moment.

This well produced book has been viewed for some years as one of the classics of photo literature. Great images well chosen to illustrate the points being made. Every photographer who thinks at all deeply about their work should have read this and hopefully own a copy.

This is a great book if you have a fairly deep interest in photography or are a student of the subject. A range of photographs from the early days of photography to the 1960s are presented in a number of chapters that investigate the key elements that underlie most photographs. It is a fairly scholarly analysis of photography, but one that I found very interesting, and it has certainly helped me to create better images.

I enjoyed this book, but found it a little superficial, and would have preferred to see more photos to illustrate the 5 headings. More photographers could also have been included, and the text could have been extended. It didn't take long to read, and although I am still going back to look at the photos at present, I am not sure how long this will last.

Constructive critique in the context of the times. A worthwhile addition to a photographic library when there are so many coffee table books and too many on the technical aspect.