Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

Picked up The Photography Encyclopedia by Fred W McDarrah and Gloria S McDarrah at a Friends of the Library book sale yesterday and Wow, what a great reference book of who's who in photography, print collections (many genre-defining photographs) and some 300 technical terms arranged in alphabetical order.

A great compendium for any student of photography, it contains a wealth of useful information in one giant paperback that is a little under 700 pages long. Many notable photographers whose names I did not know before, photographs and prints I had not seen until I came across this fantastic book. This book comes wrapped in an unassuming cover. The saying "Never judge a book by its cover" definitely comes to mind.

This great book covers history of photography from camera obscura to digital images, techniques from calotype to Kai's Super Goo, great photographers, photojournalists, artists from Ansel Adams, Cindy Sherman to Susan Sontag and Andy Warhol, galleries and museums and key events in the development of photography in this wonderful encyclopedia.

If you would like to get a copy, you can find it at Amazon and Abebooks

The author, Fred W McDarrah was a staff photographer for The Village Voice, he spent the 1950s documenting the Beat Generation can be seen at Fred W McDarrah Exhibit The Artist's World at Steven Kasher Gallery

Read more about him on this short wiki page

The Villager reported his passing on Nov 6, 2007 Fred W McDarrah

On a different note, for a book lover (and we have thousands of books in our library collection), this is such a refreshing piece of news. The Guardian's article - People are hungry for real bookstores, Judy Blume on why indie booksellers are thriving

picture credit The Guardian

It looks like the tide may have turned for printed books. I secretly wish the same will happen in the camera world, that folks will discard their digital cameras and film will thrive again............