Why am I passionate about this?
Growing up in the 1970s, I loved my family’s cheap plastic Polaroid OneStep camera and the magic pictures that developed right before my eyes. Thirty years later, I was incredibly lucky to be the first researcher to get access to the Polaroid archive just as the company was going bust. For me, the key to Polaroid photography is that it is fun, and all the books on my list are, in one way or another, about the lighter, playful side of photography. I hope that they take you off the beaten track of the history of popular photography and into some quirky and interesting corners.
Peter's book list on the history of popular photography
Why did Peter love this book?
I wish I’d written this book. I’ve always been fascinated by instructional guides for amateur photographers and the rules they set out to get a ‘good picture.’ I’ve followed many of these rules myself over the years, but what this great book shows is that the rules are constantly changing.
What made a good picture in 1930 is not the same as in 1950 or 1970. This book tells this story in fifty short and punchy chapters, and it has great pictures on virtually every page.
1 author picked Good Pictures as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A picture-rich field guide to American photography, from daguerreotype to digital.
We are all photographers now, with camera phones in hand and social media accounts at the ready. And we know which pictures we like. But what makes a "good picture"? And how could anyone think those old styles were actually good? Soft-focus yearbook photos from the '80s are now hopelessly-and happily-outdated, as are the low-angle portraits fashionable in the 1940s or the blank stares of the 1840s. From portraits to products, landscapes to food pics, Good Pictures proves that the history of photography is a history of changing styles.…