5+1 Photography Books Without Photography (You Can’t Miss)

Today, book day, we couldn’t talk about anything else, that’s why I propose six photography books without photographs. Because photography is not just techniques and accessories, SLR cameras or EVIL, it’s not even just portraits or landscapes.

Photography goes beyond click, of the form, or even of the immediacy of social networks. The photograph is a profoundly powerful tool, capable of reflecting (or not) a reality, of freezing an instant and not another, of making us disappear from oblivion, of tearing us from death. He is capable of many things.

Because photography is not just that final image, each image bears the stamp of each one of us in it, it is part of our dreams, decisions, books, feelings and movies that have accompanied us in life.

A photograph of us is us and no one else.

It is for all this and much more that today I want to share with you these books that are so different from the ones we are used to looking for on photography. Picture books without pictures, props, or techniques.

I hope you get excited about some of them, that you enjoy them, that they make you think, that help you on the way to conceive your images and especially in your way of understanding and taking photography :-).

1. Roland Barthes’s camera lucida

the camera lucida it is a very interesting book to enter into that photograph that cannot be seento analyze and understand the meaning of photography beyond the techniques used to produce them.

In this work you will find an exhaustive analysis of photography, where the role of the viewer, the creator, the person who is portrayed and the image itself are analyzed.

Similarly, it teaches us to see photography as a method to freeze reality and preserve its memory, which becomes nostalgia, (in the past that is associated with death), just an instant after being made.

Without a doubt, it is one of the most interesting photography books (without photographs) for anyone who wants to take a step further in the conception of photography.

2. About Susan Sontag’s photography

This essay is from must read for everyone who enters the world of photography and wants to go something beyond of the simple photographic technique.

In about photographyalready a literary classic in photography, Susan Sontag asks what the role of photography is in the world and how the omnipresence of these images affects our way of conceiving it.

Photography is not something “innocent”, but we have come to depend on it to make our reality. Its role as a means of ideological communication is indisputable.

A book that will never go out of style, 100% applicable to our current times. Highly recommended 🙂 .

3. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing

John Berger has been a painter, a writer and considers himself one of the most influential thinkers of recent decades. ways of seeing has become, in turn, an indispensable work for everyone who is interested in the theory of art and especially in the audiovisual communication.

In ways of seeingit is precisely about this, about how it affects our own vision of the world, how we represent ourselves in it, how we relate to and establish ourselves in the world through everything we see.

Although it focuses on the specific analysis of oil painting, the themes are applicable to any type of visual art.

With this work you will be able to go deeper, for example, into aspects such as how what we know affects the way we see things, how look is never single look at because what we see we relate to ourselves or how we think others perceive things.

It also analyzes aspects such as the role of the artist, the work of art, power or the role of women in the image.

Without a doubt, it deserves a space on your shelf or that of someone who is interested in any type of visual art 🙂 .

4. Slightly out of focus by Robert Capa

of content not so philosophical as the previous 3, we have this interesting autobiography of the one considered one of the best photojournalists of all time: Robert Capa.

It is the history of europe at war Seen from the eyes of a photographer and reporter, who experiences first-hand the most important events of the Second World War.

If you are interested in learning more about the work of Robert Capa through texts, images, and his own personal experiences, as well as the exciting history of World War II, this work will fascinate you.

5. The photographic vision of Eduardo Momeñe

Another book on photography without photographs. Another jewel that will make you travel to the heart of photography.

If you want, above all, find that photographer or photographer that you can becomeif you want to reach the place of good photographers, that place beyond pretty postcards, this can be a great gift for yourself.

How to learn to move, bet on oneself and find our own style, wave need to count and how to do it are just some of the topics you will find in this wonderful work by Momeñe.

A must-see for anyone who wants to travel beyond the click and of how it was made. 100% recommended.

I leave you with the words of my colleague Caro:

If you love photography, if you feel like you can’t find your niche, that your photos lack something and it’s not exactly sharpness or light, if you want to delve deeper into its meaning, into what photography has to say, you can’t stop reading this little gem.

You can take a look at the Literary Recommendation that we dedicated to him at the time here.

6. The kiss of Judas (photography and truth) by Joan Fontcuberta

Written in 2011 and now a classic in the theory of photography, this book contains eight essays originating from the author’s own photographic experience.

In this book made up of eight chapters, you will find several very interesting reflections, which above all revolve around one main idea: Is photography objective? What we see represented in it is real? Is it true that the camera does not lie?

Is it possible that appearances have replaced reality? What is the role of photography? What is the role of advertising?

All these reflections are made by the author in this work that surely will not leave you indifferent 😉 .

and here you are 6 recommendations of photography books without photographs. I hope you are encouraged to to travel with any of them, that you dare to enter their pages, that help you to consider the way you see things.

I hope they inspire you and make you grow as a photographer, that they make you go further and in better conditions, that encourage you to find your own style and be yourself.

Definitely, that encourage you to grasp photography with your soul and not with your hands.

I hope you liked this article of literary recommendations. If so, don’t forget to share it before you rush off to read one of these wonderful books. Thank you very much, as always, and we’ll see you in the next article 🙂 .

Happy book day.