Ian Jeffrey

A revised and updated edition of Phaidon's bestselling book, which brings this landmark work fully up-to-date with new additions covering the latest developments in photography. The Photography Book is an unsurpassed collection of over 550 superb images that represent the world's best photographers from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Arranged alphabetically by photographer, it showcases pioneers such as Gustave Le Gray and Daguerre, icons like Robert Capa and contemporary names such as Richard Wentworth and Carolee Schneemann. The selection encompasses fashion, sport, natural history, reportage, society portraiture, documentary and art, with concise text providing useful insight into each work and its creator. Also included are extensive cross-references and glossaries of technical terms and movements.

Ian Jeffrey is a superb guide in this profusely illustrated introduction to the appreciation of photography as an art form. Novices and experts alike will gain a deeper understanding of great photographers and their work, as Jeffrey decodes key images and provides essential biographical and historical background. Profiles of more than 100 major photographers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, highlight particular examples of styles and movements throughout the history of the medium. Each entry includes a concise biography along with an illuminating discussion of key works and nuggets of contextual information, making this book the ideal gallery companion for photography aficionados everywhere.

In September 1939, thousands of German soldiers were turned loose on Poland. In 1940, they descended on Holland, Belgium and France. In 1941 they went to the Balkans, and then to the USSR. Armed with Leica and Rolleiflex cameras, some of these soldiers were officially commissioned as photographers, while others were asked by their commanders to snap records of events. Among them were trainees who knew about the Bauhaus, and other, older, men who could remember Weimar. Some excelled at formal portraiture, others were storytellers, stylists or humanists who wept at what they saw. The style and content of their work changed along with the collective mood after 1942, a change that is discernible in the photographs themselves. Celebrated author and art historian Ian Jeffrey - author of How to Read a Photograph and The Photography Book - has trawled through these albums, picking out the most compelling of these works to create an intimate record of anonymous lives experiencing the unprecedented.