Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Dead Trees
An excellent magazine that I came across on the newstand a few months ago is "Black & White" (the
masthead reads "B&W"). The editors classify it as a magazine for collectors of photography (*every*
photograph in the magazine is for sale), though they do recognize the value of their magazine to
photographers. Each issue (thus far) contains a nice mix of old and new talents working in every format
(so along as the results are in black & white). Each photographers' works are accompanied by some brief
biographical information or a short interview that provides a nice bit of context.
Not a place to get information about equipment or other technical matters, but if you enjoy learning by
looking, get a copy of this magazine.
-- Ronald Buchanan, November 9, 1999
I subscribe to 2 other magazines primarily to learn photographic techniques. DoubleTake is a quarterly
magazine with numerous photographic essays. It has both color and b&w photgraphy. Not related to
photography, Double also provides plenty of good fiction.
I was quite surprised to see that Life magazine was not listed. Dazzling photographs in every issue. A
qualitative way of learning about photography, seeing what appeals to you.
-- Gary Marshall, November 21, 1999
No-one's mentioned Amateur Photographer, which claims to be the oldest photo journal in the world -
certainly they've been in continuous publication for well over a century. It's a UK magazine which is
perhaps why it's not mentioned here. It's weeekly, so there is a feeling that some weeks it can be a bit
thin - not much news that week, the selected photos aren't terribly good, uninteresting reviews - but on
other occasions it can be excellent. For example their Millenium issue was very good - a review of the
photographic century, with lots of old photos (often from their own archives - one advantage of having
over 100 years of history to draw on). And there was a fascinating comparative review of cameras (all
from Kodak) from the beginning, middle and end of the century - a Box Brownie, a RTetina (I think)
and a digital. Interestingly they praised the Retina, were complimentary about the Brownie, but were
critical of the digital (and I can't remember which one it was).
Also I think they're pretty frank about equipment reviews.
-- Tom Burke, January 13, 2000
The Photography Book by the Editors of Phaidon Press, 1997 Phaidon Press Limited. ISBN 0-7148-
3634-6. 512 pages. You can order this book from amazon.com .
If you wanted to show off the history of photography, covering 150 years, how would you do it? If you
were Philip Greenspun, you'd put together a Web site. Fortunately for the non-web world, Phaidon press
http://www.photo.net/books/ (10 of 20)7/3/2005 2:23:26 AM