A-Level Photography Reading List
Starting a photography course in the new year? GCSE? A-Level? Degree? Need a photography reading list to get you started? Good, here you go.
Congratulations, you are at the start of a wonderful journey. Cherish these years as you will look back upon them as a time when you could fully indulge in your practice, undisturbed by the outside pressures of money and family.
Devour as much information as you possibly can. Read, read and then read some more. Make notes, record videos, document the whole lot.
Have a dictionary on hand – not your phone, it’s distracting.
There will be plenty of words that you don’t understand, maybe even entire passages, but this has to happen in order for you to learn. You don’t read the same books from when you were a child over and over again do you? why not? because you have extracted the information from it, you know the morals or the facts contained within it. You are hungry for more. New information, new tales and stories, new inspirations!
Learning, and I mean real learning, happens right on the point where you know a bit of what you’re reading, but not all. Only then will you engage your brain to understand the core meaning. This is why revision is boring and rather unproductive. You know the information already, so you’re just re-reading the same thing over and over. Delving deep into a subject is what keeps the magic of learning alive.
Here is my photography reading list, some books are more challenging than others. By the time you reach the end of your degree, you should have read them all. Also included in this article is a list of relevant other resources such as galleries to visit, websites to get inspiration from and popular magazines with latest news and reviews.
A-Level reading list
John Berger
Ways of Seeing (1990)
Also available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
Cataract (2012)
Understanding a Photograph (2013)
Roland Barthes
A very short introduction
Camera Lucida
The Rhetoric of the Image
The Photographic Message
W. Baart
Photography – A Concise History
Pub: Laurence King, London
Graham Clarke
The Photograph
Pub: Oxford History of Art
Susan Sontag
On Photography
Regarding the Pain of Others
Vilem Flusser
Towards a Philosophy of Photography
Michel Foucault
Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias
Douglas Crimp
Pictures
Laura Mulvey
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Books on Photography Technique
Michael Freeman is a great communicator and offers plenty of useful information that’s easy to digest.
Michael Freeman
Timeless art of Monochrome
Perfect Exposure
A Photographers eye
Alternative Processes
This is literally the alt bible
Magazines and Journals
The British Journal of Photography – Incisive Media (Professional Weekly)
bjp-online.com
Portfolio (Contemporary Photography)
portfoliocatalogue.com
Practical Photography
WH Smiths
Digital Photo
WH Smiths
Amateur Photography
WH Smiths
Galleries and Museums
Check museumcrush.org for all current exhibitions
BFI Southbank Gallery
Belvedere Road, SE1
bfi.org.uk
The British Library
Euston Road, NW1
bl.uk
British Museum
Great Russel Street, WC1
britishmuseum.org.uk
County Hall Gallery
Westminster Bridge Road, SE1
countyhallgallery.com
Getty Images Gallery
Eastcastle Street, W1
gettyimagesgallery.com
The Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, SE1
haywardgallery.org.uk
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place, WC2
npg.org.uk
Royal Academy of Arts
Piccadilly, W1
royalacademy.org.uk
Whitechapel Gallery
Whitechapel High Street, E1
whitechapel.org.uk
Tate Modern
Park Street, Bankside, SE1
tate.org.uk
Photography Equipment
Camera Price Buster (price comparison site)
MPB Photographic (second hand gear)
Jessops
jessops.com
Mr. Cad
mrcad.co.uk
Silverprint
silverprint.co.uk
First Call Photographic
firstcallphotographic.co.uk
Research – useful websites
Ignant
ignant.de
Thisiscolossal
thisiscolossal.com
The eye of photography
loeildelaphotographie.com/en/
masters-of-photography.com
Features the greatest practitioners of the camera
pinholephotography.org
Pinhole photography my professional photographer Justin Quinnell
lomo.com
Community of Lomographers
ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth
Digital archive and public library
photographyreview.com
Digital camera news, reviews etc…
DPReview
dpreview.com