Looking for contact sheets

[MPJMP]

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Nice! Thanks a lot - just ordered a used copy.

 

Be sure to take special note of the first page or so of the book. There is a full color shot of Marshall's photo bag with no less than four black paint M4 rangefinders, an R4 SLR, and about as many Leica lenses and accessories as he could squeeze in there. Just looking at that makes me want to blow some cash on more film M bodies!

 

-Mike

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[Finnkare]

This (and likely also the Adams book) is about the technique of contact printing and not about 35mm contact sheets, right? Just checking.

 

I don't know, actually.

[nhabedi]

Thanks again to all who replied. For the sake of those who might read this thread some time later here's a quick summary after receiving three books recommended above:

 

• "Das Jahrhundert im Bild" by Marie-Monique Robin (that's the book accompanying the arte TV series) is interesting in its own right and I don't regret buying it, but it does contain only very few contact sheets or alternative shots, certainly less than half a dozen. Maybe that was different in the TV series itself.
   
  
• Jim Marshall's "Proof" is really nice. As most of you will know, he's famous for his pictures of Rock and Jazz musicians. That's not the kind of photography I usually look at, but in this book really every picture comes with the corresponding contact sheets which in many cases is pretty interesting. (In other cases it isn't, though, at least for me - e.g. if he filled a whole roll with essentially the same portrait of a rock group where only the facial expressions differ slightly.) In fact, this book also raised a technical question for which I'll start a new thread later today.
   
  
• Ralph Gibson's "Contact:Theory" is also a very nice book exactly in the direction I was looking for. It differs from "Proof" and "Looking In" in that it has contact sheets from very different photographers, but that obviously has both good and bad sides. A pleasant surprise was that this book contains the contact sheets for Martine Franck's boy in the hammock which is one of my all-time favorite photos. That alone would have been worth the few Euros I had to pay for the book.
  

 

In terms of being able to watch over a famous photographer's shoulder and really see how he is working, "Looking In" (mentioned in my initial posting) is still unparalleled, though.

 

Still waiting for the Christ book, so I cannot say anything about it.

 

Thanks again,

Edi.

[dicko101]

Interesting topic as contact sheets these days seem to be a lost art but are vital in err...developing...your skills as a photographer.

[nhabedi]

I still owe you my take on the Christ book which I've received a few weeks ago but haven't commented on yet. Like Gibson's book, the collection of photographers is very diverse, so you'll likely find several which are very interesting to you as well as a bunch of others you simply find boring.

 

What's a bit irritating is that pretty often you don't really see a contact sheet in the sense of a sequence where one shot was selected but you rather see the selected photo plus two, three, or four alternatives with no indication of the chronological order (and no way to say if there were gaps). That's not a contact sheet in my opinion and I suspect these are only in there because otherwise they wouldn't have been able to fill the book. Also, like with Marshall's book, there are examples where you see a whole contact sheet which repeats essentially the same photo over and over again with only very minor variations. But I'm probably biased because I'm mostly interested in reportage-style (or "street") photography and don't care much if someone like Peter Lindbergh lets his models repeat the same pose three dozen times.

 

Still, I found enough interesting stuff in this book and I'm not disappointed. There simply are too few books of this kind to be disappointed...

[nhabedi]

One more addendum:

 

Another interesting book if you like to "look over the shoulder" of a great photographer is "Walker Evans at Work" from 1982. Not purely a book with contact sheets (although it contains some), but a very interesting and detailed description of how Evans worked. I only received my copy today, but I think I like it a lot and prefer it to most of the other books listed here so far.

[Jeff S]

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One more addendum:

 

Another interesting book if you like to "look over the shoulder" of a great photographer is "Walker Evans at Work" from 1982. Not purely a book with contact sheets (although it contains some), but a very interesting and detailed description of how Evans worked. I only received my copy today, but I think I like it a lot and prefer it to most of the other books listed here so far.

 

I use this book as an example if someone frowns on cropping as something only a poor photographer would do. Evans did it often, sometimes different ways on the same photo. It won't make a bad photograph good, of course, or substitute for a good eye in the first place, but the act is not bad in and of itself, when used effectively.

 

Frank likewise cropped images with The Americans, as the Looking In book shows. I compared his contacts to the French and English editions that I own to "look over his shoulder," as you say. Very useful exercise to see how he both selected and edited.

 

Thanks for summarizing the other findings.

 

Jeff

[Guest]

You may be interested in this 3 DVD box set where photographers - including HCB, Doisneau, Boubat, Ronis etc. discuss an individual contact sheet and how they selected the frame to print...

 

Coffret Contacts 3 DVD - Le Photoreportage / La Photographie Contemporaine / La Photographie Conceptuelle: Amazon.fr: DOCUMENTAIRE

 

Commentary in French and English.

 

Edit, I see you already have the set, but the link may be useful for others.

 

Thank you very much for the info, Steve! It should arrive here soon.

 

Thanks Edi,

4 the PM answer to me helping to find this thread again,

4 starting it in the first place and for the "Walker Evans AT Work" book suggestion.

 

Best regards from Frankfurt,

Simon

[Xmas]

Interesting topic as contact sheets these days seem to be a lost art but are vital in err...developing...your skills as a photographer.

Hi

 

Looking at a flat bed scan of the 36 or light tabling with a loupe the negatives as sleeved and being self critical is important.

 

For a long time I used to throw 100% of sleeves in the waste basket, that seemed the best place to leave rubbish, I've relaxed a bit more and file them now.

 

Noel

[Michael Markey]

Good thread .I`ll chase up some of these book recommendations. In fact I already have and ordered Jim Marshall "Proof ".

Back in the late sixties I bought Rolling Stone and sort of grew up with his stuff and that of Annie L.

I`ve mentioned in another thread about getting my C41 dev at a local Supermarket chain. Part of the processing package is a contact sheet which I file for as quick ref guide.

[nhabedi]

Let me revive this thread for three more additions:

 

• Robert Frank: London/Wales (at least the Scalo edition I have, not sure about the new Steidl edition) has one contact sheet in the beginning and two strips of images which look like parts of contact sheets in the middle.
  
• Daido Moriyama: '71-NY contains 14 pages of contact sheets according to Parr's The Photobook: A History, Volume 1.
  
• William Klein (see above) published a little book called Contacts in 2008 which contains over-painted contact sheets. These aren't really full contact sheets but rather enlarged details of contact sheets, but it's still kind of interesting in its own way.
  

[wattsy]

For what it's worth (and to add to the list), there are a number of Inge Morath's contacts in The Road to Reno.

[theendlesshouse]

contact sheets - Flickr: Search

[wattsy]

Resurrecting an old thread but this forthcoming book - Magnum Contact Sheets - might be of interest to the OP and others.

[nhabedi]

Resurrecting an old thread but this forthcoming book - Magnum Contact Sheets - might be of interest to the OP and others.

 

Thanks! I was just about to write about this book (which I received today) here when I saw that you already mentioned it. I haven't had enough time yet to look at it to give an in-depth review, but my first impression is that everybody interested in contact sheets should grab this giant tome of a book. Wow...

[wattsy]

I've ordered a copy as well (from Amazon - £55 instead of £95 cover price).

 

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts about it when you've had a better chance to digest it.

[wattsy]

Resurrecting an old thread but I was tweeted this recently. A new weekly feature that may be of interest to those interested in contact sheets.

[Guest]

Thank you for the link.

Did you see the other article there with "consumerist revolution"?

Whatever revolution, full speed ahead looks like being the motto. Not sure where these imported "revolutions" will go for the next 5000 years of this civilisation and the others.

 

Back on track with this wonderful thread and many thanks to wattsy.

simon

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Hallo,

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