1001 Photographs: You Must See Before You Die

THE PHOTOSI thought the selection was excellent, from Joseph Niepce 1826 shot to Bryan Smith's 2015 color photo of the Empire State Building. The book's scope is broad, too, with portraits. documentary, news, war, still life, art, photojournalism, fashion, sport, nature in fact any kind of photography that involves some creative input by the photographer rather than photos for the record like first past the post horseracing or police mug shots.The photos are obviously arranged historically, pages 20 to 363 have photos before 1945 and 364 to 945 photos up to 2015. The pictures, obviously reflecting the author's selection, had some omissions, in my view. Nothing from Stephen Shore, David Bailey, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton or Annie Leibovitz. On the other hand, there are plenty of photographers I've never heard of so their work is a voyage of discovery for me.THE BOOKThe before you die numbers book is a standard for general publishers: 1000 record covers, 200 places to visit, 1001 books to read et cetera. They all require images but one about photos is different because it's the image that counts. To put 1001 photos, one to a page, in a brick of a book (960 paperback pages, printed with a 175 screen on a matt art paper) doesn't seem the best way to reveal artistic intent. So many of them are not much bigger than postcards or largish thumbnails. To a certain extent, this is because there is too much background copy about the photos.The book's front pages have an unusual index listing titles, is a reader really going to look for Congo Free State page 154, or Polar panorama page 842? The back pages are more useful with a glossary and photographer index (though regrettably in tiny type).'1001 photographs' is a sort of history of the subject and a better title could be Juliet Hacking's 'Photography: the whole story' published in 2012 (ISBN 978-3791347349). You can look inside the book at Westread Book Reviews then click 2023 and April.

Whilst this is a very interesting book, in terms of the 1001 photographs I was a bit disappointed to find that very few are full page and most are at best 1/3 or 1/2 page and many are even smaller. That said the arrangement in chronological order does make for very interesting discoveries. And, of course a book of full page photograph reproductions would be far more expensive than this book! So this is not the book for closely studying photographs but one rather to enjoy exploring the history of photography with a good sample of important photographs.

At 3inches thick this at the very least represents fantastic value for money. A selection of amazing pictures - or amazing stories to go with at-first-glance nondescript pictures. All the 'great' pictures are here plus many you won't know about. There'll be some missing of course but trying to decide the 1001 top pictures in the world is all part of the fun. Very detailed background to the pictures - some of the pictures should have been bigger but then the book would have had to be 4 or 5 inches thick. A book to leave by the loo and to keep dipping in to over and over again (the book, not the loo).

As with all the books in this series a great collection of the book's topic. With this one a wonderful insight and history of the photography and the photos that define history.

Very good book, as expected, but it could be better protected or cared for, that’s the reason it loses one star... It arrived as seen in the photo, without any signs of external impact on the packaging, that was only a thick layer of hard paper... no bubble-rap to imidiately protect the book. Delivery time was as described.

It's a bit of a tome. Very thick as you'd expect with 1,000 images in it. Great descriptions.

Good information from this I like the style of how the information is presented.

For the 1001 series, about 5 have been traslated to Chinese and published, it is useful to a Chinese like me to get more understanding to Westen culture