This 2018 publication by Henry Carroll is from Laurence King Publishing. I paid £15.99 for a hardback version but there are cheaper, second hand versions on the internet including at World of Books, Amazon, Ebay etc. Carroll has produced a number of photography books and is well known in the industry. This book covers the thoughts and sayings of many leading photographers from Fox Talbot, Man Ray, and David Hockney to Hellen van Meene, Esther Teichmann, Ishiuchi Miyako and others. The main purpose is to show their work as an illustration of their way of thinking and working. If you never wanted to take an ordinary picture again then this would be the book to read, absorb and practice. Although with your own twist! What follows are five examples from the book.

Amalia Ulman, through an Instagram account, has created an utterly fictitious life. Her alter ego has a relationship breakup, moves to LA, finds a sugar daddy, has cosmetic surgery, becomes suicidal and then finds peace and happiness with a good man. This work, accepted by many followers as the truth, illustrates how much photography is produced and absorbed and understood by the viewer. By taking selfies and sharing online people grab an identity and become people who market themselves. But often what is being shared is a very edited version of the truth.

Edward Weston said "It cannot be too strongly emphasisied that reflected light is the photographers subject matter." Indeed in his long career he photographed most things from nudes to vegetables, from deserts to architecture. The picture shown above is an example of how reflected light in an attic room changes the physical geometry of the space around the figure, abstracting it beyond the physicality of the place. It is worth considering that whenever thinking about your photographs it is the reflected light you are looking at and not the object itself.

Olivia Bee deals with imperfection. "It's way more important to know how to take a picture than use a camera" she asserts. Rightly I think. Bee eschews the increasing perfection of digital media preferring instead to create images on film and leave a certain amount to chance. This risk-taking introduces an element of uncertainty but can also add emotion and human qualities that the digital work tries to reduce. Her work reminds me somewhat of Rhiannon Adam's photographs with out-of-date Polaroid film (of which I have written before) and the vagaries of result which are entirely unpredictable. After all, we are humans and a bit of imperfection is both understandable and human.

Esther Teichmann is obsessive about mounting her shoots ensuring that her backdrops, indoor or outdoor are ready and cameras primed as she wants them before starting the shoot. This leaves her free to concentrate on looking for the shots she wants. Nonetheless things can go wrong and she enjoys the serendipity when they do. In a lengthy interview in this book she talks about how mistakes that she makes often lead to the best work. The unimagined and unexpected adds an element not considered by the professional eye and can be better than that which was aimed for. So don't be too quick to discard the unintentional.

Richard Avedon was expert at seeing and capturing nuances in the faces of those who sat for him. He would often snatch pictures at the end of a shoot when the sitter was less guarded. This gave him access to a person in more relaxed, and some may feel, more truthful mode. Avedon himself said "My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything' They're readings of what's on the surface." Nonetheless catching subtleties does allow observers to interpret suggestions as facts and viewers might even imagine they can see something which will never be there in a picture - a glimpse into the soul as the picture of Marilyn Monroe above might suggest.