[.ca] Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman ... (ISBN 0892368543)

Landscape miners:
The 198 photos in the book are part of the 450 that have very generously been given to the Getty by LA collectors Nancy and Bruce Berman. This lovely book was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the photos at the museum in 2006 and 7. The twenty-four photographers featured are probably the leading contemporary exponents in the US of this landscape image capture and one reason I like this type of book is that I get to discover photographers I was not aware of. My main discovery here was Jim Dow. In the back of the book there is an excellent biography of the photographers which nicely lists their books, I've already got my eye on one by Mr Dow. If you are familiar with recent landscape photography (and I think it's worth stating that this means the man-made landscape rather than natural) you'll most likely have seen some of the photos included: `Petit's Mobil station' by George Tice, `Red building in forest' by William Christenberry or `2nd Street, Ashland, Wisconsin' by Stephen Shore are three I've frequently seen but I feel the strength of the book is the opportunity to compare how these twenty-four photographers interpret the same subject. The impressive page size: about eleven inches square, screen: 250dpi+ and quality paper and printing mean the photos sparkle on the page though I did wonder if maybe a few images had been taken from chromo prints rather than the original transparencies. I noticed a softness and lack of detail in a Stephen Shore photo of Easton, Pennsylvania for instance. The book cannot be considered a definitive survey of contemporary landscape photographers, only those in the Getty Collection have been included so no Lewis Baltz, Jeff Brouws, Gregory Conniff or David Graham for example but those that are presented are clearly part of the top creative interpreters of man-made America