Tag Archives: Influential books

photography, Tips and Technique

The Book Shelf.

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Today, 6 March 2016, is Mother’s Day in Ireland.

Some weeks ago when I was in Massachusetts, I was helping my mother organize books in our library. Some shelves hold books that have resided there since 1973.

My mother surprised me by saying, “I put these books here thinking that you and your brother would read them. But you never did. I found that very disappointing. They just sat here all these years.”

I looked carefully at the shelf.

‘These books?’

Here was a diverse collection of subjects: philosophy, history, art criticism, architecture, economics, psychology, social affairs, literature, photography and biographies among other topics.

I took one from the shelf and opened it. Inside my name was written in blue ball point.

“I’ve read almost all of these books. See here’s my name.”

I picked up another. “I read this one twice, and I wrote a college paper on this one over here.”

“Really? When did you read them?”

Starting about 1983, whenever I’d go out making photographs, I bring a book with me. If I went to the Berkshires to photograph the Boston & Albany, I always have a book to read while waiting for trains to pass. Up there in the rocks and trees along the West End, I read countless books, including many of the books on that shelf. If I took a long train ride I’d always have a book with me.

The railroad is my reading room. How many books have I read waiting trackside? In the 1980s I’d often read within sight of this old bridge on Boston & Albany’s West End. Image exposed on Kodak Verichrome Pan using a Rolleiflex Model T, October 20, 1985. What was I reading that day? Nietzsche or a book about the Roman Empire?
The railroad is my reading room. How many books have I read waiting trackside? In the 1980s I’d often read within sight of this old bridge on Boston & Albany’s West End. Image exposed on Kodak Verichrome Pan using a Rolleiflex Model T, October 20, 1985. What was I reading that day? Nietzsche or a book about the Roman Empire?

“Even now, there’s one of these books on the back seat of the car.” (Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class).

“I have a photo of Sean reading the book on propaganda at the Twin Ledges twenty years ago. And I remember reading all about the Borgia’s one summer’s day in the late 1980s waiting for Conrail.”

“I never knew that!” She said delighted.

Some of the books I’d read so long ago that their words had blended with my own thoughts.

The more I thought about it, the more the discussion about bookshelf astounded me.

Here, I read all these books that had shaped my view of the world and with it my photography and it never occurred to me that my mother had specifically put them there for me to read, nor did she know that I’d read them!

Happy Mother’s Day from Dublin!