John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop [Paperback]

Why produce a book on the art of producing fine photographs, using film, paper and chemicals, at a time when the manufacturers of conventional materials are struggling to survive and the move to digital imaging is inexorable?
Because this is much more than a 'how to' book for traditional photography. It a book about 'strategies' and the development of a personal photographic style related to subject and intention, based around the landscape and still life work of one of the UK's foremost practitioners. The contents are a visual delight and the book serves both as a monograph and a practical manual.

Those with a desire to learn techniques related to film-based photography will find much of benefit here, but the concepts and approaches are equally relevant to all camera users with a desire to produce expressive results. I had the good fortune to spend a week working with John Blakemore over 25 years ago and the experience fuelled my desire to explore all that a photograph can offer as a personal statement. This desire has never left me, and I am still exploring the possibilities and discovering new approaches. Blakemore's writing style is very accessible and he relays his personal approach in an understated and very honest manner. One definitely gets the impression that we are viewing 'work in progress' and that there are many more visual delights to come from his camera, all built upon the solid foundation of approach and technique conveyed so well in these pages. Technical information, although consistently related to darkroom work, can also provide useful guidance to anyone using a digital camera and Adobe Photoshop achieve their results.

The image reproduction quality is excellent, conveying the subtle nuances of tone and intention sufficiently to allow comparison of the many examples given. With much depending on the ability to show texture in deep shadow and detail in subtle highlights this is an important part of the book's appeal. The design and layout also is very pleasing on the eye, the square format allowing for good size reproductions of both portrait and landscape orientations as well as the many sequences.

I will close with one quote from the book that I feel summarises a key message: "To photograph and re-photograph is essential if one is to move beyond initial assumptions of what images a particular subject may yield. It is through these practices, and not through the acquisition of the latest camera or darkroom gadget, that your photography will develop."

This is definitely a 'must-have' book for anyone serious about producing expressive black and white photographs.

This book has already received a couple of very well written reviews and I don't want to try and emulate these (and fail!). All I will say is that this is probably the most important book I have read or own on fine art photography.

(although it is aimed at the "fine print" genre, I believe that the thorough understanding required of exposure and printing techniques is invaluable for all other types of photography.)

The book covers both traditional technique (brilliantly, and so easy to digest) together with the development of ones own style and subjects - thus I would recommend this book to photographers shooting exclusively digitally aswell as the obvious audience of traditional fine art photographers.

Saying that, it is undoubtedly traditional photographers who will benefit most from this book and, being one of those, this is a very welcome book to appear at a time when the world has gone digital mad.

As an example, the Zone System is explained superbly and in this sense the book is a great accompaniment to Ansel Adams "The Negative" and "The Print" - for anyone who finds the Zone System difficult to get to grips with, irrelevant or boring, Blakemore's chapter in the book on exposure ("Postvisualisation") is excellent.

Buy this book, however you capture or print images, as it will lend a superb understanding of what makes a great monochrome photograph.

John Blakemore is one of those very rare individuals in British photography whose work is known, and appreciated, across the entire spectrum of the craft. Whether you talk to advertising or editorial photographers, artists or darkroom specialists, his reputation is held in equal respect. One of the strengths of his imagery lies in its elements of accessibility. It's work that someone entirely new to photography can approach and enjoy. Yet it retains a multi-layered sophistication normally entirely detached from the more popular end of photographic practice.

In looking at the images enclosed within this new book I'm reminded of a piece written in the late eighties: considering in passing how so many of his admirers wax lyrical over the seductive beauty of his still lives without ever discerning the more savage element of their construction, and the metaphors implied. For the delicate flower still lives include subjects mutilated to expose their sexuality, along with other examples of the same flora deprived of the water that would have extended their existence. Allowed to wrinkle, shrivel, and dry they attest to their brief mortality: instigating thought trails leading perhaps towards humanity's own transient tenure on life.

Uncommonly for a book on technique, chapter one starts out by attempting to define a relationship between the medium and the message. For meaning flows freely from the shifting tones on these paper prints. Later on we'll learn about the mysteries of Dr Beer's developer: mixed as two baths, soft and hard, puritanical sounding when voiced, yet in the hands of a craftsman offering infinite possibilities for the final print. But at the outset it's meaning that is paramount.

Blakemore was always said to be an adherent of Ansel Adams' Zone system. But notions of previsualisation seem to have dropped off along the way as he considers what he describes as the possibilities of post-visualisation. Not for him perhaps Adams' rigid adherence to the image foreseen at the time of first releasing the shutter: interpretation becomes an issue into which time may be allowed to intervene.

Blakemore, the man, by contrast is much given to mirth: smiling is a word that readily springs to mind while considering ways to describe him. He's a quiet man, and contemplative, with a good sense of irony, who will be much amused by the notion of going into print with his definitive treatise on black and white photography at a point when the majority of the photographic world accelerates towards the digital future. Indeed he alludes to this in both introduction and conclusion. But the publishers needn't be concerned about recouping their investment. This is a book of relevance to all interested in photography, will find pride of place on many a book shelf and is to be highly recommended. For unlike other practitioners Blakemore has never made a secret of his methods; and he's happy to discuss, in as much detail as a single book on the subject can, his career's accumulation of technique.

Similarly to the images contained within its covers, it is multilayered: serving both as tutorial and testament. Despite it's disguise as a textbook dedicated to the process of chemical printing, in many ways, rather than the acclaimed collections of his photographs, it is this publication that will be regarded as his magnum opus. In failing to restrict itself to the technique of monochrome photographic developing and printing implied by its title, John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop offers it's readers the rare privilege of a portal to the thought patterns of a master