[photopress:10c762e89da0a866c1074110._AA240_.L.jpg,full,alignright]”Just Take It In Little Bits At A Time”. That’s was the formula for getting the most out of a book called “The Keepers Of The Light” .
Sitting at a luncheon on the Riviera, I was introduced to a man who knew things. Photographic things. Image things.
And we talked.
He told me of a book that would change the way I thought about photography. But there was a secret to this book: only read a few pages at a time. Digest well. Move on to the next.
Yeah, right.
I am used to taking my photography in huge bites, with a chaser of actual shooting to feel the rush of the whole visual experience.

So I found this recommended, but unfortunately, out of print, book, from a seller on AMAZON. It arrived last week.

The full title is “The Keepers of the Light : A History & Working Guide to Early Photographic Processes by William Crawford”. Yeah, sounded pretty dry to me too.

There are such deep roots exposed in this book, that all I can do is consume this in small doses. Like a truffle, a little goes a long way.
As the author describes photography in printmaking terms , he describes and exposes the first means of making a photographic prints. Ambrotype, Platinum, Photogravure, Carbro and many other photographic printing processes are here but laid out with an aesthetic in mind. The psychological root of the image, and where photography’s place is in that history.

Here is a small sample:
” One could never hope to understand the significance of photography until one understood the nature of the problem photography solved…..photography’s greatest achievement was to make possible communication through exactly repeatable pictorial statements without the distortion of linear syntax”

Yeah, small bites.

It’s one you may want to find to peruse on your stay-cation. Worth the $20.

We’ll let you know more as we keep nibbling away at it.