PHOTOGRAPHERS' SKETCHBOOKS

We are used to see, define the "sketchbook" as the sketches, the designs, the evidence, the ideas put down by designers, illustrators, cartoonists, even directors. 


While for the photograph, well the photograph has become a subject for which one (the viewer) does not ask too many questions concerning what is behind a given image shown in a gallery or published in a magazine or on the web. 


We, in a way, learnt to take it as it comes and value it as more of an art that has more to do with light and time, physics and chemistry and the mechanics/electronics of the camera.


At the end of the day could pictures and notes be a match? Notes for a photographer relate to the extra-quoted "decisive moment"; the preparatory work.


In fact the two are tied together much more than it seems. This is  the theme highlighted and demonstrated by the book published by Thames & Hudson. It regards a precise collection of the sketches of some of the most interesting contemporary photographers.


Photographers' Sketchbooks, the title of the book, discloses the notes of those behind the lens, explained by the words of the artists themselves (50 to 500 images collected in 320 pages), 


which according to the two editors of the book - Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals - have shared not only their studies and agendas but also a suitcase full of memories and ideas.