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Clockwise from the upper left corner:

Photography Until Now by John Szarkowski
From what I was able to read on the train while going home, it looks to be a fantastic book. A serious mental investment towards better understanding photography written by probably the greatest thinker of and writer on the art and craft. He can, through canny wit and mind bending clarity, tell you all the things about nearly anything that you soon realize you didn’t understand near as well as you should have. Eyes wide open: WOW and in a daze is how I come off of his essays and books. Who needs drugs?

砂を数える Counting Grains of Sand 1976-1989　 by Hiromi Tsuchida
Today’s best book-store find was a first edition of Tsuchida Sensei’s Counting Grains of Sand at a shop in Ochanomizu. The recently published new version is still widely avalible but this was the first time I had come across a copy of the original. Counting Grains of Sand is a good companion to his other book: Zokushin (俗神).

Japan 100 years ago １００年前日本
Quite a few photographs of Japan 100 years ago but what strikes me the most is how the visual culture (posters, postcards, matchbooks, etc) of that time (and the next 30 decades after) feels far more intelligently crafted than things designed in America with the western aesthetic standards of that period. But that is another post for another time.

Tokyo 40 years ago ４０年前の東京
I mentioned this before but thought that since it is part of a series and all it might as well show up on this blog again. Great photographs of Tokyo in 1963 and ‘64. I mentioned to Onishi sensei that I bought it and he mentioned that the photographer is a good friend of his.

The Trolleys of Showa Tokyo 部電が走った昭和の東京
It’s one thing to be American in America and say (seriously) out loud “Why can’t things be more like the 1950s?” but as an American in Tokyo I sure as hell say “Why can’t things be more like the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s?” over and over in my mind when looking through this book and all the time in East Tokyo, or when I walk past Showa-era buildings anywhere else. There is always Minowa to go shooting in. And Kameido. But I hear that there are good pictures to be had north of Urayasu . . .

Readymades by Jeff Brouws
There are some really wonderful essays interspersed through even better photographs in this blocky little photo book of pictures of American Roadside Artifacts. My favorite section is the “Partially Painted Pickup Trucks” (Look here to see some of the pictures) for not just the trucks but for how each truck relates to it’s surroundings. Some hold entire houses in their beds while others are pinned down by the light poles and powerlines in the background.