The New Book That Every Photographer Should Have On Their Shelf

There is a short list of books that distinguish themselves from the mainstream of photographic discourse, and even fewer for which a good case could be made that they are required reading for anybody serious about photography. This new book about the art of photography scores on both counts.

There exists an ocean of photography lore both online and in print, and the great majority of it seems to revolve around photography gear and the technical details of its capabilities and usage. This should not be surprising, given that the practice of photography has always involved a strong technical component, sitting as it does at the intersection of art, physics, and chemistry, optical and mechanical engineering, and most recently—electronic and digital technologies. But beyond any strictly utilitarian use as a means of documentation or visual reproduction, photography is, first and foremost, an art form just like sculpture, painting, cinema, or music—and as such, a wealth of philosophical and aesthetic learning related to its practice has evolved over the couple of centuries of its existence.

This accumulated learning represents a body of visual education that, over these two centuries, has adopted, embraced, and even extended many of the creative principles and philosophies described and practiced by artists in other fields that preceded photography. Yet across the broad landscape of photography discussion and opinion, so much emphasis tends to get placed on the purely technical aspects and physical practice of photography that these aesthetic and philosophical aspects of our art often get short shrift—and this, I think, is precisely where Ted Forbes’ new book Visually Speaking: Mastering the Art of Photography aims to fill a gap for photographers. 

It is one thing to be a technically competent photographer, but it takes more than just technical competence to create an image that can evoke an emotion in the viewer, tell a compelling story, or visually capture and convey the feeling or mood that arises out of the photographer’s relationship with their subject. In this sense, photography (like any other art) can be thought of as a language or medium of communication, and it is this visual language of photography that is the subject of Ted’s book.

Visually Speaking is definitely not the book you would turn to in order to learn how to be a technically competent photographer in the sense of understanding the exposure triangle, configuring your camera or lens for a specific situation, or developing and printing film. Within its pages, you will find very little advice or guidance concerning the technical or practical aspects of photography. What you will find instead is a kind of guided tour through the visual vocabulary of the language of photography. Thoughtful and well-organized, the book is conveniently divided into a series of relatively compact and accessible chapters that cover all of the essential visual elements that contribute to the art of photography. These include framing and composition, color theory, shadow and light, the use of color and black-and-white, and the role of focus and focal length in the creation of an image, to name but a few.

Just as an aspiring musician acquires knowledge of the relationships of musical tones, rhythms, and harmonies, so an aspiring painter (or photographer) will learn the analogous visual relationships that involve compositional forms, shadows and light, color, symmetry, and so on. As a student of music, painting, or photography at an art school or college, this kind of philosophical and aesthetic education would typically run parallel to the more practical studio work that we generally consider to be the major component of an artist’s education.

In setting aside the practical details of photography to focus on its artistic and aesthetic foundations, Ted’s book definitely takes a path less traveled in photography writing. As such, I feel that it is an important book for photographers. Such books come along only once in a while, and I would say that Visually Speaking definitely deserves its place on the bookshelf alongside some of the other books that comprise the “must-read” canon for photographers: Susan Sontag’s On Photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment, and Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, to name but a few examples.

It’s hard to overstate the value of this kind of artistic education for an aspiring photographer, and by “aspiring photographer,” I mean any photographer who—regardless of the years they have been at it—is still committed to the wonderful, inexhaustible, and lifelong process of learning and self-discovery that photography offers the practitioner. Many of the great photographers, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Steichen, and Saul Leiter, were painters before they became photographers, and the deep aesthetic sensibility that they acquired in the course of their artistic education is manifest in the powerful expressiveness of their photographs—in their masterful use of light, color, composition, and timing.

This kind of aesthetic learning and practice that goes beyond mere technical competence is what is often colloquially referred to as “developing an eye,” and I would say that, in a broad sense, this notion of developing your eye as a photographer is the principal focus of this book. To this end, some of the later chapters in the book are aimed at helping the photographer mature in their art—offering guidance in how to dedicate themselves to the practice of photography, how to integrate the visual principles presented in the earlier chapters into their art, and ultimately, how to find their own voice as a photographer. And while these later chapters expand and build upon the earlier ones, one of the things I really like about Ted’s book is that it does not need to be read linearly. This is a book that you can take off the shelf and turn to for inspiration whenever you need it, with each chapter comprising a more-or-less standalone mini-treatise on some particular aspect of the art of photography, replete with beautiful examples of the principles it discusses.

Visually Speaking is both an educating and inspiring trip that any aspiring photographer should thoroughly enjoy, regardless of how long they have been practicing photography. There really is something in this book for photographers of all levels. As somebody who (like most of us) has drawn a great deal of inspiration from the work of other photographers, I feel that this book is a great complement to the many wonderful photography monographs that line my own bookshelves. After reading Visually Speaking and revisiting some of the work of the photographers who have inspired me, I feel that I have a better understanding and appreciation of what it is that makes those great photographs work so well, and perhaps most importantly of all—how I can apply those principles in my own work and grow as a photographer myself.