I made two resolutions this past New Year’s Day. One was that I would write a blog entry on this website once a week. I have kept this up for 12 weeks, so I consider it a good start as we round the corner on the first quarter of 2019. The other resolution I made was to purchase at least one photo book every month. I was excited when the most recent purchase arrived in the mail. As you can see it is “Magnum: Contact Sheets.”

The book is a fantastic look “behind the curtain,” so to speak; to see the rolls of film that have yielded so many historic, incredibly memorable icons of 20th-century photography. Looking through this book triggered so many memories for me, recalling the days when I was strictly a film photographer. Exposing 36 exposure rolls of film, developing the film myself, and then finally making a contact sheet of each roll. Finally seeing all of the images I captured with my camera. There is still a feeling of magic for me when I look at contact sheets. Hence my joy of adding “Magnum: Contact Sheets” to my library. I love looking throughout the book and seeing the photographers’ markings… isolating the specific image that they chose to print, seeing that frame on the contact sheet marked in bold grease pencil.

Though shooting digital photographs has many advantages, there is something lost when there is not a tangible record of the photos that came before or after the ones we choose to show the world. I highly recommend this book. It should be part of any serious photographers personal library. It might even inspire you to grab a roll of film and shoot “old school.”