Hi all, I put this on Street & PJ a couple days ago, but it strikes me that it's worth putting it on LuLa too.
I'm sure all the New Yorkers on LuLa know who Tod Pagageorge is, but for people who don't know, Tod was a close friend of Garry Winogrand (you all know who he is), and used to shoot on the streets along with Garry, Joel Meyerowitz, and Paul McDonough.
I just happened on Tod's book: Core Curriculum, Writings on Photography. It's a fine piece of work for anybody interested in photography as an art form, and particularly in street photography. There's a great interview with Tod in which he reflects on his days on the street with Garry, and describes his own development as a photographer.
Tod reviews Eugene Atget's life and explains pretty thoroughly Atget's seminal contributions to photography. You should have a pretty complete Atget book at hand when you read this part because some of the pictures Tod talks about aren't in Core Curriculum. He also deals extensively with Cartier-Bresson, giving his opinion that HCB is "arguably the greatest photographer who's ever lived." You might not agree with that assessment, and I'd have to pause for a serious think before I'd agree, but he makes his case pretty well. He talks about the changes in Henri's photography when he stopped doing street photography and started doing photojournalism, a subject I've mentioned a couple times.
Tod wrote poetry when he was in school, and he's the first photographer I've run across who's said what I've said many times; as Tod puts it: "...at their best, photography and poetry can share a near-blood relationship, easier to assert than to explain."
The book digs into the work of Brassaï, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand Josef Koudelka, and many other masters of street photography. If you're interested in street you'll love this book. Tod's a good writer as well as a good photographer.