Nothing Personal, by Richard Avedon and James Baldwin

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Why?

“It was very, very tender poetism. Baldwin is such a brilliant man, an emotional man and also analytical. He was able to work with Avedon’s pictures.

This book gave me a sensibility for the breadth of photography and a different way in which it could be applied. The whole idea of how you can make something as dark and as clinically alienating as a studio, and with a certain kind of aggressiveness that Dick used as his palette. I always thought that he was just a little Jewish kid from the Lower East Side who was going to be bigger than anybody else. He put people in his white jail, boxed them in, made them extremely uncomfortable and whacked them one.”
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- Larry Fink, Photographer

In the American West, by Richard Avedon

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Why?

“The significance of this book on my decision to become a photographer cannot be understated. It’s one of my earliest memories of seeing photography. The sensation of having a part of my mind unlocked, or perhaps the embers of curiosity stoked, impacted me greatly. I’m quite sentimental about this book, won’t own a copy myself and don’t look at it when it’s around. There are some things in this world that may be magic. This book gets pretty damn close.”
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- Mustafah Abdulaziz, Photographer