My Favorite Photography Books of the Year - 2022

Added on January 1, 2023 by Alex Ramos.

After the height of the pandemic, I felt a sense of normalcy in 2022. The seasons and months of the year were marked with the releases of many exciting photography books which I am excited to share with you all. Several of the books that stand out to me were ushered among the ranks following the second half of the year, leaving me with great inspiration during the transition into 2023.

It is no surprise that some themes of books that were published this year are directly related to Covid’s chapter in history. Void’s box set “Bleak House” is a good example which is a grand package of twelve photo zines, each by a different photographer of their photographic reflections during the pandemic. Two of the included zines, “Mother of Dogs,” as well as “Death is Not Here,” ended up being published later in the year as their own monographs, and also made it into my list of favorite photo books this year. They’re excellent.

When I was going through my library to consider what would make “the list,” I considered the physicality of the book itself. These are the books where the artists, publishers, designers, printing presses, and all involved put great efforts into making each book stand out. One clear example is Raymond Meek’s “Geography of Abandonment,” which landed in my hands in the final month of the year. It is hand constructed and is a work of art in and of itself. It is evident that a lot of time was put into each and every copy out of the edition of 250. From the moment you see it with a hand written title and artist signature on the cover, to the beautiful binding, paper choices, accordion style fold-outs, it’s entirely interactive in physical form and forces me to engage even further with the photography that the book carries.

While very simple in design (and low in production cost) compared to all of the other books mentioned, Michael Jang’s “Post No Jang’s,” zine made the cut for me and onto this list of favorites. While it isn’t the biggest production amongst the rest, the newsprint zine serves as an exhibition catalog for a mixed media exhibit that was shown in San Francisco during the time of this writing. It serves as a treasure map for the countless photographs pulled from his archive which he shares through the act of wheat pasting onto forgotten walls, buildings and surfaces across the streets of San Francisco. Ever since his breakout show at the McEvoy Foundation several years ago, Jang continues to deliver to the community, making his photography accessible, and for that, we are grateful.

Staying in California, from the Bay to LA, Gregory Bojorquez introduces us to his circle of friends, family, and his surrounding community of East Los Angeles in “Eastsiders.” In a mix of B&W and color photographs, Bojorquez introduces us to his friends, family and those who left his circle too soon. He takes us on a long walk through the streets of LA from day into night. Front yards, back yards, schools, jails, social gatherings, late night parties, and so much more. He brings us into his world, partially in thanks to his opportunity to work at a camera store in the 1990’s, his first time taking photography seriously. The book is an honest portrait of an entire community that is seldom documented with great love and care.

Not long ago my dear friend, Doug Marshall of Marshall Contemporary, gifted me a copy of Albarrán Cabrera’s latest title Photographic Syntax, an artist duo represented at his gallery. For those of you who are unfamiliar with their work, I urge you to dig into their archive. Featuring stunning textures, tones and colors that would be difficult to find in a color swatch, their work stands out in print and on paper. It doesn’t hurt that the paper used for the book has a metallic sheen that creates a beautiful effect against the deep reds, greens, blues and everything in between each page. The book is smaller in size, somewhat unassuming but packs a punch from the moment the cover is opened into their world, the world of Albarrán and Cabrera.

Below isn’t a list of “Bests,” it is an honest selection of my “Favorites.” They are the photography books that got me through the year, and as a fellow photographer, the titles that dug deep in my mind leaving me with heavy doses of inspiration. They are the ones that have me looking forward to 2023.

The Books:

Matthew Genitempo
Mother of Dogs
Published by Trespasser
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Michael Jang
POST NO JANGS
Self Published
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Raymond Meeks
A Geography of Abandonment
Published by Origini Edizioni
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Albarrán Cabrera (Angel Albarrán and Anna Carbrera)
Photographic Syntax
The(M) éditions and IBASHO
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Daniel Arnold
Pickpocket
Elara Press
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Baldwin Lee
Hunters Point Press
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Nadia Lee Cohen
Hello My Name Is
IDEA
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Anastasia Samoylova & Walker Evans
Floridas
Published by Steidl
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Martin Amis
Closed
Published by Photo Editions Ltd.
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Wouter Van de Voorde
Death Is Not Here
Published by Void
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Gregory Bojorquez
Eastsiders
Published by Little Big Man
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Curran Hatleberg
River’s Dream
Published by TBW Books
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Bleak House (featuring twelve photographers)
Published by VOID
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Ian Bates
Meadowlark
Published by Deadbeat Club Press
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Latoya Ruby Frazier
Flint Is Family In Three Acts
Published by Steidl
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Orange Day in the Bay

Added on September 9, 2021 by Alex Ramos.

One year ago today, on a day that many Bay Area locals will never forget, we experienced one of the most unusual skies. On August 16th, 2020, a large lightning storm swept across the West and brought with it many wildfires that burned through California. Smoke from the Bear Fire in Butte County and the August Fire in northern counties of the Bay Area blanketed the area overnight on September 8th, resulting in a bright orange sky that lasted well into the afternoon the next day. The morning of the 9th, I awoke confused because of the lack of light out of the bedroom window. The night before, I had a feeling that it would be a smokey day, like the days prior, but I didn’t expect to see the dark glow of orange when I peeked out of the window. The photographer in me got ready as fast as I possibly could, grabbed my camera and hit the streets to document the day, both on the way to work, and during an extended “lunch break.” The resulting photos are a selection I made during the memorable day, and the last photo was made 8/16/20, the morning after the lighting storm passed over California that sparked many wildfires. While the event was captivating and made for a unique lighting situation for photography, let’s hope that it never happens again.

Leica 35mm F2.0 APO Summicron-M ASPH

Added on May 11, 2021 by Alex Ramos.

I hear exciting rumors from Leica occasionally but I didn’t expect the announcement in early March 2021. My day started with conversations with friends who have a deep appreciation for Leica 35mm rangefinder photography:

“Look at what Leica just announced!”

“OMG… A new 35, I need to try this”

“APO?!?!?”

Leica announced the 35mm f/2.0 APO-Summicron-M which is now the leading 35mm focal length lens available for the rangefinder. It is the first 35mm apochromatic M lens, built using the highest quality materials for use with the M rangefinder and SL systems and offers a new close focus distance. The announcement came just weeks after the reissue of the 50mm Noctilux f/1.2. Clearly, Leica continues to put great effort into lens development for the rangefinder system that has been in production since 1954.

Peter Karbe, Leica’s head of optical development, and his team of designers, constructed the new 35mm lens using ten lens elements, four aspherical surfaces, in five groups. All of the elements except for one use a special type of glass that ensures aberrations, stray light, flaring, and additional characteristics are kept to a minimum to ensure the result is as optically correct as possible for a compact lens. The apochromatic design allows red, green, and blue wavelengths of light to travel through the lens elements at a precise point so that the image is recorded sharp, corner to corner, with excellent contrast, and virtually no aberrations.

I had the opportunity to test the lens on the M10-R, M10-M, and SL2 systems and also used it alongside the standard Leica 35mm Summicron for a side-by-side comparison. I tried to take advantage of the close focus as much as possible, in addition to shooting it wide open and stopped down in various types of light.

Physically, the lens is compact and weighs 320 grams. It is 41mm in length (49mm with hood) and 53mm in diameter. It includes a circular screw-on lens hood designed in a way that it doesn’t block the view from the rangefinder. For those who are familiar with Leica’s current production 35mm Summicron and 35mm Summilux, the new APO fits in between the two in size.

Leica rangefinder lenses have a standard focus distance that normally ranges between 0.7 meters and infinity but the new 35mm lens was designed to be used at a new close focus distance of 0.3 meters, a first for any M lens. When out in the field, the new focus distance made it feel like I was using two lenses in one. The lens’s ability to focus closer drew me in on areas of the view that I didn’t initially notice at first. I was able to make a portrait of my small dog in my living room, to show more of the surrounding area, but I then pulled focus a full 300°, past the light detent, or transition between standard distance to close focus, to make an even tighter portrait, and have sharp and clear detail in his eye. The Leica rangefinder system isn’t designed to be able to focus a lens at such a close focus distance, so to be able to properly focus on macro mode between 0.7 meters and 0.3 meters, I had to use the live view screen on the back of the camera or the Visoflex electronic viewfinder.

The 35mm focal length is a great standard and starting point for anyone who is familiar to photography or just starting out. It’s the perfect bridge for those who don’t want to use a wide-angle 28mm or the 50mm portrait lens. It’s my favorite recommendation for the one camera / one lens combination. The 35mm APO’s ability to render contrast, color, resolution with incredible clarity is what impresses me most about the lens. Wide-open it performs beautifully and offers a nice buttery out-of-focus area when shooting at maximum aperture. There is slight distortion noticeable at the corners when doing more technical photography, such as photographing head-on against a building or wall. For photographers who print or crop into your images, you will like this lens because of the resolution it can achieve. Whether your goal is to capture a landscape, and subject within the landscape or even a finer detail that requires a close-up, this is the all-in-one package.

The reissued Leica 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux-M coupled to a Leica M2-M

Testing the Leica 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux-M Lens

Added on February 25, 2021 by Alex Ramos.

In early 2021 Leica Camera announced the reissue of the legendary 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux-M that was originally produced in 1966 for the M rangefinder system. You heard that right, Leica Camera is revisiting the archives again, this time rebuilding a historic lens using the best research, technology, and materials available today. At a performance level, the 50mm f/1.2 is one of fastest lenses available for low light photography and isolating subjects with its shallow depth of field. It offers a beautiful and ethereal thumbprint that is incredibly eye catching.

Originally, designed by Helmut Marx and Paul Sindel, the 1966 Noctilux f/1.2 consists of two hand ground aspherical elements that allowed for a sharper image with fewer optical imperfections - revolutionary for its time. It’s said that there were only a handful of people at the Leica factory who could manually grind lens elements with enough precision to ensure that each component met the lens designers standards and specifications. Because of these challenges, combined with the tight tolerances of production, very few were produced. An estimated 1,750 black lenses were made over nine years. Even rarer, were a limited number of prototype lenses made in silver that were never available for public release. When production of the 50mm f/1.2 ceased in 1975, Leica introduced the 50mm Noctilux f/1.0 non aspheric followed by the 50mm Noctilux f/0.95 aspheric in 2008 which is still in production today.

In February 2021 I had the special opportunity to make a series of photographs using the modern reissue of this lens. I wasn’t given advance notice about the opportunity so I didn’t have any plans or subjects lined up to photograph, but I decided that a walk through San Francisco’s Chinatown, North Beach, and Financial District would be a good way to cover and test on varying types of light. I spent roughly two hours with the lens and I simply photographed whatever caught my attention.

From the moment I picked up the Noctilux to mount on the camera (a Leica SL2-S) I knew I was in possession of something very unique compared to the current production line-up of M rangefinder optics. With its “scalloped” focus ring and no focus tab, the focus throw felt manageable in shooting situations when I had to quickly pull focus from infinity to close focus which is 1 meter. The weight feels slightly heavier and larger than the 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M, yet compact and lighter weight when compared to the current production 50mm Noctilux. It weighs 924.6 grams to be exact, and was very comfortable to use.

As soon as I hit the streets, I set one rule for myself: to try and photograph with the widest aperture possible at all times. I broke my rule only once in order to shoot a reference image to view how the lens performs compared to other modern lenses when stopped down on a high resolution digital sensor. It looked very sharp at f/8 which, to me, demonstrates that the lens can be used as a very high performance tool when stopped down, with reduced optical imperfections. At the same time, it reinforced the idea that this lens is no replacement for a current version 50mm Summilux-M, 50mm APO Summicron-M, or 50mm Noctilux-M f/0.95. It’s just too different at maximum aperture.

Looking back. I suppose I could have taken multiple images of the same scene at each aperture speed but I truly wasn’t interested in that. This was more of an emotional experience rather than a scientific experiment. I was most interested in making intriguing photographs of life and the landscape of contemporary San Francisco with a lens and camera combination that were released 54 years apart.

When viewing my photographs, I advise you to pay attention to the characteristics and signature of this lens. Some details to consider are the color, vignetting, distortion, sharpness, aberrations, coma, flaring, fall off on the edges and corners of the frame, and of course the out of focus areas. I found that if I readjusted the camera horizontally or vertically, I could render the out of focus areas minutely or aggressively, similar to a view camera. It is a full departure from the character of a modern Leica lens that offers an even buttery characteristic in the out of focus areas when shooting wide open.

Is this lens for you? That’s not for me to answer but I will say that this lens offers something that is completely unique. You’ll probably be able to quickly answer that question for yourself by either using the Noctilux for just a short test or taking a closer look at my photographs to see how it works for your personal vision and the work you want to create. Wide open, it offers a soft vintage character, and stopped down it has the ability to make the viewer think the pictures were made with a contemporary lens.

I would like to end with a quote from my friend and mentor Mark de Paola, an incredible photographer and ambassador of Leica, who shoots mostly with the Noctilux:

“The emotional content in a photograph is contained within the out of focus areas of the frame.”

And with this Noctilux, your photographs will have no shortage of emotion.

*All the photos were shot on the Leica SL2-S using the M to L adapter and no lens filters. The majority of photos were shot at the camera's base ISO setting of 50, or slightly higher as the sun approached the horizon. Slight adjustments were made to the image files, primarily to the camera’s exposure. Many images were left untouched. There were no edits made to the files that had anything to do with the optics such as vignetting or sharpness. I wanted to stay true to Leica’s lenses.

Thank you to my friends S.P. and N.M. for their help with this article.