LOOKING AT PHOTOGRAPHS: Animals

A follow-up to the Looking at Paintings book, this large, comely volume contains a full page photograph and one small inset on each spread. The relaxed and chatty mini-essays that accompany b&w and full-color pictures cover a range of photographic concepts--historical, technical, and artistic--listed by their animal subject matter. These vary from William Wegman's famous dog Fay on roller skates to David Scharf's microphotograph that turns an ordinary flea into an imposing intergalactic creature. Drawn in by the intriguing photographs, readers painlessly are invited to consider a range of abstract concepts, from point-of-view to the relationships between objects. Rather than stopping to explain possibly unfamiliar terms, Coleman italicizes technical words that are defined in the glossary.