Aletti's 2004 Lists

The Village Voice has posted Vince Aletti's lists of top photography books and amagazine work for 2004. Apparently someone's been on vacation. In my experience these sorts of things hit the stands in the weeks just before New Year's.

Amongst his top 25 photo books are several by photographers who I covered last year: Shomei Tomatsu (#8), Larry Sultan (#9), Alec Soth (#12), David Maisel (#22). It's a pretty standard list. One could have culled it from the "Amazon recommends" feature if you've even got a handful of photo books in your wish list. (Amazon really pushes Stephen Shore and Larry Sultan, for some reason.)

"Do Not Recycle" is Aletti's list of the best magazine phototgraphy. His number one photo is a crass and uninspired piece of fluff, but the accompanying article is a good stab at providing an overview of the current state of magazine photography, even if he does focus too much on fashion. Not enough on editorial, and, of course, he's completely left out photojournalistic work.