Books

Handbook of Self and Identity by Mark R. Leary and June Price Tangney

I read part of this book in relation to my FMP. It took me quite a while to find relevant quotes to my work though so I did spend quite a long time reading it.
I found it interesting as it explained to me some logical reasons why people behave the way they do from which I was able to draw my own conclusions, like drugs potentially playing a part in people's behaviour around others.

Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes

This book explores how people represent themselves in day to day life. He also discusses the pose and the importance that has on how we are representing ourselves. This book helped give me a deeper understanding the importance of the pose in photographs, namely by celebrities or world leaders. He used John F. Kennedy as an example for this.

Fashion and Music by Janice Miller

This book mainly focuses on the influence that music has on our style and how people represent themselves within the music industry. By reading this book I was helped to understand that lyrics are important to the formation of a music community or fan group. As psychedelic music mimics the effects of psychedelic drugs, it clearly has an impact on the dress sense and how people would act.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

This was probably the most interesting of all the books I had read over the past couple of months. Goffman believed that we were all actors and that we have 'onstage' and 'offstage' personas. I had never really thought about the differences in how we act around certain groups, like family, friends or at work.

Revelations - Diane Arbus

I found this in the library one day when looking for a book on Diane Arbus. It contains much of her work and excerpts from her journals and two features called 'In the Darkroom' by Neil Selkirk and 'The Question of Belief" by Sandra S. Phillips. There is also a timeline of her entire life within the book, even including the details of her postmortem.

In focus - August Sander

This book discusses 50 or so plates by Sander, has a interviews with other photographers and artists and a timeline of his life.