"They are taking pictures of taking pictures... What was the barn like before it was photographed? What did it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here. We're now." Â Â Â Â
       ~ Don DeLillo, White Noise
In no particular order, a few of the books I've found incredibly helpful in developing my artistic practice...
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, Twyla Tharp
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief, Steven Kotler
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Christopher Vogler
The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan GottschallÂ
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
Burton on Burton, Tim Burton, edited by Mark Salisbury, foreword by Johnny Depp
Maggie Taylor's Landscape of Dreams, Amy Standen
Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, Margaret S. Livingstone
Interaction of Color, Josef Albers
The Brilliant History of Color in Art, Victoria Finlay
Exploring Color Photography: From Film to Pixels, Robert Hirsch
As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art,  Redecca Solnit
When I was a Photographer, Felix Nadar
On Being a Photographer: A Practical Guide, David Hurn and Bill Jay
The Education of a Photographer, Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller, Adam B. Bell
Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa, Alex Kershaw
Referencing Art, Jerry Uelsmann
The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, Lucy R. Lippard
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs, Sally Mann
Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit, Paul Martineau
Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images, Terry Barrett
Primer of Visual Literacy, Donis A Dondis
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, D. Bayles and T. Orland
The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age, Sylvia Wolf
Photo: box, Roberto Koch
A World History of Photography, Naomi Rosenblum
The Photographer's Eye, Jon Szarkowski
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes
Why People Photography, Robert Adams
On Photography, Susan Sontag
Magritte, Suzi Gablik
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg (I recommend the audio version read by Natalie)
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
White Noise, Don DeLillo
And the Guggenheim has created a free archive of artist books, currently at 204 titles! All titles can be easily downloaded to your kindle or viewed online as an e-book.
I'm excited to check out:Â
Surrealism, two private eyes : the Nesuhi Ertegun and Daniel Filipacchi Collections
by Weisberger, Edward; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum