The site, launched in March, selects one photography book to explore per month. It began with a discussion of Robert Frank's 1958 canonical work "The Americans." This month's focus is on Richard Avedon's first book "Observations," a collection published in 1959 of his iconic early portraiture. Upcoming in May will be a conversation based on Eugene Richards' "Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue," a portrait of three communities devestated by drugs - East New York, North Philadelphia, and the Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn - published by Aperture in 1994.
Ford and Johnston envision the site as a collaboration, with readers encouraged to participate by submitting guest posts, book-of-the-month suggestions or comments, as well as being encouraged to blog about the book currently being discussed. A recent crowdsourced project on the site is another example of reader participation. It produced a map of recommended brick-and-mortar photography book stores as a Google map (at right).You can keep tabs on this welcome addition to the online photography community on Facebook and Twitter.