Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph – Jason Fulford

Photo No-Nos is a volume curated by Jason Fulford and published by Aperture featuring ideas, stories, and anecdotes from many of the world’s most talented photographers and photography professionals, along with a list of more than a thousand taboo subjects compiled from and with pictures by contributors.

Photographers often have unwritten lists of subjects they tell themselves not to shoot—things that are cliché, exploitative, derivative, sometimes even arbitrary. At turns humorous and absurd, heartfelt and searching, Photo No-Nos is for photographers of all levels wishing to avoid easy metaphors and to sharpen their visual communication skills.

Not a strict guide, but a series of meditations on “bad” pictures, Photo No-Nos covers a wide range of topics, from sunsets and roses to issues of colonialism, stereotypes, and social responsibility. At a time when societies are reckoning with what and how to communicate through media and who has the right to do so, this book is a timely and thoughtful resource on what photographers consider to be off-limits, and how they have contended with their own self-imposed rules without being paralyzed by them.

Booksigning on June 5th in Venice