What a bizarre list. Camera Lucida and On Photography are masterpieces that anyone interested in photography as an art form should read, but they don't say a lot about the lives of the artists whose work they describe. Barthes says virtually nothing about the photographers' lives, in fact.

While I can't vouch for anything beyond Just Kids (which is spectacular), here are some other ferociously good reads on the lives of artists:

* Ernest Hemingway - A moveable feast

* David Lipsky - Of course you end up becoming yourself

* David Sylvester - Interviews with Francis Bacon