In this season’s photo book selection, we look at early color photographs by urban street photographer, Mitch Epstein; Elaine Mayes’s portraits of hippies and oddballs at the height of Haight-Ashbury’s counterculture scene; a reprint of William Eggleston‘s famous Chromes; whimsical portraits of Swedish farmers and villagers from the early 20th century; and a special edition of Kikuji Kawada‘s Chizu (The Map), one of the most sought-after photo books of all time.

Mitch Epstein, Silver + Chrome – 112 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

Related: Walker Evans’ American Photographs, and five other photobooks worth checking out

Mitch Epstein was one of the first photographers to champion the use of color film in the 1970s, at a time when “art photography” was B&W. A former student of Garry Winogrand, he once asked his mentor, “Why not color?” to which Winogrand apparently had no good response. With his blessing, Epstein began working with Kodachrome.

His work was first exhibited in 1977, in New York, and he was immediately seen as a serious photographer. This new book shows the transitional period when he was shooting both B&W and color, with photos from 1973-1976, many of which have never been seen before. They highlight the energy and effervescence of cities like New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, the sexual liberation occurring at the time, and reactions to the Vietnam war.

Elaine Mayes, The Haight-Ashbury Portraits 1967-1968 – 96 pages, hardcover (Damiani)

The Summer of Love in San Fransisco lasted just one season. It started in 1967, and quickly went downhill as people from around the United States flocked to the city to take part, motivated by press accounts of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that were freely available.

Freelance photographer Elaine Mays, who was living in the Haight-Ashbury district of the city—which was ground zero for the counterculture—had photographed the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and began photographing the hippies and other counter-culture oddballs around her the following year. Instead of just taking street photographs, she took portraits of the people she encountered, asking them to pose naturally.

“Natural” was different for each person, and this collection of portraits shows a wide range of people and how they presented themselves to the camera during this pivotal time for American youth culture. The wide range of subjects in this book is a window on the type of people who gravitated to San Francisco in this time, some of whom may still be there.

William Eggleston, Chromes – 432 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

This three-volume set from William Eggleston’s early career was shot between 1969 and 1974. First released in 2011, it went out of print fairly quickly. The contents of the set were curated from a collection of more than 5,000 slides, including photographs made on both Kodachrome and Ektachrome, many of which had never been published before.

Eggleston’s approach to photography was “democratic,” which, to him, meant that anything could be a subject. As such, some may find his photos simplistic and boring, but when looking at a collection of his work, you can see how he views the world, and how his framing of subjects makes sense.

He spoke of these photos as “poetic snapshots.” And the combination of the unexpected compositions with the saturated colors of the photos—most of these photos were printed using the dye transfer process—makes them jump off the page. Eggleston’s work is an acquired taste, but anyone who appreciates these photos should get this book now, because it’s unlikely to be reprinted.

John Alinder, Portraits 1910-1932 – 256 pages, (Dewi Lewis)

Every now and then, an unknown photographer is discovered whose work went overlooked in their lifetime. A recent example is Vivian Maier. Her mesmerizing street photographs spanning the 20th century weren’t uncovered until shortly after her death in 2009. However, she is now recognized as an important photographer.

John Alinder was the son of a farmer in Sweden and a self-taught photographer. In the 1980s, a curator discovered more than 8,000 glass plates of photographs he took between 1901 and 1932 of people in his village. The subjects are mostly dressed in their Sunday best, unsure of how to pose for a camera, and there is a sense of whimsey in many of the photos, as people stand on chairs or logs, some making funny poses, and others looking very serious. Somewhat like August Sander‘s portraits of everyday people, these photos lack pretension and show a glimpse of a world that is on the cusp of the past and modernity.

Kikuji Kawada, Chizu (Maquette Edition) – 272 pages, (Mack)

One of the most sought-after Japanese photo books has long been Chizu, which means “The Map.” Photographer Kikuji Kawada first visited Hiroshima in 1958, photographing the dome that remains as a memorial from the atomic bomb explosion in 1945. Over the next few years, he continued to photograph the site and was notably moved by the stains on the walls and ceiling of the dome.

On August 6, 1965, Chizu was published, the book featuring photos of these stains, along with photos of Japanese war memorabilia. The current edition is a reproduction of the original maquette (the pre-production dummy), in two hardcover volumes, together with a paperback volume, which discusses the history of the book, and includes an interview with the photographer.

In The Photobook: A History, Volume 1, Martin Parr and Gerry Badger describe Chizu as, “the ultimate photo-book-as-an-object,” adding that, “no photo book been more successful in combining graphic design with complex photographic narrative.”

The style of photos and the unconventional crops give the book an abstract quality. This is especially true of the original edition, which included fold-out pages. The maquette edition is much simpler, without the gatefolds, but it still shows how powerful this book is.

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A playful, illicit urgency under a harsh camera flash. Art on the cusp of creation and the artist on the cusp of being caught. Such was the life documentary photographer Martha Cooper chased as she captured the emerging graffiti scene in 1980s New York City. 

Now, nearly 40 years after the publication of her revered Subway Art, Cooper returns with a companion photo book, Spray Nation. Action, adventure, and artistic anarchy abound, it features the photographer’s previously unpublished work, including images of fellow creatives like Patti Astor, Fab 5 Freddy, Rammellzee, DONDI, and LADY PINK.

Even today, Cooper continues to travel the world documenting graffiti culture. When asked why, the answer is just as thrilling.

“I think the illegal aspect is exciting,” she writes to PopPhoto. “As soon as you go on any kind of illegal mission, you understand the thrill because it’s an adventure. It’s an art competition that takes a lot of skill to see who can get up the most with the best style. It takes a lot of planning to pull off a great piece at a great spot and that adds to the excitement.”

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A photography trailblazer

Few were better suited to capture the birth of NYC’s underground graffiti culture than Cooper, it turns out. A trailblazer in her field, Cooper claims the distinction as the first female intern at National Geographic and followed up as the first female staff photographer at the New York Post. At the Post, Cooper covered all sorts of news: crime, stakeouts, celebrity portraits, and more. Her “weather shots”—a feature photo thrown into the paper when space was available—are compiled in another book, New York State of Mind.

Then, in 1979, she met the graffiti artist HE3, who would be her connection to a formidable introduction with the artist Donald Joseph White, aka DONDI.

Meeting DONDI

As it turned out, DONDI was already familiar with Cooper the day she and HE3 rode up to his home in Brooklyn.

“When I introduced myself, DONDI said, ‘Oh, Martha Cooper!’ He knew because he had clipped a picture from the Post that I had taken of a kid on a rope swing with a Dondi piece on the wall with my credit line and pasted it in the front of his black book,” Cooper explains. “That was a perfect connection because graffiti writers wanted fame and I had given DONDI a lot of fame with that photo—although at the time, I was surprised to learn that the writer of the graffiti could be identified. That was a revelation.”

The meeting was followed by an invitation from graffiti writer Eric Deal to interview DONDI and his friends. Cooper recalls shooting indoors on Kodachrome 64 ISO. And that was the beginning of her foray into the underground art scene. 

“DONDI was the first graffiti writer I met. He was respected and he vouched for me,” Cooper says. “DONDI introduced me to other writers at the Sam Esses studio in 1981. Relationships evolved from there.”

A subway car sparks a lifelong interest

Though her relationship with DONDI gave Cooper an “in,” the spark that really stoked her interest in graffiti occurred the day she took a hard look at the New York City subway. DONDI constantly referenced it, so Cooper decided to see what the hubbub was about.

“In 1980, I went up to 180th Street in the Bronx where the trains run above ground and started looking,” she recounts. “The first time I went, the LEE train with the poem on it was sitting there. It must have been freshly painted the night before. It was the very first day! I started going back. I had a car and I drove along the tracks looking for interesting backgrounds. The second day, a full BLADE car came by with most of the windows still painted. I shot a few of my best pictures those first few days and that really got me going.”

Dodging danger

A true journalist, Cooper didn’t settle for merely documenting the final product. She also tagged along as the graffiti artists snuck around train yards on early mornings, making their mark with the rising of the sun. 

“To me, the story wasn’t complete until I could see how graffiti was painted,” Cooper shares. “Whenever I was with them it was usually, ‘Let’s get this done.’ It was a mission and they were professionals. They know how to get in, do their thing, and get out. I was definitely an outsider and tried to make myself invisible. I wasn’t a participant observer. I didn’t help carry the paint. I just tried to quietly be a fly on the wall. That was my approach.”

Capturing these clandestine scenes took quick thinking on multiple fronts. At the time, Cooper was shooting film on a Nikon FM. So, in addition to coming up with creative exposure techniques (a flash could draw attention) and angles, reloading the camera was also a factor—all while dodging the law. 

“I was all about, ‘How am I going to capture this?’ What equipment do I need to carry while ducking under the fence and crawling in and out of the yards?” she elaborates. “I couldn’t put anything down. Sometimes a guard would come and I would have to duck under the car near the third rail and think, ‘I hope this train doesn’t move because I’m dead.’ I don’t have any stories of being chased out of the yards but I always knew it could happen and I had to be prepared to run with the camera gear.”

Graffiti culture today

Today, graffiti enjoys wider public acceptance. The medium has even found its way into the contemporary wings of museums and galleries. Back in the 1980s, however, there was a different story. 

“In the early ‘80s, the scene was primarily New York City-based and very underground with few outsiders understanding what was going on,” Cooper remembers. “Today graffiti and the related (but different) street art scene is a huge worldwide art movement.”

Aside from museums, graffiti still remains very much a public, democratic form of art. And Cooper is gratified to see the mainstream audience’s enthusiasm for the medium, from community-painted trains in South Africa to public graffiti events in Tahiti.

On Spray Nation and Subway Art

Following on the heels of Subway Art, Spray Nation is a companion book and collaboration between Cooper and her editor, Roger Gastman. To compile the images, Gastman culled through thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of slides, scanning them and planning the layout. When asked how the two tomes compare to the other, Gastman is adamant: Neither is trying to outdo the other.

“They were shot at the same time but are edited very differently for content,” he shares. “For Spray Nation, we labored over thousands of the images that had not been published to find the best of the best of the photos that told a story and were just great photos. Spray Nation is also a landscape format book that is much longer than Subway Art. We would never want to compete or compare to Subway Art—just be a companion.”

A touch of humanity, however, sets Spray Nation apart from its peers. It’s not so much about just the final works proclaiming themselves on screeching trains, it’s also about the people. 

“It was important to group several artists and themes, such as sayings, characters, storefronts, and gallery works together,” Gastman finishes. “It was also important for me to make sure every so often there were people in the photos. That was easier than I thought it would be as Martha did such an amazing job always capturing the story and the scene—and not just the graffiti, as most did.”

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This post has been updated. It was originally published on July 23, 2019.

A well-curated photo bookshelf can be an excellent source of inspiration when it comes to your own photo projects. Cracking open a nicely bound photography book focuses the eye in ways that just can’t be duplicated when scrolling through Instagram. These famous photography books are essential for any kind of photographer.

Related: Paris streets in B&W, Meyerowitz’s classic ‘Cape Light,’ and other books worth viewing

Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

SEE IT

Nan Goldin describes the photographs inside this book as a visual diary. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was first published in 1986 and captures the photographer’s personal encounters in a time when New York City was still very rough around the edges. Her photographs are intimate but also candid and document a way of living that largely disappeared by the 1990s. The work has become a cultural touchstone for generations of photographers since.

Gordon Parks, The New Tide: Early Work 1940-1950

SEE IT

Gordon Parks was the first African-American photographer to have work appear in LIFE magazine—he’d go on to spend more than two decades working as a staff photographer. Throughout his career, Parks was known for documenting stories related to the arts, civil rights, and poverty. This book collects photographs from the first decade of his career including work from his days in Minnesota, Chicago’s Black Renaissance, and images depicting segregation throughout the South. The New Tide gives an in-depth look at Parks’ groundbreaking photojournalistic vision.

Mary Ellen Mark, Tiny, Streetwise Revisited

SEE IT

In the early ’80s, while working on a photo story about unhoused youth in Seattle, Mary Ellen Mark met Tiny, a 13-year-old victim of human trafficking with big dreams. Mark ended up photographing Tiny for thirty years and documented her transformation from a fierce 13-year-old to a middle-aged mother of ten. Tiny, Streetwise Revisited captures the way that Tiny’s life has unfolded and speaks to issues of poverty, race, and addiction.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment

SEE IT

Henri Cartier-Bresson is easily one of the most famous and influential photographers ever, and this is among his most famous photography books. Originally published in 1952, it catalogs work from the early days of his career. The “decisive moment” is a term that gets thrown around in photo circles constantly, and it’s all about watching and waiting for that visual peak of a scene. This book gives photographers a chance to dig into the frames where Cartier-Bresson captured just that.

Robert Frank, The Americans

SEE IT

Although critics panned it after its 1959 release, The Americans, Robert Frank’s B&W photographs of the United States have had an undeniable influence on the medium. The book contains 83 photographs captured during a road trip across the USA that reveal a less-than-rosy perspective of the so-called “American dream.” The photographs that make up The Americans have an asymmetrical and impressionistic style that still influences shooters to this day.

Lynsey Addario, Of Love & War

SEE IT

Of Love & War is the first photography book from prolific photojournalist Lynsey Addario, and includes images that span her career as a photographer documenting war-torn regions of the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Her arresting images are interspersed with diary entries from her assignments, letters back home to her family, and present-day reflections on her career as a photojournalist. It’s an in-depth look at what it takes to be a conflict photographer in the modern era.

Gregory Heisler, 50 Portraits

SEE IT

Too many instructional portrait photography books get caught up in technical details like lighting and composition without delving into the intangible elements that make a good picture of a person. Heisler has spent decades photographing high-profile subjects for prestigious outlets and this book tells the story behind some of his most famous images. There’s not a lot of talk about shutter speeds or flash positioning, but you do get a look into his process for getting to know his subjects and envisioning what the final shot will look like.

Neil Leifer, Relentless

SEE IT

Neil Leifer led an amazing life. He started his career by sneaking his camera into baseball games as a volunteer. He went on to capture some of the most iconic sports—and general interest—photos of all time. The book is worth the read just to learn the backstory of the famous Muhammad Ali photos alone, but the real draw is the perfect mix of his eccentric personality and his impeccable photographic mind.

Ansel Adams, The Print

SEE IT

The photographic process has changed profoundly in the decades since Ansel Adams released his trio of iconic instructional books. While The Print has a lot of darkroom information that may not apply to digital shooters, it also perfectly sums up the concept of pre-visualizing a final image before you take the shot. Adams knew that “getting it right in camera” meant giving yourself the best possible raw materials for the print—or in modern times, the Instagram post. Even just the intro may change the way you think about photography if you’re trying to level up your skills.

Other famous photography books

This list, of course, only scratches the surface of famous photography books. Looking for more inspiration? Check out some of our other photobook recommendations right here.

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This month’s photobook selection includes a collection of photos of pairs by Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti; Thomas Hoepker’s look back at his 1963 road trip; Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb’s lockdown project of photos from Cape Cod; a collection of Bob Kolbrener’s B&W Californian landscapes; and a groundbreaking trilogy of photobooks by Ralph Gibson from the early 1970s.

Pentti Sammallahti, Me Kaski – 200 pages, hardcover (Atelier EXB)

Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti is known for his quirky photos of people and animals. This book, Me Kaski (Us Two), collects photos shot over forty years that present “the fortuitous encounter, the strange closeness, the presence in the world of two beings.” Two people, two birds, two dogs; all these photos show living beings meeting briefly. Some of the photos are shot in the street, some in fields, and some on roads. Sammallahti uses a variety of aspect ratios; rather than accepting what his film imposes, he crops in many ways, which makes a series of his photos seem dynamic, and also adds an element of uniqueness.

Thomas Hoepker, The Way it Was, Road Trips USA – 192 pages, hardcover (Steidl)

In 1963, the then 27-year-old Thomas Hoepker was commissioned by the German magazine Kristall to photograph the USA, to discover America through his camera. He made a Kerouacian road trip across the country, and his B&W photos, published in five issues of the magazine, show an America akin to that of Dorothea Lange or Robert Frank (whose book, The Americans, Hoeoker discovered shortly before leaving on his American odyssey). He photographed the streets, the poor, factory workers, cowboys, and more. His photos presented those elements of America that stood out to a European. As Freddy Langer says in his introductory essay, “Hoepker’s images are ultimately characterized by skepticism rather than longing.“

In 2020, he set out on a new road trip to find the American present. This book features hundreds of his original B&W photos from 1963 alongside new color prints shot on the recent trip. These new photos provide an interesting counterpoint to the America of the 1960s, but they also show that some things haven’t changed. The juxtaposition says a lot about America, as well as about Hoepker’s interpretation of what he saw there.

Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb, Waves – 108 pages, hardcover (Radius Books)

The husband and wife team Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb were sequestered on Cape Cod from March 2020 through May 2021 and developed a lockdown project. Alex photographed the waves of the sea, and Rebecca photographed the light in the sky reflected in windows. Alex writes, “I followed the subtle movements of time and tide, wind and water. Meanwhile, Rebecca photographed the waves of light as they washed through our house of many windows—and wrote spare text pieces to try to emotionally navigate this unsettling time, when so many we know have been caught in its undertow.” The resulting photos are calm and quiet and mask the anxiety of isolation during the pandemic. And the double-page photos of the vast panoramas of the sea draw you into the scale of the landscape.

Bob Kolbrener, California – 78 pages, hardcover (Nazraeli Press)

Bob Kolbrener’s photos of California owe a debt to Ansel Adam’s, and it shows. He first discovered Adams’ photos in 1968 by chance, then studied with the master, and eventually worked with him through the 1970s. Kolbrener shoots and processes photos in the “old-fashioned way,” with large format cameras, using fiber-based paper and selenium toner, to create photos with a depth that is only available with film. This book contains a selection of 60 of Kolbrener’s favorite photos of the wild landscapes of California. Stunning photos of landscapes and plants, the mountains, the desert, and the ocean highlight the beauty of California.

This video shows Kolbrener with one of his students in the field, and in the darkroom. “What I want to try to show people in my photography is something that they don’t already know. You have to find out some way to […] make a photograph that is more than just something that exists.”

Ralph Gibson, The Black Trilogy – 198 pages, softcover (University of Texas Press)

Ralph Gibson first studied photography in the US Navy, and then went on to work as an assistant to Dorothea Lange, as well as Robert Frank (on two films). In New York City in the late 1960s, he discovered French new wave cinema, and nouveau roman fiction, which influenced him as a photographer. He founded his own publishing company, Lustrum Press, in order to control the way photobooks were made. In 1970, his first photobook, The Somnambulist was “A dream sequence in which all things are real. Perhaps even more so.” as he said in a brief introduction. This book was later followed by Deja-Vu (1972), and Days at Sea (1974), which, together, form the Black Trilogy.

In these grainy, B&W photos, the influence of that period of French cinema can be seen, as well as the vagueness of the nouveau roman. Many of the photos show the influences of surrealist painters, such as De Chirico and Magritte, but also modernist photographers like Edward Weston and Aaron Siskind. This important trilogy shows a photographer early in his career, setting standards for the photobook in the decades to come.

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In this month’s photo books selection, we take a look at an expansive annotated selection of Alec Soth’s work; a collection of images by famous photographers all shot on “the other film” (Polaroid); flowers in contemporary photography; Antigone Kourakou’s surrealist B&W images of women and nature; Curran Hatleberg’s photos of the dog days of summer; and the classic monochrome photos by Bill Brandt.

Alec Soth, Gathered Leaves Annotated – 720 pages, softcover (Mack)

In 2015, Mack published Gathered Leaves, a collection of four “mini-facsimile” books by Alec Soth, together with 29 large-format postcards. This new book, Gathered Leaves Annotated, brings together five of Soth’s books, with annotations. Printed in color on newsprint, it’s not a good-looking photo book, but rather a working copy for people who want to go deeper. This is like a director’s commentary to the DVD box set of official releases, outtakes, demos, and b-sides. It includes notes, handwritten comments, emails, articles, and much more.

You discover the stories behind Soth’s photos and subjects and learn about original titles from the books—Sleeping by the Mississippi was initially going to be called From Here to There. There’s also a full-color map with pushpins showing the locations where he shot his photographs. This is less a photo book than a book about making photos, and photographers who admire Soth’s work will want to peruse this to learn more about his ideas and motivations.

Barbara Hitchcock, The Polaroid Book. 40th Ed. – 456 pages, hardcover (Taschen)

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Known by many as “the other film,” Polaroid served generations who wanted instant gratification from their cameras. This book, now updated in its 40th edition, presents selections from the Polaroid Corporation’s photography collection, which contains more than 23,000 images from hundreds of photographers.

The Polaroid attracted photographers such as Ansel Adams, Judith Black, Harry Callahan, Paul Caponigro, Barbara Crane, Eliot Erwin, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, and so many others. In particular, the SX-70, released in 1972, was used by artists like Andy Warhol, Linda McCartney, and Wim Wenders, to provide instant photos in a robust format. A chapter on the history of Polaroid cameras traces the evolution of this unique form of instant photography.

William A. Ewing & Danaé Panchaud, Flora Photographica – 272 pages, hardcover (Thames & Hudson)

If there’s one perennial subject for photographers, it’s flowers. With their brief lives and glorious hues, flowers are the perfect muse. They can be treated like still lives, like portraits, or like explosions of color, as Cig Harvey did in her latest book Blue Violet.

Flora Photographica looks at the history of the flower in contemporary photography, with works by more than 120 photographers, such as Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Vik Muniz, Valérie Belin, Viviane Sassen, and Martin Schoeller. In thematic chapters, such as Roots, Arrangement, In Full Bloom, and Reverie, author William A. Ewing explores the vast genre of flower photography that ranges from simple studies of flower arrangements to surrealist compositions where flowers add to complex montages.

Antigone Kourakou, Transfiguration – 120 pages, hardcover (Skeleton Key Press)

There’s a timelessness to the photos in Antigone Kourakou’s Transfiguration, as if they could be by Edward Weston or Bill Brandt. These often stark images alternate between people—mostly women—and shots of the natural world. Subjects are often posed in a theatrical way as if they seem to want to take root in the earth.

Many of the photos in this book feature an element of surrealism or fantasy, a feeling that things are slightly askew, where subjects function as symbols, and where natural elements take on more power than they appear at first glance. The photos are sequenced in this book as if there is a hidden narrative that repeated explorations will reveal. As the photographer says, “these images are thoughtfully arranged and sequenced throughout with depictions of water, stone, trees, plants, fire, and dilapidated interiors quietly assisting the book’s poetic arc.”

Curran Hatleberg, River’s Dream – 152 pages, hardcover (TBW Books)

The saturated colors of Curran Hatleberg’s River’s Dream lend a feeling of humidity to these photos, many of which feature water in one form or another. Rivers, swamps, and moisture are all present in this series of photos shot in the dog days of summer.

This series of pigment prints, featured at the 2019 Whitney Biennial, includes photos taken on a number of road trips across the United States, yet they all seem to be the same community. Photos alternate between normal people doing normal things, and odd images of junk and desolation. There is a feeling of immediacy in pictures of people eating together, playing games, and sitting on porches talking. But there is something unsettling in the photos of the beekeeper covered with bees, or the huge snake, first in a marsh, then in a bathtub, then in the hands of a man sitting in a car.

Bill Brandt, Shadow & Light – 207 pages, hardcover (MoMA)

Bill Brandt was born in Germany. He met Ezra Pound in Vienna in the late 1920s, whose introduction led him to assist Man Ray in Paris for several months in 1930. A few years later, he moved to England, where he would make his name photographing the wealthy and the poor, along with many artists.

Brandt’s work, as shown in this exhibition catalog from the Museum of Modern Art, covers several key themes. He photographed London in the 1930s, both the wealthy at home and at play, as well as the working classes in pubs. His photographs in Northern England, from the late 1930s, show stark buildings, grimy miners, and poverty.

During World War II, he photographed the Blitz, both in the streets and in Underground stations where people were taking shelter. In the 1940s, he shot many portraits of famous people; writers, politicians, artists, and others. And his landscape work is memorable for his use of contrast, and his ability to find arresting shapes in the natural world. He also shot many photos of nudes, using stark lighting, exploring the natural distortion of wide-angle lenses, and shooting closeups of body parts. This book is a wonderful overview of the career and varied subjects of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.

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This month, we look at a collection of COVID-19 lockdown portraits of mothers and their children, each captured through a pane of glass; a series of subtle B&W photos showing a diverse Parisian quarter; a look at the history of portrait photography, from the Daguerreotype to the selfie; a guide for photographing mindfully; monochromatic photos of the highest peaks of the Alps; and Joel Meyerowitz’s classic Cape Light, which is one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century.

Related: Joel Meyerowitz on making photographs in the street

Lisa Sorgini, Behind Glass – 64 pages, hardcover (Libraryman)

Australian photographer Lisa Sorgini faced COVID-19 lockdown like many other photographers, with her work cut off and with limitations on where she could go and what she could photograph. She decided to approach the new constraint by taking photos of mothers and their children behind windows, to highlight the role of parenting during a period when children could not go to school.

After sharing just one photo, she was contacted by The New Yorker, who wanted to publish the series (which is now available in book form). The photos have the look of old Renaissance paintings, with the chiaroscuro of the rooms behind the windows, the reflections softening the faces and bodies, adding muted colors. This is a moving reminder of what lockdown meant to families around the world.

Thomas Boivin, Belleville – 100 pages, softcover (Stanley Barker)

These B&W photos of the Belleville neighborhood in Paris have the look of classic French street photography, like that of Robert Doisneau. Thomas Boivin moved to this multicultural area in the northeast of Paris and has been photographing people there for more than ten years. He describes the area as “a mixture of beauty and decay, of joyful moments and sadness, the warm feeling of light and the bittersweet sensation that one can experience walking around all day, searching for a stranger’s eyes.”

These subtle photos show the diversity of this neighborhood, but also freeze moments that seem timeless. Shot on film, these photos are weighted toward the middle grays, which gives them an almost palpable softness.

Philip Prodger, Face Time: A History of the Photographic Portrait – 256 pages, hardcover (Thames & Hudson)

Portraiture is probably the most common form of photography. We take pictures of our friends, family, and ourselves. Portraits are used to document our lives, immortalize people, and sell products. In this book, art historian Philip Prodger looks at the history of the portrait, from early Dageurrotypes to selfies. With more than 250 photos of strangers and celebrities, Prodger examines the history of the genre through photos by 19th-century photographers, such as Hippolyte Bayard and Julia Margaret Cameron, well known 20th-century portraitists like Edward Weston, Lee Miller, and Richard Avedon, and today’s photographers, including Newsha Tavakolian, Rineke Dijkstra, and Zanele Muholi. Subjects in the book range from anonymous people to heads of state, actors, and celebrities, proving the vast range of this genre which can be artistic, documentary, or utilitarian.

David Ulrich, The Mindful Photographer – 208 pages, hardcover (Rocky Nook)

Most practical photography books are about the craft of photography: f-stops, focusing, and composition. But as photographers progress, they often want to find more meaning in their photography. David Ulrich, who worked as an assistant to Minor White, discusses how to be more intentional when taking photos. He says, “photography is many things: a means of interacting more deeply with the world, a path of personal growth and transformation, a challenge to strive toward becoming more whole and attentive, a catalyst for stimulating creative expression, and a vehicle for insight and understanding.”

Several dozen short essays, with titles like Fitting into the Flow of Time, The Art of Inseeing, Embrace Paradox, and Creative Intensity, discuss how to take photos that have meaning. He prompts the reader to take photographs “with an inquiring spirit, open to new realizations that can come from the corner of the eye or the depths of the mind.”

Thomas Crauwels, Above – 200 pages, hardcover (Hemeria)

If you’ve ever spent time in the mountains at high altitudes, you know how spectacular rocky peaks above the tree line can be. Buffeted by wind, dusted with snow, these craggy mountains change as the sun moves across the sky, offering a fascinating spectacle. It is also very difficult to get to the right locations, at the right time, to photograph peaks at their finest.

Thomas Crauwels has shot thousands of photos in the Alps, and Above is a collection of these photos. This large-format book immerses you in these serene landscapes, many of which are hard to see in person and require long hikes in harsh conditions. Reminiscent of Ansel Adams’s landscapes, these photos expose the natural beauty of the highest peaks in Europe.

Joel Meyerowitz, Cape Light – 112 pages, hardcover (Aperture)

Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light, originally published in 1979, is one of the most influential photobooks of the 20th century. After shooting B&W street photography, notably in New York City, Meyerowitz moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and starting photographing in color with an 8×10 view camera. Not only was color not yet considered appropriate for fine art photography, but Meyerewitz’s approach of slowing down the process with a cumbersome camera changed the way he worked.

In this photobook, time stands still as Meyerowitz’s serene and contemplative photos, rich in color, paint pictures of the sea, the beach, simple houses and stores, and the people he encounters. The book has influenced many photographers, including Alec Soth, who in a recent interview with PopPhoto shared, “Cape Light was a huge influence on Sleeping by the Mississippi in particular. There’s a way of sequencing, landscape to portrait, and then surprise pictures like that blurry picture, that just felt really fresh to me.”

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To celebrate Earth Day 2022, we’re revisiting some of our favorite environmental stories and interviews from the PopPhoto archives.

Nick Brandt’s 2016 photo book, Inherit the Dust, was his visual cry of anguish about the looming apocalypse for animals habitats in Africa. If the killing of animals continues at pace, the elephants, rhinos, lions and cheetahs will all but disappear. “I am embarrassed to use this phrase because it’s so corny and clichéd, but I want to make the world a better place,” he says.

The English born Brandt is a self-acknowledged environmental activist who has been shooting exclusively in Africa making eloquent and emotional animal portraits for more than 20 years. (On This Earth, and a Shadow Falls Across the Ravaged Land.) As Brandt watched both the animals habitats and the creatures disappear, he realized he “couldn’t in good conscience keep making money from the animal portraits without taking action.” In 2010 he co-founded Big Life Foundation with Richard Bonham, one of East Africa’s most respected conservationists. Big Life partners with local communities and currently employs more than 300 rangers to protect animals living on more than two million acres of land.

That epiphany was also the genesis of the idea to erect life-sized panels of the animal portraits, place them in dystopian urban wastelands or industrial sites in Kenya where the animals once roamed, and create black and white epic panoramas of the scenes. The resulting images are simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, because they illustrate the irreconcilable clash of past and present. The animals represent a time when the African landscape, filled with a plethora of species, was primal and glorious and seeing it would fill even the most jaded of us with a profound sense of wonder. The present is a world eclipsed by poverty and desperation, exploding with population growth gobbling up every inch of land for people to live on, farm or mine.

Animals and humans are both struggling to maintain animal habitats. Brandt culled his outtakes, made life size prints in California and built test flats 30 feet long on his property to see whether the animals looked correctly life sized. “Where you place the panel can totally change your perception of whether the animal is large enough,” says Brandt. When he was satisfied, the strips of images were shipped to Kenya to be mounted on site onto huge elaborately constructed wooden and aluminum flats. At times it took at least 23 men to install the flats to ensure they were level, tied down with sand bags, and the horizon lines in the animal images matched up with the actual horizon line in the scenes. With the flats in place, Brandt would wait with his Mamiya RZ67 Pro II for hours, sometimes days, for the perfect melancholy clouds and the ideal film moments. Later he meticulously stitched the images together in Photoshop to create the huge panoramas of animal habitats that were published by Edwynn Houk editions in a 13 by 15 inch book.

“The really tough part was waiting for the clouds,” says Brandt. “I went in the rainy season, but it is still Africa and you can go six days in a row with sunshine and no clouds. I had no choice but to wait, hoping that when the clouds finally came, something else interesting was happening in the frame.”

Film seems like a risky choice for a very expensive three-month location shoot in various African animal habitats. To ensure that his exposures were right, Brandt flew someone to London every couple of weeks to hand carry a couple hundred rolls of film to a certain small lab where film is still processed by hand. Even though the returned contact sheets assured him that the exposures were fine, it wasn’t until he was back home in California, scanning negatives, and deep into post production that he knew whether the focal planes of each frame aligned with the next so he could create the seamless panoramas. The obvious question is why not take the easier and safer digital route? Brandt’s answer— characteristically brash and irreverent—is that digital “stone cold” bores him. “Film just turns me on,” he writes in his book. “I covet the glorious surprises that are sometimes achieved by the magical interaction of light and film negative.”

He is turned on not just by the magical interaction of light and film, but also the serendipity of what happens when events are left somewhat to chance. On the first couple of days Brandt attempted to control every minute detail of the animal habitats, not surprisingly, since he is demanding, obsessive and meticulous. He hired a cast of locals to direct, but almost immediately, he realized it wasn’t working. “We were calling ‘action’ but what was happening was complete crap, just so staged and stilted that I realized the scene couldn’t be directed,” he says. “I decided to place one person somewhere in the frame for a size reference and wait for that perfect moment of staged and spontaneous action and interaction.”

Sometimes interaction meant no action with the picture at all. In most of the images, the contemporary figures move through the frame, picking up garbage, sniffing glue, and just walking down the street, seemingly oblivious to the large animal photograph, as if the animals were already ghosts. In one of the saddest images, “Alleyway with Chimpanzee,” a solemn chimpanzee sits with its head lowered in a trash filled alleyway next to what looks like a stream of fetid sewage. “The actual portrait was originally a quite neutral photograph, not particularly moving,” says Brandt. “In the new context, the chimpanzee seems to be lamenting the world in which it now finds itself.”

In one of the most compelling images of animal habitats, “Underpass With Elephants (Lean Back, Your Life is On Track),” Brandt has installed the image of a family of elephants under an overpass. New construction rises in the background, while homeless people anchor the foreground. Some are sleeping while others sniff glue out of empty water bottles. On the left side of the frame a toddler seems to be walking towards the elephant image. On the right, a very small child has walked up to the image, trying to touch the elephant’s trunk. In the distance we see a billboard of a man relaxing on a bench with the ironic slogan, “Lean back, your life is on track.”

“Nothing compares to the excitement of shooting on location when the unexpected happens,” says Brandt. “In the ‘Underpass with Elephants’ image suddenly on the right side of the frame this little child walks up and touches the image. It was one of those ‘where the hell did he come from’ moments.”

The urban animal habitats, where the huge panoramas exist, were not easy to work in. The crew spent 12 days at a dumpsite in Kenya, which was a toxic, smoking pile of waste where locals scavenge for food. In one image from this dump, “Wasteland with Lion,” the flat has been installed so the lion appears to be lying in the trash, lethargically surveying the wafting smoke and the people picking through the dump for scraps of food. In the case of the lions, H=humans have destroyed both the animal habitats and the human living situation.

One of Brandt’s favorite images, “Wasteland with Elephant,” was taken in the same dump. The image of a large old elephant with ragged ears that mirror the ragged edges of the flat looms large on the left hand side of the frame. The flat was installed deep so the elephant’s foot looks as if it is touching the actual foreground and he is walking out of the flat into a world in which he knows he cannot survive. The image garners emotional resonance from the sky, layered with light clouds just at the horizon, but dark gloomy clouds at the top. It produces a foreboding image of animal habitats.

“This is a really great example of how under a cloudy sky not all light is the same,” says Brandt. “The stormy clouds in this image inform and affect the light on the ground. There was something apocalyptic about the combination of the rising smoke and the clouds, even though not much is going on with the people who almost blend in to the landscape.”

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It’s Film Week here on PopPhoto, and to celebrate, we’ve rounded up a selection of contemporary photobooks—and one classic—all shot on film.

Documentary shooter Alec Soth set out to photograph America, by following the route of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train, and ended up buying “photos by the pound.” Robert Adams shows the “silence of America” in a 50-year retrospective. A half-dozen collotype prints show the ethereal work of Rinko Kawauchi. Deanna Templeton links recent portraits of adolescent women with her own teenage years. And Diane Arbus’s only photo portfolio is still powerful after more than 50 years.

Alec Soth, A Pound of Pictures – 80 pages, softcover (Mack)

Alec Soth set out to photograph Abe Lincoln, following the route of his funeral train “in an attempt to mourn the decisiveness in America,” and this book is a collection of what he saw during this road trip. It includes portraits, Egglestonian landscapes, photos of found objects, and more. From New York to Texas, from Ontario to South Dakota, this book is a collection of images that together, “address themselves, before all else,” to quote Walt Whitman.

Soth uses a large 8 x 10 view camera, and his method of photography is slow and deliberate. But he also literally bought photographs “by the pound” while making this book (from an LA street vendor), peering into the anonymous past of everyday people. And this informed his own photographs. “If the pictures in this book are about anything other than their shimmering surfaces, they are about the process of their own making.”

Robert Adams, American Silence – 304 pages, hardcover (Aperture)

For more than fifty years, Robert Adams has documented the American landscape, mostly in the American West. He aims to take pictures “where all the pieces fit together into a unified, balanced, coherent whole.” His stark, silent, B&W photos, many of highways and houses, show American suburbia as it meets the emptiness of the desert landscape.

This large book contains 175 photos from Adams’ career and shows the American West through its shopping malls, homes, highways, and stores, but also the open spaces, the rivers, and especially the sky. Adams has moved from a large format camera to 35mm and fears one day “opening the New York Times to read that Kodak will stop making Tri-X”, his 35mm film of choice. These photos show the detail and character of this classic film, and they present a timeless view of the American landscape.

Listen to Adams discuss his photography here.

Rinko Kawauchi, Early Works 1997 – 6 pages, hardcover (Benrido)

This “mini-portfolio” features six photos by Rinko Kawauchi, a Japanese photographer born in 1972. Her works are often of everyday subjects, captured with a grace and gentleness that invites the viewer to explore them in detail. She uses shimmering light, fog, and sometimes soft focus, resulting in photos that are often delicate and luminous.

Kawauchi has selected six photos from her 1998 solo exhibition, Utatane, to be created as collotype prints. Collotypes are one of the oldest forms of photographic printing, and Benrido Collotype Atelier is one of only a few studios in the world that produces fine color collotype prints. These 20-by-25 cm photos are just begging to be framed.

Deanna Templeton, What She Said – 168 pages, hardcover (Mack)

Deanna Templeton’s new book juxtaposes texts from her own diary—written in the 1980s when she was between 14 and 18-years-old—and concert flyers from her youth, with recent street portraits of adolescent women from around the world, captured between 2003 and 2020.

Together, this mix of media presents a fascinating take on life as a teenage girl. Photos of goths, punks, and other “outcasts” populate many of the pages, and it’s clear Templeton sees these subjects as reflections of herself. Moreover, the book points to a universal coming-of-age experience shared by young women everywhere, and one that hasn’t changed all that much since the 1980s, the period covered by Templeton’s diaries.

Diane Arbus, A Box of Ten Photographs – 110 pages, hardcover (Aperture)

By 1969, Diane Arbus had many years of magazine work behind her, but her serious photography has only rarely been exhibited. She wasn’t well known enough to make a full photobook, so instead, she began working on portfolios of her photographs to sell to collectors. She had planned to make 50 portfolios, each containing 10 prints (16-by-20 inches) packaged in a clear plexiglass box, with a price of $1,000 each. But she only completed and sold four of them before her death in 1971.

This facsimile is a reproduction of edition four of the portfolio, featuring 10 (plus one) photos, and includes Arbus’s handwritten notes and captions. She had made it specifically for Bea Feitler, and included an 11th print in the set, as she had for the first portfolio she had made for Richard Avedon.

The gorgeous printing of these photos brings them to life and allows us to see them in a large format. And a long essay by Smithsonian curator John P. Jacob tells Arbus’s story and the story of the creation of this portfolio. Arbus’ deeply personal photos are a reminder of an era when photography was just beginning to be taken seriously as a form of art, and a reminder of the talent of this great photographer.

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For our second edition of photobooks worth checking out, we’ve got a half dozen works that cover a diversity of photographic styles and subjects. These include Annie Leibovitz’s fashion photos; Joe McNally’s career compendium with how-to tips; Matt Black’s five-year project documenting American poverty; a compilation of photos exploring Black identity; Bieke Depoorter’s serendipitous collaboration with a Parisian stranger; and Fred Herzog’s classic Kodachrome photos.

Annie Leibovitz, Wonderland – 440 pages, hardcover (Phaidon)

Annie Leibovitz needs no introduction. The photographer famous for shooting rock stars for Rolling Stone has also photographed celebrities, socialites, and politicians. In addition, she’s a prolific fashion photographer, notably for Vanity Fair and Vogue. 

Leibovitz’s fashion photos often involve complex mise en scènes, with almost baroque compositions. Far from looking static, her portraits often brim over with life and energy, as if a rare moment is captured fortuitously. This massive book, containing more than 350 images—many previously unpublished—is a celebration of this dynamic work. Watch this video of Leibovitz discussing some of the photos in this collection to learn more about her technique, inspiration, and the backstories behind the shots.

Joe McNally, The Real Deal – 348 pages, hardcover (Rock Nook)

In a carer spanning more than 40 years, Joe McNally has done it all, from documentary work to commercial assignments, portraiture to spots and action. Beginning as a copy boy for the Daily News, McNally went on to become a professional photographer, carving out a career shooting for Life Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, and many others.

He’s also well known for his project, “Faces of Ground Zero,” which celebrates the heroes of September 11, 2001, with larger-than-life portraits of first responders, survivors, and the family members of those lost, captured using the world’s largest instant camera.

Part autobiography, part how-to book for photographers, this comprehensive overview of McNally’s career shows how he’s never stopped seeking new challenges, in every genre of photography. Come for the photos and stay for the stories about life as a working photographer. 

Selections from the Wedge Collection, As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic – 184 pages, hardcover (Aperture)

This compilation of photographs explores the African diaspora and showcases the work of Black artists from all over the world, including Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, South America, and the United States. Photographers include established artists, such as Stan Douglas, Seydou Keïta, Jamel Shabazz, and Carrie Mae Weems, as well as younger artists including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Texas Isaiah, Rashid Johnson, Zanele Muholi, Ebony Patterson, and Dawit L. Petros.

This selection of more than 142 images comes from the Wedge Collection—a privately-owned collection assembled by Dr. Kenneth Montague— and bears witness to the diversity of the Black experience, but also to the commonalities of Black culture around the world.

Matt Black, American Geography – 168 pages, hardcover (Thames & Hudson)

When Magnum photographer Matt Black read an article about how half of Americans are shut out from the “American dream” due to income inequality, he decided to document this large underclass. Black traveled to 46 states and Puerto Rico, visiting designated “poverty areas,” locations where more than 20% of people live in poverty. For five years, covering 100,000 miles, Black documented America’s poor. 

In stark B&W photos, Black’s work, interspersed with his own travelogue, shows the extent of people left behind in the “land of opportunity.” In full-page square photos and wide panoramas, Black documents “the geography of poverty.” Like a modern-day Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange, Black catalogs the extent of “the psychological and physical pains and indignities of living poor in the richest country in the world.” An interactive presentation on Black’s website looks at the first two chapters of this book.

Bieke Depoorter, Agata – 424 pages, softcover, Japanese binding with perforations on the fold (Des Palais)

Bieke Depoorter met Agata in a Parisian strip club in 2017, and, for three years, the two collaborated on a photographic project. Depoorter began by shooting some photos in Paris at night, then photographed Agata performing. 

Their relationship continued as they visited each other and traveled together. Agata used the project as a search for identity, and Depoorter wondered who this project was really about, her subject or herself. Featuring photos in chronological order, there are also notes and texts hidden behind the perforated folds of the book, revealing a hidden narrative, an alternative story, and perhaps some truths that are not apparent in the main photos in the book.

Fred Herzog, Modern Color – 320 pages, hardcover (Hatje Cantz)

Born in Germany in 1930, Fred Herzog migrated to Canada in 1953. Working as a medical photographer, he also walked the streets of Vancouver with his Leica, documenting his surroundings. His use of Kodachrome for street photography was unusual in this period, long before such photographers as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore made the transition from B&W for this type of subject.

Herzog only had a couple of exhibitions of his work, until it was rediscovered in 2007, and he is now recognized as a pioneering street photographer who documented his surroundings in color. His heavily saturated photos of storefronts, signage, and ships often leap from the pages. And many of the more muted photos of strangers walking along rainy streets have an almost Munchian tone to them. The atmosphere of Herzog’s color photos—along with a few B&W shots—draws you in and immerses you in a world that is lost to the past.

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Martin Parr’s photography is instantly recognizable. He zeroes in on the foibles of everyday life, focusing on people in their natural surroundings, highlighting the quirkiness of their lives. A Magnum photographer since 1994, Parr has published more than 100 photobooks and now oversees the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, England, where he presents exhibitions and hosts talks with photographers. 

Collecting photobooks

Parr once had one of the most extensive collections of photobooks in the world, and, in 2017, the Tate Gallery in London acquired the more than 12,000 books he had amassed since the 1980s. I asked Parr if it was hard to let go of the collection, and he said, “Yes, but I knew it was going to happen, and I knew it was the right thing to do. It was too difficult to look after, too valuable; it became a liability as much as an asset. And I couldn’t afford to insure it for its true value; it was worth millions.”

The most expensive book he ever bought was Les jeux de la poupée, by Hans Bellmer, which cost $60,000 (and is now worth more than twice that). Even though he’s given up collecting, Parr hasn’t stopped buying photobooks; he currently has four or five thousand books in his Foundation, with a focus on British photographers. 

Related: A Conversation with Martin Parr (2008)

Leveraging this collection, Parr, together with Gerry Badger, produced three volumes of The Photobook: A History, (which is sadly, now out of print). Each volume covers 200 books, arranged by theme, looking at the trends and highlights in the history of the genre.

“Many of the books were well known. The other books perhaps haven’t been as celebrated as they should be, so it was a great pleasure to rectify that and include them in the survey.” The history of the photobook can tell us a lot about the history of people, beyond simply the documentary nature of some photos. “A photobook is a reflection on the world we live in.”

A rise in photobook popularity

The popularity of photobooks has increased greatly in recent years. Parr says, “This explosion has been going on for about 15 years. I think it’s calmed down a little bit, but we just had a big book fair in October [at the Martin Parr Foundation], and we had 30 publishers and photographers selling books, and it was very busy, very buzzy. What photographer doesn’t want a book? It’s the perfect way to give their work a platform. You get to select how to sequence it, produce it, design it, and get it out into the world. And no one throws it away; magazines come and go, exhibitions come and go, but the books are here forever.”

What makes a good photobook

So what makes a good photobook? “You have to have strong pictures to start off with, and then the design has to echo what the book is about. And that’s it really; if you’ve got those two things, then you’re well on the way to getting a good book. But most books that are published are not good, because the photographs aren’t strong enough, or the message isn’t strong enough, it hasn’t been thought through, hasn’t been resolved.” A good photobook has to have a sort of narrative, “The narrative’s important. It’s got to make a statement about the photographer’s relationship to the subject.”

Street photography today

Much of Martin Parr’s work could be called street photography since he photographs people in their natural habitat; he’s said that it’s getting more difficult to shoot this type of photo, though. “Funnily enough, people didn’t like being photographed in queues. I don’t know if there’s a sense of shame in queuing up with your trolly to go into [British grocery store] Sainsbury’s. But I did get people objecting to being photographed. They haven’t got anything else to do. If you photograph on the street, and people are walking by, they’re busy. But if they’re just queuing up, standing there wondering what to do, killing time before they get in. You’re very noticeable.” 

Shooting landscapes

While Parr’s subjects have mostly been people, he did produce one interesting book of landscape photos, Remote Scottish Postboxes. He drove around Scotland with his wife, between 2004 and 2010, stopping occasionally to photograph the red postboxes that he discovered in remote areas. He doesn’t plan to do more landscape photography though, saying, “I’m interested really in what man gets up to rather than the beauty of landscape.” But this project was “a combination of landscape and man-built things. The wilder the setting, the happier I was. Especially in Scotland, it’s very surreal when you see them and there’s not a farm or a house anywhere to be seen, and here’s this postbox.”

Current work

His latest book, Match Point, contains photos from four tennis Grand Slam tournaments he’s photographed, but, as per his style, focuses on the spectators, not the players.

“I like tennis. This is a commission I was invited to do, and I couldn’t say yes quick enough. So you’re sent to all these grand slams and have everything paid for and the fee as well. It was a fantastic exercise. There’s hardly any tennis in my tennis book, but there’s plenty of people looking at tennis and enjoying tennis.”

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