The best photography books for your coffee table

Photography is a portal, and photography books can offer a closer look at subjects we often overlook – a lens onto a world unseen, a tool to probe for the truth of our times, or irresistible visual fodder for your coffee table.

Whatever you’re after: a collectable object, an art gift, or an education, we have you covered, from cover to cover. Alongside the best art books, these are the most intriguing, engaging and unexpected photography books on the market.

Our pick of the best photography books

Saints, by Sasha Maslov

Ukrainian-American portrait and documentary photographer Sasha Maslov divides his time between Kyiv and New York, documenting life on the frontline in Russia and Ukraine. Now, Maslov is celebrating the portraits he has captured in this time, in new photography book, Saints. Created in partnership with Canadian foundation Saint Javelin, and published by Kyiv-based publishing house ist_, Maslov's images are accompanied by text from Ukrainian war correspondent Nastia Stanko. Together, the duo bring to life the personal sacrifices which have taken place since the war began, with Maslov's profund portraits shining a light into the darkness.

£95, saintjavelin.com

Writer: Hannah Silver

O, by Luis Alberto Rodriguez

Artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez already had a successful creative career before turning to photography – as a Juilliard-trained dancer, he performed worldwide for 15 years. The choreographic approach of a dancer remains as he’s evolved towards image-making, particularly present in his photography book O, an exploration of power and an idea of purity, published with Loose Joints.

The dynamic nudes began from the personal turmoil experienced on a collective level during the pandemic. ‘I think it's fair to say it became a moment of reflection and contemplation for many of us,’ Rodriguez told us. ‘I began thinking of my own mortality, the state of denial I was in, and the unknown that always awaits us which at the time felt very scary. The initial conception of this new body of work stemmed from this aching and nagging feeling that had infiltrated my everyday life during that period.’

£50, loosejoints.biz

 American Polychronic, by Roe Ethridge 

American photographer Roe Ethridge’s comprehensive monograph gathers more than 400 works, spanning from the late 1990s-2022. This collection offers a vibrant sequence of his postmodern visual language, bounded by two interlocking threads of photography: his commercial and editorial photographs, as well as images for exhibitions. Intertwined, these provide us with a sequence of hybrid images that embody the breadth of contemporary American society, and a photography approach that spans everyday documentary, fine art, fashion imagery, advertising and personal projects.

£50, mackbooks.co.uk and Amazon

Walk To The Moon, by Suffo Moncloa

When the pandemic put a pause on the creation of most new work, photographer Suffo Moncloa began reflecting on his archive, which ultimately formed Walk To The Moon. For Moncloa, the book ‘depicts a wild dream that consists of figures and symbols, signalling an apocalyptic world. What is left from waking up from a dream are hardly narratives, even the most memorable ones, but sharp details of a moment, a feeling that lingers.’ This notion of parallels between dreams and photography is explored in a thoughtful introduction by David Campany. The expressive images that follow are recognisably Moncloa’s: featuring animals, the moon, the sea, cities, disco balls and factories. Moncloa explains: ‘We are all just flickering specks in the history of the Earth. Why not be daring? Dream a wild a dream. Nevertheless, it ends in peace, a hopeful wish from me, a rebirth like a lotus flower growing in muddy water.’

€36.40, suffomoncloa.shop

Diachronicles, by Giulia Parlato

Giulia Parlato’s Diachronicles investigates the dialogue between history and fiction as she explores the role of museums in shaping our understanding of historical narratives. In blurring the boundaries of authenticity, her images create a new version of history using fabricated artefacts and dioramas and placing them on a metaphorical background of historical evidence. These staged photos mimic archaeological legitimacy through their archival qualities, initially destabilising through her historical reconstructions. Shot in black and white, her images seperate from time as she reinforces the fallibility of museography.

£35, witty-books.com

Praberians, by Thomas Rousset 

Thomas Rousset examines the ritualistic aspects of rural life in his fantastical study of his childhood agricultural village, Parabert, which lies on the French and Swiss border. Published by Loose Joints, this nostalgic culmination of 12 years of work sees Rousset document the local Praberians and the striking landscapes they inhabit. Through this creative collaboration with his fellow inhabitants, Rousset indulges in the importance of united communities and the symbolic aspects of everyday life. Comic constructions, naturalistic portraits, rural eccentricities and heightened moments of absurdity amount to a depiction of a quasi-hallucinatory world; one of an effectively under-described society.

£48, loosejoints.biz

The Four Pillars, by Eli Durst  

Staging perturbing yet familiar scenes, Eli Durst’s The Four Pillars delves into American aspirations of happiness, self-improvement and individuality. Over several years, Durst built a relationship with a faith-based self-help group, formed of middle-class suburbanites who despite their relative comfort were seeking meaning amidst unending pressures for success. This dynamic seeded Durst’s unnerving reconstruction of family portraits, team bonding exercises, pregnancy groups, and amateur theatre. As a series of images in monochromatic dialogue with one another, a tense yet comic atmosphere builds in reflection of a society’s values.

£36, loosejoints.biz

Joke, by Talia Chetrit 

Working like a composer, Artist Talia Chetrit draws upon a breadth of visual languages and characters for Joke, her latest book, published with MACK. Bringing together family photos, street photography, still lifes, the artist’s teenage archive, and expressive self-portraits; Chetrit inverts and oscillates between reality and performance, tradition and controversy. There’s carnage and carnality in these contrasts, as her partner is depicted in high-end fetishwear while feeding their son, and a nude Chetrit photographs herself in transparent trousers. These form a controversial chorus, amidst verses of sullen teenage portraits and designer shoes in domestic still lives.

£40, mackbooks.co.uk and Amazon

Body Double, by Thomas Abdorf 

Thomas Alborf skews the reality of the physical world by disrupting our expectations of space and light - ‘Nothing here is what it seems to be - clouds can be petrified, water can become dust,’ he says. In Body Double, published with Same Paper, Albdorf connects his recognisable process to the constructed magic of Los Angeles and its film industry. Just as that world is all a mirage, Alborf’s images are never what they appear to be; each object doesn’t quite feel right, the allure of cinematic entertainment is there, keeping his audience enthralled.

$47, samepaper.com

Chaos, by Valeria Herklotz

We’re always interested in those who push the envelope in how photography can be presented, ‘Chaos’ by German photographer Valeria Herklotz is a dynamic example. Displayed in a series of five leporellos, images of young women in rapturous fervour as they dance. Since we can’t hear the beat inspiring their movements, a curious contradictory space opens up in which we are intimate voyeurs of these liberating scenes yet have no context to the rhythm they’re following.

£30, ouinoneditions

True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis), by Zora J Murff

With the autobiographical monograph True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis), artist and educator Zora J Murff produces a nuanced commentary on race, power, privilege and violence. Described as ‘part manual, part autobiography, and part visual remix’, Murff grapples personally and politically with America’s violent past and present. Photography’s divisive role is acknowledged as Murff merges the role of archiver and participant. With a background in psychology and social work, Murff identifies within his practice ‘the duality of Black patriotism and the challenges of finding belonging in places not made for me – of creating an affirmation in a moment of crisis as I learn to remake myself in my own image.’

$65, aperture.org and Amazon

The Model Family, by Tealia Ellis Ritter

In The Model Family, Tealia Ellis Ritter pulls together a visual journey through raw love and loss. The book induces a flinching fascination in the viewer, leaving them unable to ignore their own familial past and present. Published by Loose Joints, the accompanying text by renowned writer Lisa Taddeo builds on the pushing and pulling of relationships that Ellis Ritter so adeptly captures. Fittingly, the two are family friends. Sleeping, bathing, laughing, kissing, hunting, crying, loving and dying; these acts are collected into something very different than a family album. Instead, this is both a painful and joyful ode to those closest to us.

£40, loosejoints.biz

A Pound of Pictures by Alec Soth

Everything from Buddhist statues and birdwatchers to sun-seekers and busts of Abe Lincoln appears in Alec Soth’s A Pound of Pictures; the acclaimed artist’s latest book published by Mack. Described as a stream-of-consciousness, the collected works take us on a journey through the desire to record and collect. ‘If the pictures in this book are about anything other than their shimmering surfaces,’ Soth writes in the afterword, ‘they are about the process of their own making. They are about going into the ecstatically specific world and creating a connection between the ephemeral (light, time) and the physical (eyeballs, film).’ Coinciding the publication are solo exhibitions at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, Weinstein Hammons Gallery, Minneapolis, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

£55, mackbooks.co.uk

Périphérique by Mohamed Bourouissa

In Périphérique, Deutsche Börse award-winner Mohamed Bourouissa takes on visual codes of historic paintings with staged scenes of high drama in Paris’s banlieues; giving presence in history to its often stereotyped inhabitants. The acclaimed work was created amid great unrest in the banlieues with riots against France’s social and economic inequalities. Complex scenes run counter to the reductive representations Bourouissa is responding to in mainstream culture. Published with Loose Joints, the photography book includes unseen preparatory photographs evidencing the collaborative process between the Algerian-French artist with his friends and acquaintances in creating this profound look at inequality and representation.

£90, loosejoints.biz

Venus & Mercury, by Viviane Sassen

Given free reign over France’s Palace of Versailles, Viviane Sassen created Venus & Mercury, a limited-edition art book published with Aperture. For Sassen, the palace’s many marble statues were the inspiration for creating a multitude of surreal forms. Also explored were the ostentatious gardens, gilded baroque interiors, and even Marie Antoinette’s private correspondence. Together with poems from Marjolijn van Heemstra that allude to court societies of past eras, Sassen's contemporary visions of this past palace form a vivid art object. Sassen has even individually painted each box encasing the book, which was conceived and designed by renowned bookmaker Irma Boom.

£150, aperture.org

Deana Lawson

Surveying fifteen years of Deana Lawson’s practice, the self-titled publication is an arresting deep-dive into Lawson’s broad photographic language. Collaboration with the subjects runs throughout; as their eyes lock with the viewer, the voyeuristic medium of photography suddenly looks both ways. Lawson’s family photographs and archives of vernacular images are included to reveal some of the influences behind the artists challenging exploration of representations of Black identities in African American and African diaspora communities. Cohesively, the scholarly publication is a powerful reflection on personal and social histories of Black life, love, sexuality, family, and spiritual beliefs.

£35, mackbooks.co.uk

The Truth is in the Soil, by Ioanna Sakellaraki

Since being featured as one of our 21 talents of 2021, Ioanna Sakellaraki has gone on to create a book of her acclaimed project The Truth is in the Soil. Following the death of her father five years ago, Sakellaraki returned to her homeland of Greece. As part of her grieving, she explored her mother’s grief about their country’s social and religious norms before expanding her research to traditional mourning rites. Sakellaraki explains how she was ‘inspired by the last communities of mourners on the Mani Peninsula of Greece as the doyennes of a dying tradition, the work incorporates a new kind of subjectivity, intimacy, and criticism, exploring mortuary rituals as a way of humans adapting to death.'

£45, gostbooks.com and Amazon

Magnum Dogs

Magnum unleashed the ultimate dog-lover photography collection from its archive. From mutts oozing mischief to perfectly coiffed canines and pooches born to perform, this book brings together the wittiest, snappiest best of dog photography from Magnum’s top-tier roster including Eve Arnold and Martin Parr. Magnum Books is arranged into five thematic chapters: Streetwise, Best in Show, It’s a Dog Life, At the Beach and Behind the Scenes; If you weren’t already a dog person, you probably are now.

£16.99, thamesandhudson.com and Amazon

Material, by Jet Swan

Yorkshire-born Jet Swan’s perspective appears suspended in an alternate dusky dimension, yet also reminiscent of a quintessentially British form of documentary making. For her debut book, Material, Swan drew from the last three years of her engagement with the public through pop-up studio spaces, such as an empty shop front inside a mall in Scarborough, and a repurposed community hall in Ramsgate. The result is a palpable aesthetic reflective of inner worlds; pubic hair spikes through flesh-coloured tights, a scab heals, pores glisten and a newborn stares into the camera. Published by Loose Joints, Material is accompanied by text by acclaimed poet Rachael Allen.

Writer: Sophie Gladstone

£36, loosejoints.biz

Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now

Illustrated with photographs by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson and authored by Tate curator John-Paul Stonard, Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now: Seven Scenes from the Life of a House is deep-dive into one of England’s grandest country homes. While the house and grounds have a fascinating history as residence to the Cavendish family dynasty for sixteen generations, its works of art also capture the eye. From Nicolas Poussin's The Arcadian Shepherds and Antonio Canova's Endymion to great contemporary paintings by Lucian Freud and David Hockney. With a foreword by The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and structured in reverse chronological order, readers peel back layers of history as they turn pages. Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now is published by Penguin Books.

Writer: Sophie Gladstone

£50, penguin.co.uk and Amazon

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

There are unwritten rules in photography: steer clear of clichés, exploitation, derivative ideas and easy metaphors. But how straightforward is this in practice, in a field as subjective as it is varied? With as much value in humour as education, Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph by Jason Fulford has cemented some of these ‘rules’ in print. This is not a strict guide, but a journey through ideas, stories, and anecdotes from many of the world’s most prominent photographers, alongside a list of more than a thousand ‘taboo’ subjects. From sunsets and roses to issues of colonialism and stereotypes, this is both a light-hearted look at what’s considered to be a ‘bad picture’ and a serious examination of what may or may not be ‘off-limits’ as societies reckon with the heavy social responsibilities of visual communication.

$24.95, aperture.org

Photography – A Feminist History, by Emma Lewis

The history of photography is short, as is the list of female photographers who have received due recognition during its lifespan. Whether working in the studio or on the front line of war, women have contributed to every aspect of photography's evolution. In this authoritative, comprehensive and international book, author Emma Lewis delves into a photographic landscape of shifting gender rights and roles through the work of over 140 photographers, with ten thematic essays and extended profiles on 75 key practitioners. For some, gender plays a central role; for others, it's incidental. All have been affected by the power structures seen through – and behind – their camera lenses.

£40, Amazon

Face Time – A History of the Photographic Portrait, by Phillip Prodger

Photographic portraiture has always served different purposes: from practical identification to storytelling. In Face Time, readers will come face-to-face with the history, cultural resonance and evolution of portrait photography. Exploring the many faces of portraiture – from fine art photography to cinema, news-hour mugshots to glossy fashion photographs – curator and photography historian Phillip Prodger captures more than 150 years of the medium through some of the most recognisable portraits ever made, and those that probably should be. Expect to see familiar faces including Queen Elizabeth II, Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, and deep-dives into the work of legendary photographers including nineteenth-century pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, modernist icon Lee Miller and contemporary groundbreaker Zanele Muholi.

$45. thamesandhudsonusa.com

The British Isles, by Jamie Hawkesworth

The British Isles chronicles 13 years of varied life across the United Kingdom, in an era when the country's identity is evolving to become increasingly complex. Through a diverse sequence of portraits and landscapes, Jamie Hawkesworth charts the characters, moods and moments that make up the rich tapestry of his home country, from schoolchildren and shopworkers, markets to estates, cities to construction sites. There is poignancy in the every day; there are questions left unanswered. The British Isles is a record of this eventful period in British history – one interwoven with outstanding natural beauty, austerity, referenda, celebration, and conflict.

£500, mackbooks.co.uk