Image © Austin Lansing, featured in TO THE SEA, Shutter Hub Editions
Who doesn’t love a good photo book? To flick through the pages, be enlightened, educated, distracted and absorbed into another world through another’s eyes? Totally fantastic!
We’re here to share our Photobook Favourites – a selection of our favourite photography books recommended by the Shutter Hub community, an archive of titles we’ve enjoyed, and a reference point for you to explore.
100 Contemporary Ukrainian Photographers © Form Publishing
100 Contemporary Ukrainian Photographers, Form Publishing
100 Contemporary Ukrainian Photographers captures the voices of around one hundred Ukrainian photographers, whether based in Ukraine or part of the diaspora. The project presents approximately 300 images that form a mosaic of shared experience, artistic resilience, and creative diversity and emphasises photography’s dual role: as resistance and as a bridge for peace and mutual understanding.
The works selected are viewed through a “double observation”: both their visual unity and the emotional interaction between them. This reflects a deep curatorial thought process aimed at highlighting the distinct yet interconnected perspectives of the artists.
In essence, this book is a testament to the strength, creativity, and humanity of Ukrainian photographers navigating through the challenges of war. It celebrates the beauty of life even amid destruction, and it supports the crucial role of artists in times of crisis.
Borderlands © Francesco Anselmi, Kehrer Verlag
Borderlands by Francesco Anselmi, Kehrer Verlag
Borderlands is a documentary essay shot along the US side of the border with Mexico between 2017 and 2019, at the height of the Trump era. The series aims to develop a narration capable of going beyond the emergency perspective under which border-related issues are often presented and to transport the complexity of this 3,600 kilometres long strip of land. Crossed by migrants and travellers for decades but also inhabited by a very diverse range of souls, the borderlands seem to become a different place from the two countries they separate.
The images, collected over four trips to the US side of the border, reflect Anselmi’s deep engagement with the region and its people. From the Rio Grande Valley to southern Arizona and California, Anselmi’s work is a testament to the power of photography to bridge divides and foster a deeper understanding of our shared humanity.
22.5 x 27cm, 136 pages, 61 duotone illustrations / Hardcover.
Find out more and buy Borderlands here.
Vivian Maier: The Color Work © Colin Westerbeck, Harper Collins
Vivian Maier: The Color Work by Colin Westerbeck, Harper Collins
Photographer Vivian Maier’s allure endures even though many details of her life continue to remain a mystery. Her story—the secretive nanny-photographer who became a pioneer photographer—has only been pieced together from the thousands of images she made and the handful of facts that have surfaced about her life. Vivian Maier: The Color Work is the largest and most highly curated published collection of Maier’s full-color photographs to date.
With a foreword by world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by curator Colin Westerbeck, this definitive volume sheds light on the nature of Maier’s color images, examining them within the context of her black-and-white work as well as the images of street photographers with whom she clearly had kinship, like Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander. With more than 150 color photographs, most of which have never been published in book form, this collection of images deepens our understanding of Maier, as its immediacy demonstrates how keen she was to record and present her interpretation of the world around her.
25.4 x 30.5cm, 240 pages, 150 colour photographs / Hardcover.
Find out more and buy Vivian Maier: The Color Work here.
When we lie down, grass grows from us © Karolina Gembara, GOST
When we lie down, grasses grow from us by Karoline Gembara, GOST
In 2009 Karolina Gembara moved to Delhi to learn photography and stayed for seven years. When we lie down, grasses grow from us, comprises photographs taken during this period, as Gembara developed a love/hate relationship with the city, borne out of a combination of fascination, homesickness and a feeling of transience.
21.8 x 25.7cm, 96 pages, 45 colour photographs / Hardback cloth quarter bound.
Find out more and buy When we lie down, grass grows from us here.
Flamingo © Chloe Sells, GOST
Flamingo. Chloe Sells. GOST Press
The images reproduced in Flamingo, the second monograph by artist Chloe Sells, are adapted from photographs taken in the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana, one of the largest breeding grounds for flamingos in the Southern Hemisphere.
The photographs are created using an analogue large format camera and later printed in a traditional darkroom. The darkroom process is spontaneous and consuming, layering light, texture and form to interact with photographic alchemy. Some of the images are drawn on after they have been printed with paint and marker. Because of Sells’ method of working, each outcome is unique.
21.5 x 33cm, 72 pages, Full Colour / Hardback.
Find out more and buy Flamingo here.
The Powers That Be © Alan Gignoux & Chloe Juno, GignouxPhotos
The Powers That Be, Alan Gignoux & Chloe Juno, GignouxPhotos
Inspired by political campaign posters from the Polish 2023 parliamentary elections, The Powers That Be photobook contemplates the links between electioneering and political outcomes.
Whilst travelling around Poland researching coal mining Alan Gignoux and Chloe Juno were struck by the faces of politicians beaming at them from colourful political banners wherever they went. They used some Fuji Instax Wide Film left over from another trip to document the banners, zooming in on the features of these potential changemakers. The resulting image series investigates the peculiar visual language of political advertising. In The Powers That Be, these are set against photographs documenting Polish coal mines, whose future would be determined by the results of the election.
Fortune Teller Game: At the end of the book, tucked into a glassine pocket, there is a ‘fortune teller’ game printed with politicians’ features. Play the game and you will be ‘rewarded’ with different political outcomes.
21 x 26.2cm, 78 pages, Full Colour / Wirebound Card Cover / Published as a first edition run of 200 copies.
© Shutter Hub
TO THE SEA, Shutter Hub Editions
Salt sticky hair, ice cream smiles, sandcastles and sun-speckled freckles. Small boats, overfishing, plastic pollution and rising sea levels. As climate change imposes more circumstantial realities on us, the sea becomes ever more important in our everyday lives.
We reminisce on childhood holidays and collecting seashells, dog walks on the beach, and the soothing sound of gently lapping waves. But we must remember, although it’s bigger than all of us, vast and powerful, the sea very much needs us to look after it.
100 images. An ode to the ocean, something for the sea.
14.8 x 21cm, 116 pages, 100 colour photographs / Softcover.
Find out more and buy TO THE SEA here.
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