The Best Photography Books Every Serious Photographer Should Read (2026 Reading List)
How This Reading Guide Is Organised Whether you’re studying for a BA, MA, MFA or PhD, or simply want to deepen your understanding of photography, this guide… These books will change the way you think about photography, not simply how you make photographs. One of the questions I’m asked most often by photographers preparing for postgraduate study is surprisingly simple: What should I be reading? Photography is one of those rare disciplines where the most influential books often have very little to say about cameras. Instead, they challenge how we think about images, memory, ethics, representation, politics and ultimately ourselves. Over the past few years, as I’ve developed my own…
From My Bookshelves: 10 Photography Books That Continue to Influence My Practice
Looking back through almost two decades of writing for TheAppWhisperer, reviewing photobooks, interviewing photographers and studying photography myself, I recently realised I had reached a rather practical problem: I had run out of room for my photobook collection. The solution was the installation of yet another set of bookcases, a reminder not only of how many photography books I have accumulated over the years, but also of how frequently I return to them. As I was unpacking and reorganising the shelves, I found myself revisiting old favourites and rediscovering books that had influenced my thinking at different stages of my photographic journey. The titles included here represent only a small…
A Visual Tour of Alec Soth’s Bookshelf
If you’re anything like me, you will have read more books than had hot dinners, the former was always a priority. Alec Soth (of whom I am a huge fan) is not too different. In this unqiue video he gives shares a tour of his bookcase, it’s truly original, enjoy! Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work is rooted in the distinctly American tradition of ‘on-the-road photography’ developed by photographers like Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Stephen Shore. Concerned with the mythologies and oddities that proliferate America’s disconnected communities, Soth has an instinct for the relationship between narrative and metaphor. His clarity…
Mobile Photography Competition – Huawei Next-Image Second Annual Awards Competition – Free to Enter – $20,000 Grand Prize
We are delighted to announce the #Huawei Next-Image Second Annual Awards Competition. Building on the huge success of last year’s global smartphone photography awards, HUAWEI have opened entries for their second annual NEXT-IMAGE Awards, with the support of the International Center of Photography (ICP). Visual creatives from across the world are invited to submit their entries and compete to become NEXT-IMAGE finalists with their work being judged by a panel of experts. The annual NEXT-IMAGE Awards were created by HUAWEI to redefine visual expression and culture through more professional and intuitive smartphone cameras. Having started in 2017, the awards provide HUAWEI smartphone users from around the world with a gallery…
