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…
Lee Miller – A Life on the Front Line – BBC iPlayer
I highly recommend this documentary currently on BBC iPlayer about model turned photographer, Lee Miller. It is a personal story of a young woman searching for freedom and love and one which leads her to experiences, some she tried to forget, understandably. When Lee Miller returned to New York from Europe in October 1932, newspaper reporters were waiting to greet her as her ship docked. Disembarking in a smart beret and fur-collared coat, she smiled for the journalist from the New York World-Telegram. When he referred to her as ‘one of the most photographed girls in Manhattan’, she retorted, ‘I’d rather take a picture than be one.’ Lee Miller is…
