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A photo book or photobook is a book in which photographs make a significant contribution to the overall content. A photo book is related to and also often used as a coffee table book.
Early photo books are characterized by their use of photographic printing as part of their reprographic technology. Photographic prints were tipped-in rather than printed directly onto the same paper stock used for letterpress printed text. Many early titles were printed in very small editions and were released as partworks to a network of well-informed and privileged readers. Few original examples of these books survive today, due to their vulnerability to light and damage caused by frequent handling.
What is arguably the first photo book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843–1853) was created by Anna Atkins. The book was released as a partwork to assist the scientific community in the identification of marine specimens. The non-silver cyanotype printing process worked by pressing actual specimens in contact with light-sensitive paper; hence the word "impression" in the book's title. [1] : 14, 20–21
The Pencil of Nature (1844–46) was produced by William Henry Fox Talbot, who had invented the Calotype photographic process in 1839. Although significant as the first negative/positive photography process, the Calotype was also envisioned as a commercial prospect for the reproduction of images in books through mass publication. Anticipating commercial success, Fox Talbot established purpose-made printing premises in Reading to carry out the reproduction of his book. The Pencil of Nature was released in six parts between 1844 and 1846, to an initially promising list of private subscribers whose numbers dwindled, causing the premature termination of his project. [1] : 13–15, 22
Julia Margaret Cameron created the first photo book to illustrate a literary work. The 1874 edition of Tennyson's Idylls of the King contained twelve Cameron images that had been specially created, but reproduced as wood engravings. Cameron sought her own publisher, creating a new version of Idylls of the King, containing her original photographs as albumen prints, which came out in December of the same year. [1] : 69
Photographers such as Shinzō Fukuhara were producing photography books in the 1920s. The postwar years brought low-priced photography books, such as the many volumes of Iwanami Shashin Bunko magazine. From the 1950s onward, most Japanese photographers of note have had photo books published.
The simplest Japanese translation of photo book is shashinshū ( 写真集 ), and the shashinshū section of a typical Japanese bookstore displays books of photographs with various levels of documentary or artistic merit. They primarily portray currently popular celebrities in a variety of settings and outfits. Many are of cheesecake models (guradoru), or porn starlets (nūdoru); others are of singers, television personalities, professional sportswomen (often wrestlers) and so forth.
One of the best selling Japanese photobooks of all time, Santa Fe (1991), a fine art nude photo book modelled by Rie Miyazawa and photographed by Kishin Shinoyama, sold 1.5 million copies in the early 1990s. [2]
Storing digital images in traditional photo albums means printed copies are inserted in the pages of an album. Companies allow users to create personalized photo books. The resulting book is printed on digital color printers and case bound.
Professional printing and binding services offer easy creation of photo books with professional layouts and individual layout capabilities. Because of the integrated design and order workflow, hardcover bound books with customized pictures and text can be produced very cost-effectively.
Currently there are many photo book software companies who sell licensed solutions to photo labs and print houses so that their customers can create photo books (and other photo related paraphernalia) with ease. These software solutions are available for free download or online access or through apps.
Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
Joel Meyerowitz is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. In the early 1970s he taught photography at the Cooper Union in New York City.
Tulsa is a collection of black-and-white photographs by Larry Clark of the life of young people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its publication in 1971 "caused a sensation within the photographic community", leading to a new interest in autobiographical work.
Israëlis Bidermanas, who worked under the name of Izis, was a Lithuanian-Jewish photographer who worked in France and is best known for his photographs of French circuses and of Paris.
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources say that she was the first woman to create a photograph.
Aftermath: World Trade Center is a book that documents the cleanup process after the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was compiled by the photographer Joel Meyerowitz and published by Phaidon Press in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks. The book includes Meyerowitz's photographs and his personal account of the experience. A new edition was published in 2011.
Christian Patterson is an American photographer known for his Sound Affects and Redheaded Peckerwood series which have received solo exhibitions and been published as books. Redheaded Peckerwood was awarded the Rencontres d'Arles Author Book Award in 2012 and Patterson has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Vevey International Photography Award.
Seiji Kurata was a Japanese photographer.
Mike Brodie, also known as the "Polaroid Kid" or "Polaroid Kidd", is an American photographer. Since 2003, Brodie has freighthopped across the US, photographing people he encountered, largely train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters, and hobos. He has published A Period of Juvenile Prosperity (2013), Tones of Dirt and Bone (2015), and the box of reproduction Polaroids Polaroid Kid (2023).
Kikuji Kawada is a Japanese photographer. He co-founded the Vivo photographic collective in 1959. Kawada's books include Chizu and The Last Cosmology (1995). He was included in the New Japanese Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974 and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan in 2011.
Eugene Richards is an American documentary photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. He has published many books of photography and has been a member of Magnum Photos and of VII Photo Agency. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Alphonse Louis Poitevin was a French chemist, photographer and civil engineer who discovered the light–sensitive properties of bichromated gelatin and invented both the photolithography and collotype processes.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.
Gerald David "Gerry" Badger is an English writer and curator of photography, and a photographer.
Noorderlicht is a multifaceted and international platform for documentary photography. Based in Groningen, Netherlands, Noorderlicht organizes an annual photo festival runs a photo gallery a publishing house, provides an educational programme and discussions, lectures and masterclasses.
Thijs groot Wassink and Ruben Lundgren are two Dutch photographers who work together as WassinkLundgren. Their photography and film projects shift mundane, often unnoticeable, everyday occurrences into visually compelling and gently amusing observations of the world around us.
Chris Boot is a British photography curator, book publisher, and has worked in a variety of other roles related to photography. He was director of London’s Photo Co-op, director of the London and New York offices of Magnum Photos, editorial director at Phaidon Press, founder of Chris Boot Ltd. a photography book publisher, and is now executive director of Aperture Foundation. In these roles he has commissioned, edited or published a number of noteworthy photography books.
Self Publish, Be Happy (SPBH) is an organisation founded by Bruno Ceschel in 2010 that aims to help aspiring photographers to self-publish their own books. It does so through workshops, talks, exhibitions, live events, on/offline projects and publicising of books. It is based on Ridley Road, in Dalston, London, where it keeps a library of some 2000 donated self-published zines and books.
Raymond Meeks is an American photographer. "Much of his work focuses on memory and place, and captures daily life with his family." He has published a number of books including Pretty Girls Wander (2011) which "chronicles his daughter's journey from adolescence to adulthood"; and Ciprian Honey Cathedral (2020), which contains symbolic, figurative photographs taken in and around a new house, and of his partner just before waking from sleep. Meeks is co-founder of Orchard Journal, in which he collaborates with others.
Terri Weifenbach is an American fine-art photographer, living in Paris. She has published a number of books of landscape photography, often of plants and animals, gardens and parks. Her work is held in the collections of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and North Carolina Museum of Art. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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