Photo Books
Why buy them? Who are they for? Are they worth it in 2025?
There are many ways a person can get inspired. This is very personal and no two people are exactly the same when it comes to how or what inspires them.
I typically fall into two camps — watching and reading.
Watching
The easy way is to open up YouTube and search out videos to watch. That can be fulfilling and there are some really good videos out there. However, there are many, many really shitty ones, too. Probably more shitty ones than good ones that can be recommended to others to watch.
The shitty ones are basically people who open a channel, throw on a POV camera, and go out to take pictures. They may be good at talking on camera, but their photos don’t inspire me to go out and shoot. If anything, it is just background noise or a total waste of my time.
This is why I love photo books. There is no screen to deal with. The only narrator to the story is in your own mind. No outside influence. No bias. No BS.
Reading
My earliest experience to any sort of photo books were the National Geographic magazine series that my grandmother had. The photos of the people, the animals, the locations were all so beautiful. They made you want to go there. They made you want to meet the people. Most times, they just made you feel some sort of emotion — happy, sad, angry — depending on the topics being presented.
The two photo books that stand out to me from my early personal collection are ‘Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs’ and ‘Hungry Planet: What the World Eats’ by Peter Menzel. These gave me hours and hours of visual pleasure scanning the pages, seeing the various details that the photographer captured in the scene.
Over the years, I have added more and more books to my collection. Early on, they were just general photo books. As I became interested in street photography, I started adding books on that topic. Seeing how others perspective of the world was fascinating. The timing of the shots, the colors or shadows captured had me curious. All had one thing in common, though… I wanted to go out with my camera.
I have wonderful photo books remembering events like 9/11 by Joel Meyerowitz. Books dedicated to specific cameras like Leica or Nikon. Others showing the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier or books based on MoMA events.
Overall, my collection makes me happy. I enjoy occasionally picking up a book, leafing through the pages, reading the description or background of the photo, if included.
This medium makes me want to photograph moreso than videos… Generally speaking. I don’t want to copy them. I don’t want to be them. Instead, I use the photos as an inspiration to experiment. To go out and look at the shadows, try out different apertures or shutter speeds to get a different look than I would typically use.
In a world filled with hours and hours of screen time, photo books are perfect to get away from the devices that can easily distract you into other apps or websites, or e-mail, or whatever. Photo books are things you can touch. You can turn off your device and focus 100% on the book and what you are reading. Although I am talking about photo books, photography books overall can be awarding. Learn a new technique like lighting or the history of a specific camera body. Reading can be good for the soul. It is an analog form, which we are all lacking more and more of in life. I think this is why more people are looking at film photography, or vinyl records, or fountain pens and paper.
Even writing this has inspired me to go out and shoot because it has me thinking back to what I had seen in a book by Robert Frank or Robert Capa. I’m ending here because now I want to go for a walk or maybe even my local used book store. The weather might finally be starting to break and staying consistently nice.
Enjoy your week and see you next time!