My Top 10 Photobooks of All Time

My list of favorite photobooks, as of January 2025. Make sure to view this email in your browser/Substack App, it's a bit long.

I was recently asked about my top 5 favorite photobooks on Instagram and it hit me that I have never made a list like that. This is crazy because I take the top 4 on Letterboxd very seriously and I try asking that question to as many people as possible.

I wanted to share my top 10 favorite photobooks because it was too difficult to include only five. This list is in no particular order, and it focuses on how the work impacted me in book form.

1. “The Canaries” by Thilde Jensen

The Canaries series is a personal account of life on the edge of modern civilization as one of the human canaries, the first casualties of a ubiquitous chemical and electrical culture.

Since World War II the production and use of synthetic petroleum derived chemicals has exploded. We live in a world today where man-made chemicals are part of every breath we take and where electromagnetic emissions are everywhere.

As a result it is believed that 2-10% of the human population worldwide has developed a disabling condition referred to as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) or Environmental Illness (EI). EI is a condition in which the immune and central nervous systems go into extreme reactions when exposed to small amounts of daily chemicals like perfume, cleaning products, car exhaust, printed matter, construction materials or pesticides.

When the delicate balance of life first has been broken there seems no end to how sensitive we can become. In addition to chemicals some react to food, electromagnetic fields, textiles and even light - making life a near impossibility.

Many people with EI end up living as refugees in remote areas out of tents, cars, or retro-fitted trailers, away from the dangers of a chemical and electrical world which they no longer can inhabit. Others are prisoners of their homes, with advanced air filtration systems to keep contaminants out of their breathing space.

At the core of the bizarre appearance of Environmental Illness is a questioning of the sanity of a human world continuing to develop in a manner that is toxic to life itself.

I know I said this list was in no particular order, but this book is special to me. I first flipped through this book when I was in art school and a professor of mine brought it in a bunch of books for us to look through. It was kind of my first real introduction to how brilliant photobooks can be and how the book itself can impact the way the work impacts you. The whole books comes wrapped in tin foil, which, once you flip through the work, makes the work very very real and tactile. Years later I tried to find this book but I couldn’t remember the book title or photographer. I searched and searched for hours trying to figure out what the book was but never could. Somehow my lovely wife managed to find it after I couldn’t and got it for me for Christmas one year. This was me opening it and realizing that she actually found it after all these years. This book still to this day is one of my favorite objects I own. Can’t recommend it enough.

2. “Sleeping by the Mississippi” by Alec Soth

Sleeping by the Mississippi by Alec Soth is one of the defining publications in the photobook era. First published by Steidl in 2004, it was Soth’s first book, sold through three print runs, and established him as one of the leading lights of contemporary photographic practice. This is the second printing of the MACK edition and includes two new photographs that were not included in the Steidl versions of the book.

Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America’s iconic yet oft-neglected ‘third coast’. Soth’s richly descriptive, large-format colour photographs present an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, Sleeping by the Mississippi elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing, and reverie. ‘In the book’s 46 ruthlessly edited pictures’, writes Anne Wilkes Tucker in the original essay published in the book, ‘Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex.’

Like Robert Frank’s classic The Americans, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with poetic sensibility. The Mississippi is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created out of a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. Sixteen years since the book was first published, the artist’s lyrical view has undoubtedly acquired a nuanced significance – one in which hope, fear, desire and regret coalesce in the evocative journey along this mythic river.

This was another book that my professor brought in that day alongside “The Canaries,” and to this day the work has been so impactful to me and the book is equally as gorgeous. I have nearly all of Alec’s books and this one really has stood the test of time as my favorite.

3. Encampment, Wyoming: Selections From The Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948

Extraordinary, lyrical Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948 features Nichols’ own work and the images by amateur photographers she collected in the early 20th century as the proprietor of a photofinishing business in southern Wyoming. Culled from over 24,000 photographs, the book provides a dynamic visual window into the social, domestic, and economic aspects of the American Western frontier and captures an elusive sense of place through the images of this community of friends, families, and strangers.

I looked through this book again last week and was blown away by just how incredible this work is and the sequencing. What may be even better than the photographs, surprisingly, is some of her diary entries and the text describing her life and career as a working photographer. It’s extremely relatable to me as a fellow working freelance photographer. I cannot recommend this book enough!

4. “As it may be” by Bieke Depoorter

Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter has traveled to Egypt regularly since the beginning of the revolution in 2011, making intimate pictures of Egyptian families in their homes. In 2017, she revisited the country with the first draft of this book, inviting others to write comments directly onto the photographs. Contrasting views on country, religion, society, and photography arise between people who would otherwise never cross paths. The included booklet features all of the handwritten notes in the original Arabic as well as the English translations. As it may be depicts a population in transition with integrity, commitment, and respect.

Bieke has such a poetic and intimate way of photographing, and her book-making and design choices are so thoughtful that it makes it such a pleasure to experience her work this way in book form. This one in particular has such a great squishy outer cover that feels amazing to hold and the included booklet really brings so much context to the work.

5. “PICKPOCKET” by Daniel Arnold

PICKPOCKET: The first monograph of the work of New York-based photographer Daniel Arnold. Pickpocket is comprised of a "Prestige Edit" titled The Woods, and five additional "Alleyways" – GALA, Cell Out, Fuck Ups, 47th Street, and ElseWhere. With liner notes by Daniel Arnold and an afterword by Josh Safdie.

Designed by David Rudnick, Emiel Penninckx, Maharani Yasmine Putri and Mozes Mosuse in Terrain, the book features varying paper types and sizes that make it feel like a larger edit of Daniel’s most known work, stuffed with smaller zines mixed throughout. Everything about it is gorgeous and I’m extremely lucky to own a copy of this rare book. Daniel is legitimately one of my favorite working street photographers and the work in this book is truly extraordinary.

6. “Wild Flowers” by Joel Meyerowitz

This new and expanded edition of Joel Meyerowitz’s widely acclaimed photobook, Wild Flowers—now, in a larger format, features new and unpublished images. For nearly forty years Joel Meyerowitz has tended his visual garden in the streets and parks and cities he has visited or lived in. He goes out into the streets open-eyed and passionate, carrying a machine which is perfectly suited to the task of taking it all in. The Leica, as quick as the flick of an eyelash, effortlessly interrupts time, stopping and holding it forever. These walks gave shape to new territory for him, which he began to think of as a garden that reflected the variety of his observations. Then, one day, while editing, Meyerowitz stumbled upon a small group of these flower photographs which he had gathered unknowingly. He began to believe that this innocent premise might be enough to tie together many of his other photographic concerns under the nominal subject of ‘flowers,’ which, given the surprises of city life, he viewed as flowers gone somewhat berserk—and so Wild Flowers was born.

Wild Flowers is particularly inspiring because I love the idea of collecting these pieces of work from years apart and pairing them together later down the road. There are always things on the street that I’m on the lookout for that I’d love to turn into a book one day. Joel executes this idea so brilliantly in Wild Flowers.

7. “Pictures From Home” by Larry Sultan

First published in 1992 to wide critical acclaim, Pictures From Home is Larry Sultan’s pendant to his parents. Sultan returned home to Southern California periodically in the 1980s and the decade-long sequence moves between registers, combining contemporary photographs with film stills from home movies, fragments of conversation, Sultan’s own writings and other memorabilia. The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. Simultaneously the distance usually maintained between the photographer and his subjects also slips in an exchange of dialogue and emotion that is unique to this work.

It’s Larry Sultan. I’m not sure what else to say. Flipping through this is like flipping through your dreams. Abstract but still grounded in reality. It's bizarre and hilarious. Beautifully sequenced and designed.

8. “Winogrand Color” by Gary Winogrand

Garry Winogrand is known primarily for his spontaneous and energetic street photography in black and white. What is lesser known is that Winogrand also shot more than 45,000 color slides between the early 1950s and late 1960s. These photographs were often taken between assignments, when the photographer, working on his own, developed and refined an approach to his medium that was increasingly open, independent, and radical. He routinely photographed with two cameras strapped around his neck, one loaded with color film, the other with black and white.

This is, unfortunately, the only Winogrand book I own, but man is this work top-tier. Every time I flip through this book my jaw is on the floor. If you want to see someone who was a master of his craft, this book proves that it doesn’t get much better than Winogrand. The book’s pacing and flow are fantastic. Gorgeous prints and the book has an amazing feel to it.

9. “Only God Can Judge Me” by Bruce Gilden

"As I travelled through America, I noticed the same pattern in many cities: in all the bad areas, I saw white women, generally young and at one time generally pretty, who were drug addicts — and I’m talking serious heroin or crack addicts. Many of them admitted they were sex workers and in many instances they looked like a shell of themselves. This struck me very deeply bringing back memories from my youth.

In all of these women, I see my own mother — ravaged by pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol and her lifestyle — so I went to these areas where they hang out and I started asking them if I could photograph them.?? This personal motivation is the genesis of my ongoing project Only God Can Judge Me on prostitutes and drugs. I went back again to photograph some of these women in Overtown, Miami and I interviewed them. It’s hard to imagine how much suffering and how little hope their stories contain. We ignore them but they do exist and survive at the “other end of the spectrum” as Trish says.

I want to continue this project and attract attention to them and to what drugs did to them. It’s always interesting when people say that they have trouble looking at these faces. This can happen to anyone’s loved one. Just imagine you have to look at your mother’s face."

-Bruce Gilden, 2018

I love this work and I love Bruce. I know Bruce can be extremely polarizing but I have such a deep respect for him. I attended a workshop with him in 2022 in NYC and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. In the workshop, he talks about this story and how he sees his mother in these women and I think just that little bit of context gives so much power to this work. From the outside, I think this work is extremely misunderstood and is viewed as explorative but it’s far from that. Bruce gives these people a voice and he listens to them when no one else has. The work is brutal and heartbreaking yet it’s extremely beautiful. I have a lot of books from Bruce and I debated on adding several others to this list but I landed on this one because of the way the text and image work together. Most images are full-bleed on one side with most of them having pull quotes from the person on the opposite page. The short piece of accompanying text next to the image makes this book stand out from others from Bruce. It gives that tiny bit of context to the work and the text is extremely powerful. As with most of Bruce’s books, this one is very well-designed and a great object to hold.

10 “God Inc I & God Inc II” by Carl De Keyzer

In 1990, Carl De Keyzer’s seminal project God Inc interrogated the powerful grip of religion over the United States. Completed over the course of one year, De Keyzer relocated to America with his wife and child in a campervan he had bought for the trip and dedicated himself to documenting the influences and manifestations of the church around the country. Observing everything from the most routine and ordinary expressions of faith to the spectacles of Christian plays and KKK rallies, the project documented the often-bizarre rituals associated with, as well as the politics underlying, religion in a context where faith has existed in its most commodified form in the world.

In 2019 and 2020, De Keyzer returned to the USA to update the project. He was interested in how, over the last 30 years, technology and new practices of religion had helped or hindered the US’s relationship with God. His findings are now published in a new edition of the project, represented in two-parts, God Inc I and God Inc II, which also reveal 27 previously unpublished photographs from the original trip.

Here, we share extracts from philosopher Johan Braeckman’s introductory text for the new publication, which poses the question of why exactly humans are driven by an urge to believe. The text is accompanied by images from both parts of De Keyzer’s book: color images from God Inc II, made in 2020, as well as previously unpublished images from God Inc I.

This book also had my jaw on the floor every single time I looked through it. The work is truly unbelievable and how he was able to get access to some of these places is truly impressive. As someone with deep religious trauma, this book hits extremely close to home. I don’t want to say much more about this book because I highly encourage you to pick up a copy if this subject matter interests you. Every page is a surprise. Every sequence is stunning.

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Thanks for reading this far. I hope you discovered a new photobook or two. I cherish every single book on this list and there are so many more I could have included. Maybe I will do an honorable mention list in the future. I’d love to share more photobooks in the future in this newsletter. If you liked this email/format please let me know. I want to do more like this but I’m trying to dial in how to share books through this newsletter. Would love any feedback you may have!

If you can buy/find any of these books, please buy from the artist’s website (if available) or an independent bookstore/publisher. Please don’t buy any of these from Amazon.