779. Books on photographs

Further Reading:

Yann Arthus-Bertrand Our Living Earth: A Story of People, Ecology, and Preservation, 2008.

In 1994, Yann Athus-Bertrand started a project for UNESCO photographing some of the most stunning landscapes on the planet from helicopters and hot-air balloons. This companion volume to the resulting book, The Earth from Above, discusses human activity’s impact on the world since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Gail Buckland Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present, 2016.

Gail Buckland compiled 280 sports photographs from fifty archives featuring the great photographers of the past. The athletes in the images range from legends like Muhammad Ali to largely unknown athletes in more minor sports.

Arnold Genthe and John Kuo Wei Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown, 1984.

Arnold Genthe shot these rare photographs of San Francisco’s Chinatown before the great earthquake and fire of 1906 leveled the area. At the time, Genthe was a German immigrant who came to the city to tutor the son of an aristocratic family. He became fascinated by Tangrenbu, as Chinatown was called, and went there often to document what he found in these photographs.

Steve Gottlieb Abandoned America, 2002.

All places and times have abandoned buildings, vehicles, and other objects from the past. Steve Gottlieb traveled the U.S. taking pictures of the things our great-grandparents and their contemporaries left behind.

Eric Greitens Strength and Compassion: Photographs and Essays by Eric Greitens, 2008.

Award-winning photographer Eric Greitens captured people’s struggles, from Rwanda to Bolivia. They are accompanied by essays on topics such as Dignity and Hope.

Igor Kostin Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter, 2006.

When the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl exploded in April 1986, it wasn’t just a local event. The radiation it unleashed spread globally. Photographer Igor Kostin was there to capture it all. His photographs document the accident’s aftermath, taken on visits around Russia and Ukraine, and then in Sweden and France that display the social, political, and medical fallout.

Thomas D. Mangelsen The Last Great Wild Places: Forty Years of Wildlife Photography by Thomas D. Mangelsen, 2014.

Like many nature photographers, Thomas D. Mangelsen is also a fierce conservationist. He takes you on a journey spanning the forty years he spent capturing elephants below Kilimanjaro in Africa to polar bears in the Arctic. This celebration of our planet’s fast-disappearing beauty serves as a call to action to save what we can.

Richard Nagler Looking at Art: The Art of Looking, 2014.

Richard Nagler went to museums across the globe, photographing people looking at works of art.

Jane Perkins and Raghu Rai His Holiness: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, 2018.

Award-winning photographer Raghu Rai has been taking pictures of the Dalai Lama since his forced evacuation of Tibet in 1959. Jane Perkins provides the historical background for these photos of the exiled leader of Tibet.

Lisa Woollett Sea Journal, 2016.

After spending a year traversing the British shorelines, Lisa Woollett offers the photographs she took in all kinds of weather and situations, whether sheltering in a coastal cave or hanging on amid a hailstorm. In addition, she shares the stories of the history, near and far, of the scenes she captures.

For more information on the Further Reading section, see Further Reading: Start Here.