The best photobooks of 2024

Here is a little skip through my favourite photobooks of the year. I hope you find something that appeals. As always, these books will be enjoyed more when purchased via an independent bookstore, or direct from the photographer / publisher.

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‘On Reading’ by David Hurn

This book makes me smile. A celebration of the ancient art of reading (mostly) print. Hurn created the work in response to a book of the same name by André Kertész. They met in 1983:

“I told him that one of my favourite books was his, small in size, On Reading, first published in 1971 – Kertész’s father was a bookseller – after much chatting and laughing, I suggested, that if he gave his permission, I would re-do the book when I was 89. He gave his permission. This is the result.”

Purchased from the publisher RRB Photobooks.

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‘Living Room’ by Nick Waplington

Photos of everyday life taken on a council estate in Broxtowe, Nottingham. They have extra resonance as I grew up at a similar time and in the same borough (albeit in very different circumstances). Time Out gave the accompanying exhibition a well-deserved 5* review:

“… it’s in the titular living room that the real drama plays out. This room is the stage, the set where the community acts out its relationships; a cramped, filthy, beautiful world unto itself. Babies are fed, toddlers are cuddled, fags are smoked, teas are split, clothes are ironed. It’s ultra-basic, super-mundane, but it’s overflowing with life and joy. Everyone is laughing, playing, wrestling.”

Purchased from Photobook Junkies.

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‘Long Walk Home’ by Robbie Lawrence

Robbie Lawrence’s approach to colour, composition and book design make him one of my favourite contemporary photographers. Here we have photographs of The Highland Games hosted across Scotland and the USA which “examines the cultural significance of the traditional community tournament and questions the very notion of what it is to be from a place.”

Purchased from the publisher Stanley Barker.

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‘Here, In Absence’ by Mikael Siirilä

Intriguing, mysterious photos all bound in a beautifully designed book. Mikael Siirilä describes himself not as a photographer, but as a “darkroom artist.”

He writes “My small individual photographs examine the themes of absence, presence and outsiderhood. My characters appear immersed in their inner worlds and moments of being: simultaneously absent and intensely present. The pictures also reveal the outsider’s gaze, lost in observation and reflection.”

Purchased from the photographer.

(Thank you,

PHOTOSNACK

, for introducing me to his work).

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‘Skinningrove’ by Chris Killip

This is the last book Chris Killip worked on before he died in 2020. Some had appeared in other publications, but this is the first time the whole series has been brought together in one book.

The publisher, STANLEY/BARKER writes “The village of Skinningrove lies on the North-East coast of England, hidden in a steep valley it veers away from the main road and faces out onto the North Sea. The photographs that Chris Killip made of its, fiercely independent hard working-class community, between 1982 and 1984 are possibly Killip’s most intimate work.”

Purchased from Photobook Junkies.

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‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ by Peter Mitchell

This is Peter Mitchell’s first retrospective and was published to accompany a memorable exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery earlier this year. As Val Williams wrote, Peter is “a narrator of how we were, a chaser of a disappearing world”.

Purchased from the publisher RRB Photobooks.

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‘A Time - A Place’ by John Piercy Holroyd and Daniel Hopkinson

A couple of years ago a plan was hatched between an architect and an architectural photographer in which each European Car of the Year between 1964-1982 is paired with a building completed in the same year. The result is a mix of nostalgia and the contemporary.

Purchased from The Modernist Society

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