Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village, by Paul Strand

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Why?

“I like the way this one is about a place. The idea of a place always was something that appealed to me. About 10 years ago, I embarked on a project modeled after this, in India. My dad comes from an Indian village, so I had access to it in a way that was not just a professional, journalistic way. I could just hang out there. I began to document it, trying to describe something without being judgmental about it.

People look at Asia as a kind of economic powerhouse, but they aren't interested in the villages. They're interested in the towns and the IT part of things. There's not much general interest in an Indian village anymore. I kept looking at it and when I saw this place, I went back to live in India, and I thought, "nobody is looking at rural India, and it's half the country.” Anyways, I did it. I'm sitting on it. Maybe there will be a chance to show it somewhere one day. But it was inspired by this book directly.”
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- Sunil Gupta, Photographer

Master of the Photographic Essay, by Eugene Smith

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Why?

“When I was in college, I modeled my future around doing documentary work on social justice. W. Eugene Smith struck me as somebody who really dedicated himself. I came across his book and it became a kind of visual bible. It shows you how the guy shot across the different essays. It wasn't just the final essays—actually they aren't even there—it's all the shooting that went on. That kind of detail was hard to come by in print back in the day; I'm talking about the 70s and 80s. I found it very exciting to have access to something almost private.”
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- Sunil Gupta, Photographer

The Europeans, by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Why?

“Cartier-Bresson’s books he did on the people of China and the people of Moscow were much more journalistic, and they inspired me too, but this book inspired me [specifically] because many of his pictures are not that good. They're all very valid and vital and valuable, but not necessarily formed as he can form a picture in the most exquisite way.

Generally speaking, this is an extension of what Cartier-Bresson owns up to, which was the odd marriage between surrealism or a distant kind of abstracted point of perception and, at the same time, being a leftist who was trying to be a journalist telling the story of what was going down.”
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- Larry Fink, Photographer

Nothing Personal, by Richard Avedon and James Baldwin

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Why?

“It was very, very tender poetism. Baldwin is such a brilliant man, an emotional man and also analytical. He was able to work with Avedon’s pictures.

This book gave me a sensibility for the breadth of photography and a different way in which it could be applied. The whole idea of how you can make something as dark and as clinically alienating as a studio, and with a certain kind of aggressiveness that Dick used as his palette. I always thought that he was just a little Jewish kid from the Lower East Side who was going to be bigger than anybody else. He put people in his white jail, boxed them in, made them extremely uncomfortable and whacked them one.”
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- Larry Fink, Photographer

The Joy of Portraits, by Keizo Kitajima

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Why?

“I discovered Keizo Kitajima way after I discovered his photographs. I love the variation and free nature of not only his subjects but the way he takes portraits; there isn't a prescribed way that he sees a face or a person, each portrait feels different, and I like that. Maybe each portrait feels different because it feels like each person.”
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- Ronan Mckenzie, Photographer

Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge

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Why?

“This isn't even a photo book, but this book had an impact on the way that I both work and see myself as a photographer. So many internal prejudices and subconscious feelings that I had as a black woman surfaced while reading this book, which started me on a journey of re-discovery, which has shaped my work equally to the other books on my list.”
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- Ronan Mckenzie, Photographer

Does Yellow Run Forever? by Paul Graham

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Why?

“I first encountered this book while traveling. Prior to seeing this, most of the photo books I had encountered in Manila bookstores were more like coffee table books, design books, 'best of' books, or photography history books. I don't remember ever seeing a book that felt like every part of it was speaking to me, until I held 'Does Yellow Run Forever?' in my hand. It felt like I was touching something that went beyond a book.”
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- Hannah Reyes Morales, Photographer

I Am About to Call it a Day, by Bieke Depoorter

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Why?

“I have always held this body of work close to my heart. I love the tenderness Bieke has in photographing the human beings in this book. When I was beginning in photography, this body of work was something I would return to, to study. This year I got to see the book in real life, and it gave the images another layer, a new meaning.”
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- Hannah Reyes Morales, Photographer

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, by Helen Molesworth

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Why?

“Although not a photography book, an extremely important read on image creation, their relevance in visual literacy, and the framing of mankind's history. His work covers so much amazing use of colour (or absence thereof), issues of representation, black experience through depiction of mundane, political, mystical scenes. His work is a huge inspiration in my own work and an extremely necessary artist. His work is an artist's guidebook on what artists should question.”
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- Léonard Pongo, Photographer

Congo, by Alex Majoli and Paolo Pellegrin

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Why?

“They chose to approach the territory of Congo (Brazzaville) in a documentary, yet non-narrative way. They decided to use different visual approaches (reportage, staged, snapshots, panoramic) and to mix images regardless of who photographed them in a way that shows complete freedom from the medium and results in a stunning piece. Eventually they created a work that immerses the audience into experiencing rather than trying to analyse and explain.”
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- Léonard Pongo, Photographer

End Time City, by Michael Ackerman

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Why?

“The book design is quite simple, the images are extremely varied in their format, visual style and framing, and yet it works. I love the indiscriminate punk-style use of formats (24*36, 6*6, pano) depending on what feels right, this complete freedom. This is one of the first works that really hit me and showed me you could use photography for more than narrative storytelling. It convinced me that photography could be a tool to create a completely new world based one's search for experience and obsessions.”
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- Léonard Pongo, Photographer

Petrochemical America, by Richard Misrach and Kate Orff

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Why?

“The book’s combination of photographs, in-depth research and “speculative drawings” by landscape architect Kate Orff make for a fascinating portrayal of the layered and deep-rooted way in which Americans have plundered their environment for resources and the devastating legacies these behaviors have left behind. This book came out around the time I began Water and was immediately a benchmark I aspire to. The story of Man and Nature is, I believe, one of the most pertinent of our contemporary challenges.”
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- Mustafah Abdulaziz, Photographer

Self Portrait with Cows Going Home, by Sylvia Plachy

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Why?

“When Plachy was thirteen-years-old in 1956, her family fled the Hungarian Revolution for the U.S. with just a suitcase. This book, told non-linearly across color and black & white photographs, souvenirs and relics, and her writings, is a beautiful act of remembering. The book touches on the feeling of home and displacement, family history and creating new history. She goes back to Hungary across forty years, photographing places both alien and familiar brining us into the bedrooms and gardens of her memory.”
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- Mustafah Abdulaziz, Photographer

In the American West, by Richard Avedon

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Why?

“The significance of this book on my decision to become a photographer cannot be understated. It’s one of my earliest memories of seeing photography. The sensation of having a part of my mind unlocked, or perhaps the embers of curiosity stoked, impacted me greatly. I’m quite sentimental about this book, won’t own a copy myself and don’t look at it when it’s around. There are some things in this world that may be magic. This book gets pretty damn close.”
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- Mustafah Abdulaziz, Photographer

Winterreise, by Luc Delahaye

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Why?

“Nearly devoid of all text, printed full bleed, claustrophobic and unsettling. This is as much a portrait of Russia’s underclass as it is one man’s wanderings. The sequences churn along like a locomotive: arrays of oppressive yellows, faded wallpapers and bleak landscapes that become intimate stages for scenes of great humanity that drift between loneliness and despair. This book heavily influenced my desire to merge the personal journey with the ceaseless sensation of seeing the intimate lives of others.”
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- Mustafah Abdulaziz, Photographer

Leon Levinstein, by Leon Levinstein

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Why?

“I've been looking at his work for a long, long time, ever since my discovery of the Photo League. What brought me to his work was the fact that he was shooting 6x6 and was a graphic designer by trade. His compositions and connections to street photography were amazing.

I had struggled early on because we all take those large format classes at ICP, right? And then you start thinking, wow, maybe I can make some interesting portraiture with the square, or we can do this or that. And also being a New York photographer, I really connected to his work.”
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- Joeseph Rodríguez, Photographer

Raval, by Joan Colom

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Why?

“Joan Colom is a street photographer from Barcelona, and I bought his Steidl book some years back. This guy approached shooting on one of two streets in his town; he also went into the bars. There's a lot of sex workers today in this alley. He used a Leica, and a lot of the times shot from the hip or shot from the side. I just love the moments that are in there. It's just ... oof.”
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- Joeseph Rodríguez, Photographer