Since 2014, Don’t Take Pictures has published a list of recommend reading each summer and winter. We have compiled all of the titles from the last five years with links to each review. The list is limited to printed books and does not include online content or periodicals. Our Editor-in-Chief has read each book on this list and selected titles that she has found helpful in her own art and business practices. This list is not intended to be a review of each book, nor is it focused on new releases, as there are so many great books that remain relevant today.
On Process
The Photographer’s Playbook: 307 Assignments and Ideas by Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern
Why People Photograph by Robert Adams
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
The View from the Studio Door by Ted Orland
Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists by Sharon Louden
The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life by Sharon Louden
The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Your Art Will Save Your Life by Beth Pickens
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Edited by Clément Chéroux and Julie Jones
Art & Soul: Notes on Creating by Audrey Flack
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules by Amy Whitaker
The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse by Anna Held Audette
Art Can Help by Robert Adams
Letting Go of the Camera by Brooks Jensen
Art Criticism
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes
Understanding a Photograph by John Berger, Edited by Geoff Dyer
Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs by Carol Mavor
Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values by Robert Adams
The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer
Light Matters: Writings on Photography by Vicki Goldberg
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman
Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography by Janet Malcolm
When I Was a Photographer by Félix Nadar
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designer, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts by Leonard Koren
Working Stiffs: Occupational Portraits in the Age of Tintypes by Michael L. Carlebach
Pandora’s Camera by Joan Fontcuberta
Why Photography Matters by Jerry L. Thompson
On Photography by Susan Sontag
Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography by David Levi Strauss
As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905-1930 by Rosamond B. Value
The Photographer’s Eye by John Szarkowski
Photography and the Art of Chance by Robin Kelsey
On Photography by Walter Benjamin
Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography by Andy Grundberg
What Art Is by Arthur C. Danto
On the Art World
Breakfast at Sotheby’s: An A-Z of the Art World by Phillip Hook
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else by David Balzer
I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette by Paper Monument
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World by Anthony M. Amore
Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in Its Struggle to Be Understood by Grayson Perry
Tell Them I Said No by Martin Herbert
On Artists
Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers by Ken Light
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
The Realist: A Novel of Berenice Abbot by Sarah Coleman
Photographs Not Taken by Will Steacy
At the Edge of Light: Thoughts on Photography and Photographers, on Talent and Genius by David Travis
Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography, a True Story of Genius and Rivalry
by Roger Watson & Helen Rappaport
Art Business
How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery by Ed Winkleman
The Artist-Gallery Partnership: A Practical Guide to Consigning Art by Ted Crawford & Susan Mellon
Crusade for Your Art: Best Practices for Fine Art Photographers by Jennifer Schwartz
Creative Writing & Photography
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
A Box of Photographs by Roger Grenier
The Critic as Artist (Upon the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything) by Oscar Wilde
The Room in Which I Work by Andrew Seguin
27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography by Mark Alice Durant
The Coral Sea by Patti Smith