{"id":32239,"date":"2025-07-30T00:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T00:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/32239\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T00:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T00:10:17","slug":"the-best-new-photo-books-to-buy-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/32239\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best New Photo Books to Buy This Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 29, 2025<\/p>\n

Lead ImagePhotography by Chessa Subbiondo<\/p>\n

With temperatures testing the limits of English architecture and almost every scrap of green in London scorched to hay, you\u2019d need little reminding that summer is in full swing. As the days stretch long and many of us take pause abroad, the season also sees the arrival of several new photography titles to escape into.\u00a0From a book tracing the places that have shaped Marguerite Duras\u2019 seminal works to Jerry Hsu\u2019s tongue-in-cheek portrait of Californian street life, here are ten of the most captivating new books to get lost in this summer.<\/p>\n

20Splint by Chessa Subbiondo<\/a><\/p>\n

Chessa Subbiondo\u2019s debut book is cold, sensual and irrefutably cinematic. The LA-based photographer shot these images over the course of two years, taking friends to grey car parks and modern apartment blocks to stage various mise-en-sc\u00e8nes, where the charged suspense of a smashed glass or a finger in a mouth suggest a scene unfolding before and after each frame. The title, she tells AnOther, has a double meaning: \u201cIt\u2019s like a splint \u2013 as in, a brace. This is what the book felt like for me: it was really holding me together this past year and giving me purpose, something to believe in and put all my energy into. But at the same time, it\u2019s also like a splinter, something deep under your skin, nagging at you to pull it out. And this was definitely something that I kept coming back to and picking at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read our feature on the book here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"LonleyLonley CityPhotography by Jerry Hsu. Courtesy of Friend Editions12Lonley City by Jerry Hsu<\/a><\/p>\n

For Jerry Hsu, skateboarding and photography are inseparable \u2013 he sees both as ways of navigating and observing the world. Born in San Jose and now based in Los Angeles, his much-loved work Lonley City approaches the Californian landscape as a playground for exploration, capturing hundreds of fleeting moments of humour, beauty, and quiet absurdity on city streets. From cheesy slogans on T-shirts to hands brushing through the windows of idling SUVs, the book is cleverly sequenced to highlight the easily missed poetry of everyday life. Its third release arrives this summer. \u201cThis book is very special,\u201d says publisher Oliver Shaw. \u201cThe photographs themselves are great, but the pairings are perfect \u2013 an impressive exploration of the urban landscape, shot entirely on an iPhone, primarily across Southern California.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"DavidL\u2019uomo Vogue, April 2006Photography by David Armstrong. Courtesy of Matte Editions16David Armstrong: Fashion<\/a><\/p>\n

Curator Vince Aletti and photographer Matthew Leifheit have produced the first posthumous monograph on the late, great David Armstrong. Published a decade after his death, the book offers a never-before-seen insight into his fashion work between the years of 2002 and 2010. Focusing largely on sensuous, stripped-back portraits of men, Armstrong\u2019s intimate world stood in stark contrast to the bold, high-gloss productions of the 2000s brought forward by the likes of Nick Knight and David LaChapelle. Shooting with a painterly sense of timelessness, Armstrong gravitated toward simpler fantasies and fleeting gestures of\u00a0 tenderness \u2013 a style that made him deeply influential. \u201cDavid has always used photography as a seductive device, a sublimation of his desire,\u201d Nan Goldin once said. \u201cHis pictures of people feel tactile because one senses his desire to touch, but never in an aggressive or insistent way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read our feature on the book here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"RoomsPhotography by Greta Ilieva<\/p>\n

Greta Ilieva grew up the daughter of a photographer in Bulgaria. Her mum also happened to be a naturist. These two facts of her youth informed the making of her new book Rooms, which documents eight years spent photographing the women of London nude in their bedrooms. Shot in a cool, soft light, portraits of friends and people discovered on Instagram are mixed in with pictures of her subjects\u2019 beds. \u201cSeeing the sheets, the traces of someone\u2019s body and rest, somehow felt more revealing than looking at someone naked,\u201d she told AnOther. \u201cI hope the work shows that I\u2019m less interested in control and more in creating space for honesty, where people feel safe enough to be seen as they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read our feature on the book here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"YokoYoko by Masahisa Fukase\u00a9 Masahisa Fukase Archives. Courtesy of Akaaka13Yoko by Masahisa Fukase <\/a><\/p>\n

Masahisa Fukase\u2019s Yoko was first published in 1978. Bringing together tender black and white photographs of his first 15 years of marriage, the cult monograph was republished this year, with Yoko helming its reprint. Behind spontaneous shots from their wedding, holidays on sandy coasts, and private moments in bed, the couple\u2019s relationship was unravelling, and fights, affairs, and the photographer\u2019s drinking saw Yoko file for divorce in 1976. Returned to two decades after Fukase\u2019s death, the images strike various notes of bittersweet loss contemplated in the light of today.\u00a0 \u201cAt first, there were a few photographs I wished not to be included in this reprint,\u201d Yoko writes in the book. \u201cBut let me say that out of respect for Fukase\u2019s intentions, it was decided that the reprint would retain the composition of the original. If Fukase were still alive today and I could say one thing to him now, it would be, \u2018Well, it is what it is, right!\u2019<\/p>\n

Read our feature on the book here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"TheThe Places of Marguerite DurasCourtesy of Magic Hour Press6The Places of Marguerite Duras<\/a><\/p>\n

Writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras spent her career exploring the complexities of human desire, often through stories set in evocative locations around the world. A fascinating new book from Magic Hour Press delves into these settings, examining the places where Duras staged her most seminal works. Drawing on archival imagery and first-person accounts \u2013 translated from a 1976 French television interview \u2013 the book intertwines memory and place, tracing a journey from her home in Neauphle-le-Ch\u00e2teau, where she wrote many of her novels and screenplays, to her childhood house in French Indochina, the inspiration for The Sea Wall. It also visits the H\u00f4tel des Roches Noires in Trouville, where she penned The Ravishing of Lol Stein, and the sweeping seascapes of Indochina, Bengal, and Normandy. \u201cThe films I make come from the same place in me as my books, from what I call the place of passion,\u201d Duras says in the book. \u201cA place where we are deaf and blind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"LaLa Libert\u00e9 ou L\u2019AmourPhotography by Lin Zhipeng. Courtesy of the artist and Kinakaal Forlag8La Libert\u00e9 ou L\u2019Amour by Lin Zhipeng<\/a><\/p>\n

Beijing-based artist Lin Zhipeng came to notoriety in the halcyon days of the internet, when he started sharing casual yet arresting snapshots of daily life online under the moniker No 223. Spanning from early-2000s internet fame to the present day, a special new publication marks two decades of his irreverent imagery in ten small, loosely-bound booklets, designed to be swapped and shuffled. Destined to become an instant collectable, each section is themed on an individual phrase or idea, blending new, iconic, and obscure images \u2013 from desirous nudes and witty still lifes, to casual moments of intrigue spotted in the everyday. \u201cWhile the body and sexuality have certainly been significant themes in [my work], my camera captures more than just that,\u201d he told AnOther in a 2024 interview. \u201cI am always looking to document daily curiosities \u2013 the small but sensual details that often go unnoticed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"II call you my lovePhotography by Sunil Gupta. Courtesy of Baron Books5I call you my love by Sunil Gupta<\/a><\/p>\n

Baron\u2019s tender new publication documents an extended, years-long correspondence between Sunil Gupta and his lover Steve Dodd. While Gupta was working in London and Dodd was completing his PhD in America through the mid-80s to the early 90s, the pair regularly kept in touch through letters. A heartwarming document of transatlantic connection, the book sensitively mixes these writings with Gupta\u2019s family album-style images of the couple, as well as Dodd\u2019s poetry and textural ephemera such as original envelopes, sketches, and newspaper clippings. Serving not only as an archive of a particular moment in the artist\u2019s life, the book offers a snapshot of queer love and community thriving against the backdrop of oppression and illness.<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"Shells\"ShellsPhotography by Roe Ethridge. Courtesy of Note Note Collection<\/p>\n

The humble shell is a symbol of seaside ease and classical, painterly mysticism. Miami-born Roe Ethridge has chosen the form as the subject of his latest book, using the shell as a touchstone to explore visual storylines that riff on popular culture, art history, and his own childhood memories along the Atlantic coast. A tower of resplendent red lobsters for Laila Gohar<\/a>, a glamorous bathroom assemblage of conchs and hermit shells beside a smoking ashtray, and a wry cold shot of a Shell Garage logo are just a few of the visual tangents he explores. These are interspersed with portraits from his fashion work, including one of a model in a sailor hat with sun-blushed cheeks. Humorous and beautiful, it\u2019s a sunny tribute to Ethridge\u2019s particular way of blurring the lines between commercial and personal; fantasy and reality. \u201cA sequence has to sing,\u201d the artist once said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just something to decode and find the true meaning of. I have to feel its harmonies and disharmonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"Kate,Kate and Jess (NYC), 2023Photography by Marie Tomanova. Courtesy of the artist and Untitled Publishing8Kate, For You by Marie Tomanova<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re familiar with Marie Tomanova\u2019s work, it\u2019s likely the cover of her cult debut book Young American that comes to mind \u2013 a shot of couple Kate and Odie entangled in a peach-tiled bathtub, gazing straight into her lens. Then an undiscovered artist, Tomanova had just relocated to New York from the Czech Republic, and the image was taken the first afternoon she met up with Kate in 2017 after connecting online. It was just one of many raw snapshots of the city\u2019s youth at home, on dancefloors, and in the streets gathered in the artist\u2019s debut book, which together formed an electrifying document of New York youth at the tail end of the 2010s. In the years since, Tomanova has published subsequent monographs and exhibited her work globally. Kate, meanwhile, has become both a close friend and something of a muse. Tomanova\u2019s new book publishes the full roll of film from that June afternoon, alongside portraits of Kate up until the present day. These see changing apartments, lovers, and hairstyles warmly chart nearly a decade of her life and their enduring friendship.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 29, 2025 Lead ImagePhotography by Chessa Subbiondo With temperatures testing the limits of English architecture and almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-32239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}