10 Photo Books to Read This Month
Hal Fischer’s archive of queer fashion, Sophie Rivera’s portraits of Nuyorican communities, Rania Matar’s love letter to Lebanon, and more new titles to check out from photo book publishers.
In 1976, photographer Helen Levitt captured a child balancing between a lime-green car and a curb near a stream of water runoff in New York City, where she was born. Her entire career spanned six decades, showcasing the quiet politics and visual poetry photography can offer. The recent news of Steidl Verlag's near bankruptcy highlights the importance of independent photo book publishers. Here are ten photo books to read this month:
1. Family Cats: From the Archive 1949–1962 by Walter Chandoha, published by Damiani in June 2026. Chandoha, a combat photographer during WWII, became a "One Cat Photographer to Rule Them All" after returning to the US, producing 90,000 cat photographs.
2. Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures, edited by Susanna V Temkin, published by Aperture in July 2026. Rivera, a Nuyorican artist, made portraits of people in her community, with a retrospective of her work at El Museo del Barrio.
3. Rania Matar: Where Do I Go? by Julia Curl, published by Kaph Books and the Eskenazi Museum of Art in April 2026. Matar's photographs capture the presence of beautiful women against the ruins of a place she loves deeply – Lebanon.
4. Silent Springs by Michele Borzoni and Rocco Rorandelli, published by Loose Joints Publishing in July 2026. This book documents people combating climate change and environmental destruction across Europe.
5. Helen Levitt, edited by Joshua Chuang, published by Thames & Hudson in May 2026. Though best known for her childhood chalk drawings, Levitt's six-decade career encompasses various styles and subjects, including her early expeditions with a Leica, trips to Mexico, color photography experiments, and final photos from the 1980s.
6. Social Season by Miranda Barnes, published by MACK in January 2026. Barnes covers Black debutante balls she photographed in Detroit between 2022 and 2025, exploring the origins and appropriation of these events by African Americans.
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