Daido Moriyama first came to prominence in the mid-1960s. If there is one theme that jumps out from his work – one that can be regarded as his essential territory, the wellspring of his photography – it is Tokyo. He also draws inspiration from William Klein’s confrontational photographs of New York, Shomei Tomatsu’s trenchant social critiques, Andy Warhol’s silkscreened multiples of newspaper images, and the writings of Jack Kerouac and Yukio Mishima. As Gabriel Bauret points out in his introduction to this collection of Moriyama’s work, Light and Shadow is the title of a book published by Moriyama in 1982, but it could just as easily be applied to his whole photographic oeuvre, given the dialogue he so powerfully sets up between light and shadow, black and white.

The Photofile series brings together the best work of the world’s greatest photographers, in an affordable pocket format. Handsome and collectable, the books are produced to the highest standards. Each volume contains some sixty full-page reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography. The series has been awarded the first annual prize for distinguished photographic books by the International Center of Photography, New York.

Contents List:

Introduction by Gabriel Bauret • c.60 photographs • Concise biography

About the Author:

Gabriel Bauret is a noted curator, critic and photography historian.

A concise compendium of Vivian Maier's enduring images

With the discovery of her archive in a thrift auction house in 2007, Vivian Maier’s posthumous trajectory from relative obscurity to one of the great American photographers of the 20th century is a story of a singular consistent talent. From the mid 1950s throughout her adult life she worked as a nanny between New York and Chicago, and it was during this time that she created a huge body of photographs and films recording every day street life, often including her own self portrait and moments of fleeting reflection within the cityscape. With her work compared to Helen Levitt, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, her photographs are a fascinating window into American life.

About the Author:

Anne Morin is the director of diChroma Photography in Madrid.

A revised edition of this collection of Saul Leiter’s distinctive work, featuring twelve new photographs.

A new edition of this collection of Saul Leiter's distinctive work, featuring twelve new photographs.

Saul Leiter was one of those photographers who sought neither fame nor commercial success, despite his talent for imagemaking.

Born in Pittsburgh, he spent his entire adult life in New York City's East Village, in an intensely creative environment where ideas from Europe and America came together and intermingled. There he encountered Rothko and the Abstract Expressionists, and discovered street photography and the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. His mastery of colour is displayed in unconventional cityscapes in which reflections, transparency, complex framing and mirroring effects are married to a very personal printing style, creating a unique kind of urban view.

About the Author:

Max Kozloff is an American art historian, art critic of modern art and photographer. He has been art editor at The Nation and Executive Editor of Artforum.

The perfect primer on acclaimed French artist Sophie Calle.

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist. Her work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is renowned for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives, which she has deployed in her acclaimed works Suite Venitienne, The Hotel and Address Book. She has had major exhibitions all over the world, including at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and has worked closely with the writer Paul Auster. The Guardian called her ‘the Marcel Duchamp of dirty laundry’, and she was among the names in Blake Gopnik's list 'The 10 Most Important Artists of Today', with Gopnik arguing, 'It is the unartiness of Calle's work ― its refusal to fit any of the standard pigeonholes, or over anyone's sofa ― that makes it deserve space in museums.'

Clément Chéroux introduces this collection of over twenty of Calle’s most renowned projects, which are all accompanied by the artist’s own words.

About the Author:

Clément Chéroux is a French photography historian and curator. He is Chief Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Before the beginning of his exile, Koudelka had already produced two works of great importance. One documented the Prague Spring, while the other, on gypsies, could almost have been an ethnological study had its images not been charged with so much emotion. Unknown in 1970, he has risen to become one of the most powerful photographers of the day. This book shows that in the lands of exile through which he travels with his amazing urge to see, Koudelka’s own particular talent has been affirmed and expanded.

PHOTOFILE brings together the best work of the world’s greatest photographers, in an attractive format and at an easily affordable price. Handsome and collectable, the books are produced to the highest standards. Each volume contains some sixty full-page reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography. The series has been awarded the first annual prize for distinguished photographic books by the International Center of Photography, New York.

New in the Photofile series, a mini-monograph on Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert.

Born in Antwerp in 1941, Harry Gruyaert was a pioneer of European colour photography in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972, he created TV Shots, a series of images created by turning the dial on a television set at random and photographing the screen.

Later he travelled the world, seeking out different kinds of light and exhibiting a particular fascination with borders, interfaces and incongruous juxtapositions. A member of Magnum Photos since 1982, he describes colour as ‘a means of sculpting what I see ... it’s the emotion of photography.’ Most recently he has begun to explore the experimental freedom offered by digital photography. Autonomous, non-narrative and often witty, Gruyaert’s images are complex encounters with colour and light.

About the Author:

Brice Matthieussent is an award-winning translator of over 200 novels from English into French, including the writings of Jim Harrison, for which he was awarded the 2013 Prix Jules Janin from the Académie française. He currently teaches the history of contemporary art and aesthetics at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille.

A carefully curated collection of Helmut Newton’s chic, provocative and erotically charged photographs

Helmut Newton (1920-2004) lived and worked all over the world and was one of the most internationally famous and controversial photographers of the 20th century. His shots at haute couture and the beau monde are instantly recognizable, having appeared in virtually every major magazine in Europe and the United States. From his early work for Vogue to his portraits of the rich and famous, Newton conveys a unique vision of a wealthy and glamorous world that often shocks but never ceases to fascinate.

The Photofile series brings together the best work of the world’s greatest photographers, in an affordable pocket format. Handsome and collectable, the books are produced to the highest standards. Each volume contains some sixty full-page reproductions printed in superb duotone, together with a critical introduction and a full bibliography. The series has been awarded the first annual prize for distinguished photographic books by the International Center of Photography, New York.

Contents List:

Introduction by Karl Lagerfeld • Sixty reproductions • Helmut Newton by Helmut Newton • Bibliography

About the Author:

Karl Lagerfeld is a German fashion designer, artist, and photographer based in Paris.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) studied painting before taking up photography in his early twenties. One of the founders of the photography agency Magnum (together with Robert Capa and others), he is best known for the consummate skill with which he captured the most fleeting of scenes.

This volume includes selections from his photographs of France, Spain, America, India, Russia, Mexico and pre-revolutionary China. Introduced by Michael Bresson, it show clearly how, for Cartier-Bresson, art is an expression of common humanity.

An introduction to the work of the celebrated fashion photographer.

An experimenter and innovator, Erwin Blumenfeld (1897–1969) produced an extensive body of work including portraits and nudes, celebrity portraiture and advertising campaigns – but it is his fashion photography for which he is best known.

Having fled Paris during World War II, Blumenfeld forged a stellar path in New York, where he worked for Harper’s Bazaar, American Vogue, Helena Rubinstein, L'Oréal and Elizabeth Arden.

Discover Blumenfeld’s masterful work through sixty full-page reproductions in this title in the Photofile series. The curator Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais contributes an introduction.

About the Author:

Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais is curator of photography at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

An illuminating introduction to photographer Issei Suda, who captured the soul of Japan old and new

The work of Issei Suda (1940-2019) is distinct in contemporary avant-garde Japanese photography for its celebration of the beauty of the everyday. His black and white pictures reflect on apparent banality of urban life, capturing the little surprises usually ignored in our world: the shadow of a figure, the shapes of the street, the expressions on stranger's faces. Sudas practice revealed the tensions between old and new Japan, juxtaposing the ingrained visual traditions of Japanese culture with the prevailing western vocabulary of fashion, advertising and leisure, as seen through his observant and tender lens.

About the Author:

Simon Baker is Director of the Maison Européenne de la photographie (MEP).

A concise survey of Susan Meiselas's documentary photography

Best known for her work documenting the political upheaval in Central America during the 1970s and 80s, American photographer Susan Meiselas has been at the forefront of ethical debates around documentary photography for most of her career. Through close engagement with subjects such as war and exploitation, she has interrogated her own relationship to what she's photographing, the circulation and dissemination of these images, and the pivotal questions around social and cultural representation and memory. Her influential contribution to the way audiences approach and engage with photography is as vital and resonant today as it was 40 years ago.

This book in the Photofile series also includes short texts by Meiselas herself accompanying each work in the volume.

About the Author

Marta Gili is an art critic and exhibition curator. She was previously director of the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2006–2018), and director of the École nationale supérieure de la Photographie in Arles (2019–2023).

Guy Bourdin is one of four new titles being published this Spring in Thames & Hudson’s acclaimed ‘Photofile’ series.

Guy Bourdin (1928–1991) was a fashion photographer whose talent and strength of vision were apparent even in his earliest works. He shared Helmut Newton’s taste for controversy and stylization, but Bourdin’s formal daring and the narrative power of his images exceeded the bounds of conventional advertising photography. Shattering expectations and questioning boundaries, he set the stage for a new kind of fashion photography.

About the Author:

Gilles de Bure (1940-2013) was a journalist for publications including Glamour, Beaux Arts, and Technikart, among others, on subjects ranging from dance to architecture. He was responsible for the Current Affairs Gallery at the Center for Industrial Creation--Centre Pompidou and was the first director of the Grande Halle de la Villette.

A compact survey of the work of 20th-century photographer Helen Levitt, best known for her New York street photography.

A compact survey of the work of 20th-century photographer Helen Levitt, best known for her New York street photography.
Brooklyn-born photographer Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was an assistant to Walker Evans and a friend of Henri Cartier-Bresson, but forged her own path with fierce independence and endless curiosity about the world around her. She is best known for her street photography, capturing children at play on the streets of Depression-era New York and chalk drawings on walls, but she also cast her eye upon the adult world, seeking out moments of movement, transience and theatricality.

Following her first solo exhibition at MoMA in 1943, she devoted more than a decade to filmmaking, but returned to photography in the late 1950s and began to work in colour as well as black and white. Lyrical and witty, her images reveal the streets of New York as flowing with life and unexpected poetry.

About the Author:

Jean-François Chevrier is an art historian, art critic and exhibition curator. He is Professor in the History of Contemporary Art at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Claude Cahun (1894–1954), the chosen name of the artist born Lucy Schwob, was best known in her lifetime as a writer but built up a remarkable body of photographic work that only came to prominence after her death.

Politically active and involved with a wide circle of artists and intellectuals, including the Surrealists, Cahun followed her own rules in both life and art. She is best known for her strikingly staged self-portraits, in which she used costumes, makeup and technical effects to tackle themes of identity and self-representation. Her love of symmetry, mirroring, repurposing and retouching was also reflected in her approach to other styles of photography, including portraiture, photomontage and still-life tableaux.

Whether working alone or in collaboration with her life partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), Claude Cahun was a pioneering figure in the aesthetics of modernity who never stopped crossing boundaries of gender and genre.

About the Author:

François Leperlier is a French writer, essayist, poet, philosopher and art historian, known especially for his work on the surrealist writer and photographer Claude Cahun. He has dedicated a large part of his life's work to the rehabilitation and recognition of Cahun's creative works, having rediscovered her nearly forty years after her death in 1954.

A mini-monograph on Samuel Fosso, the renowned Cameroon-born Nigerian photographer.

Samuel Fosso (b. 1962) is one of Central Africa’s leading contemporary artists, whose playful and perceptive work investigates Pan-African identity and history through the use of portraiture. Fosso’s path to artistry was found through his initial work as a commercial portrait photographer, utilising his leftover film by capturing self-portraits against well-considered backdrops and incorporating pose, costume and props. Renowned for his ‘autoportraits’ - styling himself and others as characters from popular culture or politics – Samuel Fosso reflects the world around him through a distinct aesthetic that has at times defied Nigerian dictatorial decree.

Fosso’s work is now held in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, and he was the recipient of the Prince Claus Award of The Netherlands, in 2001.

About the Authors:

Christine Barthe is head of the photographic collection at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.
Samuel Fosso is one of Central Africa's leading contemporary photographers.