This list was created by PDN Magazine and is considered THE list of best photography books available. Err, I should say "created", as some of them are no longer available at all! Thanks to Christopher Morris, one my instructors at Langra College, for providing the list.
In the January 2003 issue of PDN, we listed, in no particular order, some of the most influential books in the history of photography - explaining why they were so important and what made them groundbreaking. Included on that list were well known titles such as Robert Frank's The Americans, Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment and Bill Owens' Suburbia. Also noted were some lesser-known publications, including Helmer Lerski's Kopfe des Alltags, Eikoh Hosoe's Ordeal by Roses and Joan Fontcuberta's Sputnik.
Listed below are the books we chose:
1. Diane Arbus
2. Richard Avedon's In the American West
3. Lisette Model's Aperture monograph
4. Karl Blossfeldt's Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms In Nature)
5. Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment
6. Sebastião Salgado's Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age
7. Josef Koudelka's Gypsies
8. Robert Frank's The Americans
9. William Klein's New York
10. Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
11. Paul Strand's Tir A Mhurian
12. Bill Owen's Suburbia
13. Philip Jones Griffiths' Vietnam Inc.
14. Eugene and Aileen Smith's book Minamata
15. Ernst Cole's House of Bondage
16. Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency
17. Larry Clark's Tulsa
18. Brassai's Paris de Nuit
19. Weegee's Naked City
20. Larry Sultan's Pictures From Home
21. Eugene Richards' 50 Hours
22. Joan Fontcuberta's Sputnik
23. Sally Mann's Immediate Family
24. Helmer Lerski's Kopfe des Alltags (Everyday Heads)
25. August Sander's Antlitz der Zeit (Faces of our Time)
26. Andre Kertesz's From My Window
27. Laszlo Moholy Nagy's Malerei Photographie Film
28. Eikoh Hosoe's Ordeal By Roses
29. Bill Brandt's Perspective of Nudes
30. Helmut Newton's White Women
31. Robert Mapplethorpe's Mapplethorpe
