Each year we’re gifted a plethora of photo books that are beautifully designed and contain wide-ranging imagery and a variety of subjects. 2024 did not disappoint—and was a particularly thrilling year for photo books. From Drew Doggett’s breathtaking look at horses in nature to intimate rare photographs of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love with their daughter Frances Bean, here’s a list of what we consider the 10 best photo books of the last 12 months.

Epicly Later’d  by Patrick O’Dell

An inside spread from Patrick O’Dell’s photo book Epicly Later’d. Photo: Patrick O’Dell

Patrick O’Dell is a name synonymous with capturing intimate moments of skateboard culture from the 2000s to today. Long before Instagram, in 2004, O’Dell started the influential online photo blog Epicly Later’d, which eventually turned into a documentary video series of the same name for Vice. Aside from his years working as a photographer for Thrasher magazine and photo editor for Vice, O’Dell is also an acclaimed filmmaker.

Now a dad and in a different life chapter, O’Dell decided to look through his vast archive of images and released a beautifully designed hardcover book this year, bearing the same name as the blog. With the help of editor Jesse Pearson and designer Sue Barber, this book perfectly translates O’Dell’s candid imagery into a nicely assembled collection, detailing the emotions of that era like a familiar scrapbook.

“It was hard going through all the raw files. Like a real time machine in my basement,” O’Dell told me. “Every other person is dead, everyone is a lot younger. I had to relive all my highs and lows. I would close the computer and go back up to my family after looking at the past all day, and it was like that Talking Heads song: ‘This is not my beautiful house, how did I get here?’”

The photographs in Epicly Later’d read like a raw time capsule and examine what made the DNA of New York City’s underground skate and culture scene of the 2000s something that was once in a lifetime. Through the images, you peek into the lives of different characters, some of whom you may or may not recognize. O’Dell reflected: “I hope people see the fun we had and are inspired to have their own fun.  I hope people enjoy the fashions and characters from 20 years ago, and if they were around back then enjoy it as a yearbook.” —Kenneth Bachor

Untamed Spirits by Drew Doggett

An inside spread from Drew Doggett’s photo book Untamed Spirits. Photo: Drew Doggett

This is, at its core, really an expression of photographer Drew Doggett’s love for horses—an animal that has a close companionship with humanity all across the world. As Doggett writes in the introduction, “I’ve photographed horses on glaciers, near waterfalls, in the snow, in the rain, underwater, on volcanic black beaches, pristine white sand beaches, in stables with studio lights against backdrops, and in the wild at dusk, sunrise, and every moment in between.”

While the text of the book is fascinating, what really shines here are the images that evoke fantastical, cinematic scenes. In many of the images, I half expected to have to “Where’s Waldo” for Gandalf hidden on the page. This book really aims to show the majestic and wild beauty of Equus caballus, with nary a saddle on them.

I want to throw in an honorable mention here, because if you like this book, you will also like Wolf by Frederik Buyckx, filled with stunning Ansel Adams-like black-and-white or otherwise monotone pictures depicting the past decade, which the photographer has spent living in the mountains—the kind of pictures only a true nature lover like Doggett or Buyckx can capture. —Adam Schrader

Snail World 2: Welcome to Slimetown by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland

An image from Snail World 2: Welcome to Slimetown. Photo: Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland

A creative visual delight, Snail World 2: Welcome to Slimetown is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting photo books I’ve seen this year. Or ever. Created by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland, this book serves as a sequel to their uniquely popular book Snail World and depicts snails in human-like scenarios with colorful and elaborate scenery.

“Snail World 2 gave us the opportunity to create a specific series that takes us more intimately into Slimetown, the fictional neighborhood inhabited by our pet snails,” noted Murawski.

It’s hard to pick a favorite image, as each photo has its own unique personality. In this series, we follow the character of El Dente, who is a paranormal investigator and is trying to figure out why strange occurrences keep happening around town. Murawski reflected: “This project is about exploring what we do not know and are afraid to confront, including the many monsters that crawl out of our inner world without invitation.”

Each snail scene in this 160-page book is cinematic and mesmerizing. What do Murawski and Copeland want the reader to take away? “We hope people are drawn into this small world we are creating, and that they get a little lost in Slimetown too.” —Kenneth Bachor

Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía

The cover for the book Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografia. Photo: Louis Carlos Bernal

This book pays tribute to the late Arizona photographer Louis Carlos Bernal, who has been called the father of Chicano art photography. It was produced by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, not far from his parents’ home, and follows a more traditional photo book style—heavy on images accompanied by art historical text penned by Elizabeth Ferrer.

The imagery in this book felt relatable to me as a Brazilian American even though I am outside the Chicano experience. I grew up in Dallas, where John F. Kennedy was shot decades before my birth. But depictions of the former president abounded in my childhood and echo throughout Bernal’s photographs. The book also includes a humorous series where people can be seen holding cutout masks of Richard Nixon’s face over their own as they pose among Saguaro cactuses or piles of trash. Really, the beautiful images provide a special insight into Chicano life in the American Southwest. Fun side quest: See if you can count how many Catholic symbols appear in its pages.

And if you liked this book, I would recommend that you follow it up with I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now. The photographs are wide-ranging in theme and varied in aesthetic, but the book informs about the legacy of an overlooked tradition in modern photography. —Adam Schrader

Dream on – Berlin, the 90s by Boaz Levin, Annette Hauschild, and Kathrin Kohle

Potsdamer Platz, 1990 from Dream on – Berlin, the 90s. Photo: ©Sibylle Bergemann/OSTKREUZ

I saw this book on a trip to Berlin in September at the book shop do you read me?! and I just couldn’t believe the incredible collection of images it featured. Walking around present-day Berlin, I kept thinking about these photographs from another era as a testament to Berlin’s endurance and rebuilding, after the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989.

The images from Dream on – Berlin, the 90s come from nine photographers who were a part of OSTKREUZ, a German photo agency that was founded in 1990. To this day, the collective is run by 25 photographers. Dream on – Berlin, the 90s is a collaboration between OSTKREUZ and C/O Berlin, which is featuring an accompanying photo exhibition. Berlin-based writer Boaz Levin (C/O Berlin Foundation) worked with curators Annette Hauschild (OSTKREUZ) and Kathrin Kohle (OSTKREUZ) to look back and sort through these images with a contemporary perspective.

Both powerful and personal, this book provides a firsthand look into the many cultural changes and challenges Berlin underwent during the unification of East and West Germany. Seeing these photographs, the viewer gains a greater understanding of what led to today’s Berlin as a center of culture. Like the city, the book is a nod to the past that also looks forward.

This sentiment is echoed in the essay “BERLIN, BERLIN, BERLIN,” in which German playwright and novelist Anne Rabe writes poignantly: “But sometimes I think that perhaps we should learn from what we have lost and not let ourselves indulge in too much nostalgia. Instead of talking only about how it was, we should imagine how it could be.” —Kenneth Bachor

I Will Pay To Make It Bigger by Ahren Warner

A still image from Ahren Warner’s I Will Pay To Make It Bigger (2024). Photo: Ahren Warner

If this book was being reviewed purely on the merits of its photography, it wouldn’t make this list. Every single picture in this book is out of focus or has motion blur. It is printed on paper more suitable for printing text than photos. And the pictures all apparently depict people engaged in acts of hedonism like streaking in public with nothing remarkable about their compositions or subject matter. Yet this was my absolute favorite book on this list.

Ahren Warner, a poet, has written a novella that is compelling for being written from the second-person point of view with stylistically lowercase sentences that make it feel like you’re stuck in a drug-fueled adventure game with poorly translated subtitles: think Grand Theft Auto: Bangkok. And though the book takes its name from an A$AP Rocky song, it could have alternatively been titled “The Best Party Hostel Chain in Thailand,” a hilarious motif that repeats throughout the book.

The text follows the story of “You,” and you are a British corporate bloke fresh off a long-term relationship in your mid-30s, hostel-jumping your way across Thailand like an X-rated Odysseus equipped with a Fujifilm X100F camera. In fact, the photographs in the book are artificially constructed and manipulated from stills taken from video footage shot by Warner while living in what was likely the best party hostel chain in Thailand. Their rendering as still images on the paper type chosen for printing the book makes it feel like an adult-themed Choose Your Own Adventure.

I want to throw in an honorable mention here as well for Joey Cochran’s latest art book, Barzakh, which was commissioned by Swivel Gallery and debuted at Expo Chicago in April. The globe-trotting Cochran, whose Flags, Forays and Frontiers made Artnet’s list of art books of 2023, chronicles 10 years of his photographic practice, with works that easily could have been taken between stays at the best party hostels in New York and abroad. —Adam Schrader

Family Values: Kurt, Courtney & Frances Bean by Guzman and Michael Azerrad

Kurt Cobain holds Frances Bean, with Courtney Love, in a still from Family Values. Photo: Guzman

Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love have been written about, talked about, and photographed a million times. What’s different about Family Values: Kurt, Courtney & Frances Bean is the intimate look into the duo’s daily lives as parents. Ironically, this book was released just a few months before Frances Bean welcomed a son of her own, with her husband (and skate royalty) Riley Hawk.

In September 1992, Vanity Fair published an infamous article that portrayed Kurt and Courtney as drug-addled parents, quickly becoming a PR nightmare for the family. In response, the couple sought to do a more positive interview with Spin magazine, written by friend/Sub-Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman and photographed by Guzman, the husband/wife photographer duo of Constance Hansen and Russell Peacock. During the photo shoot at Kurt and Courtney’s Los Angeles home, Guzman provided a source of ease and comfort for the couple, who were understandably wary of many photographers at this time. Originally, only five images were published to accompany the Spin feature; the rest of the photo shoot’s images are seen in this book for the first time.

In a statement, Guzman looked back, saying, “Slowly, a narrative of two transcendent artists beside their most tender creation began to unfold upon the studio wall—and those are the images that appear in this book.” With text by music journalist and Nirvana historian Michael Azerrad, this book is a must-have for any true Nirvana fan. —Kenneth Bachor

Dark Room A-Z by Paul Mpagi Sepuya

The cover for Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s Dark Room A-Z. Photo: Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Paul Mpagi Sepuya has released a monograph of his work expressing a multitude of themes, but most apparently Black queer male sexuality. The book is a compilation of work made for several independent photographic series that he has collectively referred to as his “Darkroom Series.” Sepuya explores his artistic themes through studio photographs that often give the appearance of having been taken candidly. But the photographs, usually against a black backdrop, are ultimately very controlled.

In his own words, the images are meant to show the collapse of boundaries between the photographer and his subjects while highlighting the interconnectedness of the community of artists around him that contribute to his artistic process. But the images are not voyeuristic. Sepuya writes: “The audience may think they are having a look into my studio, but they are not. It’s not a documentation but a very specific and controlled representation of parts and elements.”

The book is interesting in part for how it was designed. On each page, readers are given a column of text that contains writing from curators and critics about his work, another that has the artist speaking about his work, and a third column of commissioned text by art historian Gökcan Demirkazik. As a straight, cis-gendered white male picking up this book, I appreciated this approach, which offers insight to his artistic process and reflections on his work that I normally might not gravitate toward. —Adam Schrader

Casa Susanna: The Story of the First Trans Network in the United States, 1959–1968 by Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett

A still from Casa Susanna: The Story of the First Trans Network in the United States, 1959–1968. Photo: Courtesy Thames & Hudson

Historically, 1950s and 1960s America was seen as a time of a binary perspective of the “nuclear family” and heteronormative gender roles. Unfortunately, for people who identified as LGBTQ+, it was a time where one had to hide their true identity due to threats of physical violence or arrest.

During this era, an underground community that included trans women, cross-dressing men, and nonbinary individuals sought refuge at a home in the rural town of Jewett, located in the Catskills, New York. This house, called Casa Susanna, provided a weekend getaway and a secure place for these people to express their true identities and live how they wanted to without fear of persecution. Casa Susanna was run by a trans woman named Susanna Valenti and her wife, Maria, who purchased the property in the mid-1950s.

The images in Casa Susanna: The Story of the First Trans Network in the United States, 1959–1968 provide a rare and critical look into the first known trans network in the United States. One of the guests at Casa Susanna, Andrea Susan, acted as de facto photographer, often developing the images at home since they couldn’t be taken to a photo lab. Over the years, many of the negatives and images were tossed away and ended up at a Manhattan flea market, where they were discovered In 2004 by Robert Swope and his partner, Michel Hurstand. The pair found nearly 350 images from Casa Susanna and published a book the following year.

This version of the book provides a unique look into this history. In addition to the images there are excerpts from Transvestia, a magazine featuring the crossdressing community that was the first widely published magazine of its kind. This book is a great celebration of Casa Susanna, questioning the boundaries of traditional gender roles, promoting self-expression.

—Kenneth Bachor

American by Robin de Puy vs. The Americans (reissue) by Robert Frank

The cover for American. Photo: Robin de Puy

Robin de Puy, a Dutch photographer and filmmaker, has done something here that—intentionally or unintentionally—gives the iconic 1958 photobook The Americans by Robert Frank a much-needed modernization. The book opens with a black-and-white image of a deer on the side of a road in rural America in front of a billboard with a quote from Jesus.

From there, we are shown a mixture of black-and-white and color photographs depicting life across the United States. Dimly lit mountain diners, pregnant young women, men with rusted pickup trucks outside of motels, children wearing sweatshirts advertising the battle royale shooting game Fortnite, children who are too skinny, old men who are too skinny, abandoned strip malls—everything feels politically charged and, well, violently American.

Robert Frank’s Charleston S.C. (1955). Photo: Robert Frank, Courtesy of Sotheby’s

The book, published by Hannibal Books, comes as Aperture this year reissued Frank’s The Americans. Frank, born in 1924 to a Swiss Jewish family, emigrated to the United States in 1947 when he was in his early 20s. About a decade later, The Americans would be first published in France. Like de Puy’s work, Frank’s includes politically themed images including a man wearing an Estes Kefauver shirt, a Black woman holding a white baby, pictures of Abraham Lincoln and pictures of wealth inequality.

Frank’s book boasts an introduction describing “American-ness” by Jack Kerouac and remains one of the most influential photo books ever published. It has been reissued by Aperture to celebrate the centennial of Frank’s birth. —Adam Schrader