100 Books Like From Above

If you could only have one book featuring the world from above this would be it.

It’s oversize and gorgeous. Yann is the photographer who pioneered this kind of socially conscious photography. If you only looked at the pictures it would be satisfying enough, but Yann is an environmentalist, and the chapters highlight the beauty and fragility and danger of the planet we all share.

The photos are amazing! 

I think that Brad has an amazing photographer's eye.

Using drones, he has created a unique book of photographs of swimming pools from above. This could have been a mundane subject, but in Brad’s hands, each photo is perfectly framed, sized, and cropped to reveal geometry you would not expect, reminiscent of a colorful abstract painting. What I like about his work is how he can look at a pool and find the perfect abstract detail: a sinuous curve, geometric lines, and rectangles, little bits of pool furniture, blue sparkling water combined in a way that no one else would have seen. 

George Steinmetz is a pioneer in a risky type of aerial photography.

He uses a motorized paraglider that uses a small gas engine driving a propellor strapped to his back, while a parachute-like fabric wing provides the lift. I am in awe of how he has traveled the world with this setup, getting photographs from low altitudes that are truly amazing. He has traveled to every continent, going to seemingly impossible places. The book features incredible photos of the natural landscape as well as the man-made landscape. Some of my favorites are the pyramids of Egypt, the indigenous architecture and animal migrations in Africa, the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the camel salt caravans, and the amazing Brazil dune-scape.

I cannot overstate the value of this book if you want to see the world in a way you have never seen. I am amazed by the photos. These were taken before… show more.

I love the huge size (12.5”x17”) and gorgeous printing of this book.

Of course, the photos are amazing. This book was published by Abrams during the years when they were known for their exquisite art books. There are not many publishers who would put out a book like this today, including Abrams. The photos of New York City in this book are the work of a photo genius.

I get immense pleasure holding this book and going through the pages which show all of New York in beautiful late sun and night light, and so large you can feel like you are right there.

What happens when you shift your gaze to the sky? This ethnography of the Cuban sky finds surprising things there: cacti, pigeons, and the internet. The author of this beautifully illustrated ethno-fiction tells stories that make Cubans of today come alive in defiance of the usual clichés and stereotypes. 

I’ve always loved the portraits the photographer Félix Nadar made of nineteenth-century Parisian celebrities such as Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire.

I went to this book—Nadar’s memoir—to learn more about the making of those pictures. There is a little bit of that, but what really gripped me was the weird and wonderful shaggy dog stories Nadar tells about his adventures in ‘aerostatic photography’—taking pictures from balloons.

Spoiler alert: there is a lot of crashing.

I tried to do something different with this list than the usual photography books people often cite, however, there is just no avoiding how important Robert Frank’s The Americans has been on the medium. In 1955, Frank departed for a two-year road trip to document the people of the United States, which coincided with the evolution of new post-war classes – namely, the working poor and those who would eventually become the beatniks of the ‘60s. Focusing on the racial and socio-geographic divide, Frank was a pioneer, as his work defiantly contradicted the popular romanticized propaganda of Life Magazine, opening the doors to the gritty documentary and street photography genres we know today.

Now for something completely different. My own book is for middle-grade readers, so I wanted to include another younger title, and it was perfect timing that this rollicking adventure crossed my path when it did. Hilariously droll, Phelan’s illustrated fiction stars characters lauded for their pivotal role in early flight—the three barnyard aeronauts who made the very first ascent in a hot-air balloon. But their career didn’t end there: the sheep, the rooster, and the duck went on to battle injustice, defeat dastardly villains, and expose nefarious plots against society. Phelan’s extraordinary farm animals are more than fearless aeronauts: they’re covert superheroes in a world of sinister secret societies, Benjamin Franklin, and the world’s first heat-ray. High-flying fun!

Miller was one of the great combat photographers of WWII, but she also documented the social consequences of the conflict, particularly the lives of women on the European front. She would also write about what she saw for British Vogue. She photographed Martha Gellhorn in London in 1943 as part of a series about women correspondents. 

In addition to an introduction by Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, Roberts provides insightful commentary that places each image within the context of women’s roles throughout the landscape of war.

It filled me with wonder at how much one could learn from studying just one photograph. The photo, by Dmitri Baltermants, a Soviet Jewish photojournalist, was taken outside of Kerch, in Ukraine, of dead bodies lying in the snow in 1942. Baltermants focused on a non-Jewish woman mourning the death of her non-Jewish husband, but the photo came to symbolize so much more.

I love how Shneer traces the path of this photo across decades, illuminating how many meanings can be attached to a single image.