Here are 100 books that From Above fans have personally recommended if you like
From Above.
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When I was young, my passions were flying and art. I became a pilot at age 17. Later, I became an architect, and much later, in 2000, I decided to become a fine art photographer. After ten years of shooting from the ground, I decided to take to the air again and began shooting aerial photographs, primarily of cities. I now have three aerial books published: LA NY, Thames & Hudson, Paris From the Air, Rizzoli, and London From the Air, Rizzoli. My aerial photographs are exhibited and collected throughout the world.
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.
Both low- and high-level aerial photographs document places around the world and form the starting point for discussions of ecology, sustainable development, and the current state of the world.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
When I was young, my passions were flying and art. I became a pilot at age 17. Later, I became an architect, and much later, in 2000, I decided to become a fine art photographer. After ten years of shooting from the ground, I decided to take to the air again and began shooting aerial photographs, primarily of cities. I now have three aerial books published: LA NY, Thames & Hudson, Paris From the Air, Rizzoli, and London From the Air, Rizzoli. My aerial photographs are exhibited and collected throughout the world.
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.
In Pools From Above, aerial photographer Brad Walls captures the unexpected beauty, curves, hues and textures of unique aquatic architecture from around the world.
Produced over a span of three years in four countries, this photo collection is the culmination of Walls' long journey to discover the beauty in commonplace landscapes seen from unexpected vantages.
When I was young, my passions were flying and art. I became a pilot at age 17. Later, I became an architect, and much later, in 2000, I decided to become a fine art photographer. After ten years of shooting from the ground, I decided to take to the air again and began shooting aerial photographs, primarily of cities. I now have three aerial books published: LA NY, Thames & Hudson, Paris From the Air, Rizzoli, and London From the Air, Rizzoli. My aerial photographs are exhibited and collected throughout the world.
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…
A dynamic aerial exploration of our changing planet, published on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day
The Human Planet is a sweeping visual chronicle of the Earth today from a photographer who has circled the globe to report on such urgent issues as climate change, sustainable agriculture, and the ever-expanding human footprint. George Steinmetz is at home on every continent, documenting both untrammeled nature and the human project that relentlessly redesigns the planet in its quest to build shelter, grow food, generate energy, and create beauty through art and architecture. In his images, accompanied by authoritative text by renowned…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
When I was young, my passions were flying and art. I became a pilot at age 17. Later, I became an architect, and much later, in 2000, I decided to become a fine art photographer. After ten years of shooting from the ground, I decided to take to the air again and began shooting aerial photographs, primarily of cities. I now have three aerial books published: LA NY, Thames & Hudson, Paris From the Air, Rizzoli, and London From the Air, Rizzoli. My aerial photographs are exhibited and collected throughout the world.
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.
Aerial photographs of the famous landmarks, historic buildings, and local neighborhoods of New York provide a birds-eye-view of one of America's major cities
I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. My own work has focused on race and social science, mobility and inequality, and sound and media, all as ways of grappling with colonial legacies and their impact on the daily lives of people who live in this region.
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.
Aerial Imagination in Cuba is a visual, ethnographic, sensorial, and poetic engagement with how Cubans imagine the sky as a medium that allows things to circulate. What do wi-fi antennas, cactuses, pigeons, lottery, and congas have in common? This book offers a series of illustrated ethno-fictional stories to explore various practices and beliefs that have seemingly nothing in common. But if you look at the sky, there is more than meets the eye. By discussing the natural, religious, and human-made visible and invisible aerial infrastructures-or systems of circulation-through short illustrated vignettes, Aerial Imagination in Cuba offers a highly creative way…
Growing up in the 1970s, I loved my family’s cheap plastic Polaroid OneStep camera and the magic pictures that developed right before my eyes. Thirty years later, I was incredibly lucky to be the first researcher to get access to the Polaroid archive just as the company was going bust. For me, the key to Polaroid photography is that it is fun, and all the books on my list are, in one way or another, about the lighter, playful side of photography. I hope that they take you off the beaten track of the history of popular photography and into some quirky and interesting corners.
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.
The first complete English translation of Nadar's intelligent and witty memoir, a series of vignettes that capture his experiences in the early days of photography.
Celebrated nineteenth-century photographer—and writer, actor, caricaturist, inventor, and balloonist—Félix Nadar published this memoir of his photographic life in 1900 at the age of eighty. Composed as a series of vignettes (we might view them as a series of “written photographs”), this intelligent and witty book offers stories of Nadar's experiences in the early years of photography, memorable character sketches, and meditations on history. It is a classic work, cited by writers from Walter Benjamin to…
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for a two-year backpacking sojourn across the country. I took a bunch of snapshots along the way with a little point-and-shoot camera. 800 of those images became my first book. Photography – be it travel, documentary, street or reportage – is my passion. The following are but five of five hundred books I’d love to recommend.
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.
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of 20th-century photography
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life. And it was not just Frank's subject…
As an avid student of curious social history, I’ve wanted to tell the story of early flight for a while. A friend once took me up in a hot-air balloon for my birthday, and I’ve been a balloonomaniac ever since. I’ll never forget the awe I felt that morning in Vermont—the sensation of drifting softly above it all, passing spirit-like through orange-pink clouds just after sunrise with the muffled bark of a distant dog the only sound for miles. It was, to quote Sophie Blanchard, a “sensation incomparable.”
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!
“An amusing, fast-paced tale of land, sky, and spies.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Incredibly creative. . . . A little bit of history, a touch of mystery, and heaps of fun.”—Booklist (starred review)
A Publishers Weekly Best Book
Wherever there is injustice, nefarious plots, or threats to society, the Sheep, the Rooster, and the Duck are there to stop them!
A sly villain with a plan to cause havoc across the globe is no match for three extraordinary animals—and their two young human friends. From acclaimed author and artist…
I am a hopeless photographer. But I have a passion for looking at photographs, for trying to understand how good ones work. They are not just momentary slices of life but structured artefacts, sometimes technically interesting, that in myriad ways reflect the society that produced them. I studied aspects of US cultural history at three universities. After devoting the first part of my academic career to American literature, in the second half – during which, supported by wonderful fellowships, I spent much time rooting in archives – I gave myself up to American photography. I have learnt much from each of the books I commend here.
This book is a lively, questioning, and comprehensive survey of American photography, from its beginnings to the present. It analyzes achievements in each of the genres, from portraiture, through landscape, to documentary, fashion, etc. It treats individual photographic artists, from Avedon to Weegee, from the views of New York taken by Berenice Abbott to J.T. Zealy’s likenesses of enslaved Africans. American Photography is always concerned to underscore what photographs have to tell us about major aspects of American culture: race and ethnicity, gender and identity, business and technology, religion, and region. It also has numerous well-reproduced images; illuminating sidebars and boxes on such topics as the daguerreotype or picture magazines; a helpful timeline; and notes on further reading and viewing. The book was expanded and retitled as Photography in America in 2015, but the first edition still holds up.
This lively new survey offers fresh insights into 150 years of American photography, placing it in its cultural context for the first time. Orvell examinines this fascinating subject through portraiture and landscape photography, eamily albums and memory, and analyses the particularly 'American' way in which American photographers have viewed the world around them. Combining a clear overview of the changing nature of photographic thinking and practice in this period, with an exploration of key concepts, the result is the first coherent history of American photography, which examines issues such as the nature of photographic exploitation, experimental techniques, the power of…
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
Photography has its own language. It can be used to tell us things about the world in a way that words never can. Through photography I have explored the world and witnessed the huge difference in circumstances that exist. It has made me aware of how we all live in our own little bubbles of family, work, school, and neighborhood. I love books that take us outside those bubbles, and since becoming a Dad, reading and looking at books is a way for me to travel with my children to different places before they go to bed. I hope that these books can open up your and your children’s eyes.
This is a fun book of photography projects for children (although they would also be good for any adult aspiring photographer). I like the way it has varied practical projects which get you thinking about the process of making photographs based around a theme or idea.
It poses interesting questions to think about when taking a photograph, and as Susan Meilsellas says “whether or not a photograph can change the world, photography can change you. Just open your eyes!”
Compiled by Magnum photojournalist Susan Meiselas, Eyes Open is a sourcebook of photography ideas for kids-to engage with the world through the camera.
Twenty-three enticing projects help inspire a process of discovery and new ways of telling stories and animating ideas. Eyes Open features photographs by young people from around the globe, as well as work by professional artists that demonstrates how a simple idea can be expanded. Playful and meaningful, this book is for young would-be photographers and those interested in expressing themselves creatively.
