Masterworks of Modern Photography 1900–1940: The Thomas Walther Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

"If one were to have a single volume of photography for one’s reference shelf dedicated to the twentieth century, this one might be it. In 2001, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired an unprecedented survey of modern photography from longtime collector Thomas Walther, who amassed one of the most impressive private collections of photography in the world. Focused on the era between the two World Wars, a time of experimentation and movements such as pictorialism, abstraction and candid street photography, this was a moment in image-making that set the stage for modernism. Throughout the history of the medium, photography books played a rather under-appreciated role, but their value has been increasingly recognised. Inundated with ever more digital imagery, as all of us have become content producers while corporations harvest our IP. Yet no matter the extent of the proliferation of photos, some images remain seared on the imagination, a retinal after-image on the mind’s eye. Among the pieces included in this clothbound volume are some of the definitive examples of the medium: Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, John Gutmann, André Kertész, Alexander Rodchenko, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Edward Weston. Other photography books I’ve added to my ‘best art books 2021’ reference shelf this year include the beautiful documentary fairy tale The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams by Argentine photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti; American Protest: Photographs 2020–2021 , an urgent look at our troubled times by Mel D. Cole; Lee Friedlander , an American master; and rare photographic glimpses by celebrated cinematographer Roger Deakins, Byways . Part of our best books of 2021 series."