10 Eye-Opening Photography Books About America

In this stirring new collection, award-winning photojournalist Richard Frishman delves into America’s history of institutionalized racism by photographing the relics of slavery and segregation. Frishman crisscrossed the United States to complete Ghosts of Segregation, capturing hidden-in-plain-sight structures like the former New Orleans Slave Exchange or the old “colored entrances” at movie theaters in Seattle and Texas to reveal how the racial barbarities of the past are still with us to this day. Accompanying his photos are seven essays on Black life in America by University of Virginia professor, writer, and sociologist Dr. B. Brian Foster, that add a layer of profound emotional depth and insight to the work. The result is an immersive book about America’s past, present, and future that demands to be seen and read.

First published in 1958, The Americans by Robert Frank is a legendary photography book that offers an unblinking look at life in mid-20th-century America. Across its pages, Frank documents a country in flux as its citizens grapple with class and racial divisions, political strife, and the shortcomings of the American Dream. At the same time, Frank captures instances of quiet intimacy and promise in America, from snapshots taken in public parks and bars to the allure of travel on the open road.

In the 1950s, pioneering photographer Gordon Parks was sent to Alabama on assignment by Life magazine to chronicle the daily experiences of Black Americans living under Jim Crow laws. In the years that followed, the bulk of Parks’s work was believed to be lost. Five years after the photographer’s death, however, the Gordon Parks Foundation discovered more than 200 original color transparencies from the series and compiled the images into this important collection. Segregation Story offers a searing look at inequality and discrimination in 1950s America and demonstrates the powerful potential of photography to open minds and inspire social action.

Nicole Strathman delivers a photographic study of Native American life in Through a Native Lens. Featuring both images of Native Americans and pictures taken by Native American photographers, Strathman’s photography book explores how North American Indigenous people incorporated the art of photography into their lives. With photos that span 1840 to 1940 and range from staged portraits to relaxed snapshots, Through a Native Lens is a groundbreaking book that traces the origins of Native American photography and offers perspectives into Indigenous communities throughout North America.

Walker Evans’s American Photographs presents an unforgettable vision of life in America in all its complexity. The influential collection was first published in 1938 by the Museum of Modern Art to coincide with Evans’s exhibition there — the first one-person photography exhibition in the museum’s history. This 75th-anniversary edition, also published by MoMA, seeks to re-create the original publication and present Evans’s iconic images of America to a new generation.

In the early 1940s, renowned photographer Dorothea Lange went on assignment for the War Relocation Authority to document Japanese internment camps in America during WWII. Lange captured what she saw: the raw emotion and harsh realities of forced internment. As a result, the U.S. government withheld Lange’s work from public viewing during the war. Impounded, published in 2006, shares 119 of Lange’s photos, revealing the brutal truths she witnessed and the devastation experienced by Japanese Americans who were uprooted from their homes and incarcerated without being charged with a crime. Enhanced by essays from historians Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro, Impounded “unflinchingly illustrates the reality of life during this extraordinary moment in American history” (Dinitia Smith, The New York Times).

A haunting photo documentation of Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor, Petrochemical America by American photographer Richard Misrach and landscape architect Kate Orff delivers an urgent examination of the impact of petrochemicals and the lasting effects of environmental abuse. The inventive photography book combines Misrach’s images with Orff’s data-rich ecological drawings that she created after studying this polluted stretch of the Mississippi River. Hard-hitting and visually stimulating, Petrochemical America is not to be ignored.

Artfully curated by historian and journalist Todd Brewster, American Childhood chronicles American youngsters through the decades as it traces the fleeting experience of youth. Featuring photos sourced from library archives, top-tier museums, and flea markets, Brewster’s collection is a diverse gallery of growing up in America from the Civil War era to the present day. Booklist calls American Childhood “visually enchanting, offering glimpses into the passion, play, banality, and trauma of childhood.”

Renowned landscape photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams spent a lifetime exploring America’s National Parks, and more than 200 of his stunning nature photographs are compiled in this collection. Ansel Adams in the National Parks includes many of Adams’s rarer shots, quotes from the photographer himself, and commentary by Andrea G. Stillman, the foremost expert on Adams’s body of work. An extraordinary collection for photography fans and outdoor enthusiasts alike, Ansel Adams in the National Parks is a vivid reminder of the grandeur and fragility of the American wilderness.

Celebrated documentary filmmaker Ken Burns chronicles the rich tapestry of American life in this collection of photographs that spans more than 200 years of history. Featuring the work of acclaimed photographers alongside that of unknown artists, Our America is a tour of American landscapes, cities, and communities. Documenting times of conflict and celebration as well as everyday moments of connection, Burns’s book movingly captures America’s history and its ever-evolving identity.