“What are the Best Art & Photography books of 2018?” We aggregated 17 year-end lists and ranked the 283 unique titles by how many times they appeared in an attempt to answer that very question!

There are thousands of year-end lists released every year and like we do in our weekly Best Book articles, we wanted to see which books appear the most. The top 17 books, all of which appeared on 2 or more “Best Coffe Table” Book lists, are ranked below with images, summaries, and links for more information or to purchase. The remaining 250+ books, as well as the top book lists are at the bottom of the page.

Make sure to take a look at our other Best of 2018 book lists:

• The Best Fiction Books of 2018
• The Best Nonfiction Books of 2018
• The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2018
• The Best Science & Nature Books of 2018
• The Best Cookbooks of 2018
• The Best Graphic Novels & Comics Books of 2018
• The Best Art & Photography & Coffee Table Books of 2018
• The Best Books All Categories of 2018
• The Best Biography & Memoir Books of 2018
• The Best Poetry Books of 2018
• The Best History Books of 2018
• The Best Children’s Books of 2018
• The Best Young Adult Books of 2018

You can also take a look at our Best Art/Photography books from last year as well as all the other Best 2017 articles!

Happy Scrolling!

Top 17 Art And Photography Books Of 2018

17 .) Andy Warhol: Polaroids XL

Lists It Appears On:

• OPUMO
• Reader’s Digest

Instant Andy: Before there was Instagram, there was Warhol A picture means I know where I was every minute. That s why I take pictures. It s a visual diary. – Andy WarholAndy Warhol was a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters. Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, he amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself. Created in collaboration with theAndy Warhol Foundation, this book features hundreds of these instant photos, many of them never seen before.Portraits of celebrities such asMick Jagger, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson, Yves Saint Laurent, Pele, Debbie Harryare included alongside images of Warhol s entourage and high life, landscapes, and still lifes from Cabbage Patch dolls to the iconic soup cans. Often raw and impromptu, the Polaroids document Warhol s era like Instagram captures our own, offering a unique record of the life, world, and vision behind the Pop Art maestro and modernist giant.

16 .) Contact High: A Visual History Of Hip-Hop written by Vikki Tobak

Lists It Appears On:

• Amazon
• NPR

Featuring rare outtakes from over 100 photoshoots alongside interviews and essays from industry legends, Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop takes readers on a chronological journey from old-school to alternative hip-hop and from analog to digital photography. The ultimate companion for music and photography enthusiasts, Contact High is the definitive history of hip-hop’s early days, celebrating the artists that shaped the iconic album covers, t-shirts and posters beloved by hip-hop fans today.

15 .) Drawn Together written by Minh Lê

Lists It Appears On:

• Booklist 2
• NPR

When a young boy visits his grandfather, their lack of a common language leads to confusion, frustration, and silence. But as they sit down to draw together, something magical happens-with a shared love of art and storytelling, the two form a bond that goes beyond words. With spare, direct text by Minh Lê and luminous illustrations by Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat, this stirring picturebook about reaching across barriers will be cherished for years to come.

14 .) Flowers for Lisa: A Delirium of Photographic Invention

Lists It Appears On:

• PDN
• Publishers Weekly

Best known for his surreal camera obscura pictures and luminous black-and-white photographs of books, photographer Abelardo Morell now turns his transformative lens to one of the most common of artistic subjects, the flower. The concept for Flowers for Lisa emerged when Morell gave his wife, Lisa, a photograph of flowers on her birthday. “Flowers are part of a long tradition of still life in art,” writes Morell. “Precisely because flowers are such a conventional subject, I felt a strong desire to describe them in new, inventive ways.” With nods to the work of Jan Brueghel, Édouard Manet, Georgia O’Keeffe, René Magritte, and others, Morell does just that; the images are as innovative as they are arresting.

13 .) Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times written by Alan Walker

Lists It Appears On:

• Booklist 1
• Kirkus

Based on ten years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker’s monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English. Walker’s work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin is an intimate look into a dramatic life; of particular focus are Chopin’s childhood and youth in Poland, which are brought into line with the latest scholarly findings, and Chopin’s romantic life with George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years.

12 .) Hey, Kiddo written by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Lists It Appears On:

• Booklist 2
• NPR

Hey, Kiddo is the graphic memoir of author-illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Raised by his colorful grandparents, who adopted him because his mother was an incarcerated heroin addict, Krosoczka didn’t know his father’s name until he saw his birth certificate when registering for a school ski trip. Hey, Kiddo traces Krosoczka’s search for his father, his difficult interactions with his mother, his day-to-day life with his grandparents, and his path to becoming an artist. To date, nearly one million people have viewed Krosoczka’s TED Talk about his experience.

11 .) Imagine John Yoko written by John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Lists It Appears On:

• Amazon
• Publishers Weekly

Imagine John Yoko tells the story of John & Yoko’s life, work and relationship during this intensely creative period. It transports readers to home and working environments showcasing Yoko’s closely guarded archive of photos and artifacts, using artfully compiled narrative film stills, and featuring digitally rendered maps, floor plans and panoramas that recreate the interiors in evocative detail. John & Yoko introduce each chapter and song; Yoko also provides invaluable additional commentary and a preface.

10 .) Inside North Korea written by Oliver Wainwright

Lists It Appears On:

• Dwell
• Reader’s Digest

Guardian journalist and photographer Oliver Wainwright takes us on an eye-opening tour behind closed doors in the most secretive country in the world, revealing that past the grand stone façades lie lavish wonder-worlds of marble and mosaic, coffered ceilings, and crystal chandeliers, along with new interiors in dazzling color palettes. Discover the palatial reading rooms of the Grand People’s Study House, and peer inside the locker rooms of the recently renovated Rungrado May Day Stadium, ready to host a FIFA World Cup that will never come.

9 .) Photographic: The Life Of Graciela Iturbide written by Isabel Quintero

Lists It Appears On:

• Booklist 2
• NPR

Graciela Iturbide was born in México City in 1942, the oldest of 13 children. When tragedy struck Iturbide as a young mother, she turned to photography for solace and understanding. From then on Iturbide embarked on a photographic journey that has taken her throughout her native México, from the Sonora Desert to Juchitán to Frida Kahlo’s bathroom, to the United States, India, and beyond. Photographic is a symbolic, poetic, and deeply personal graphic biography of this iconic photographer. Iturbide’s journey will excite readers of all ages as well as budding photographers, who will be inspired by her resolve, talent, and curiosity.

8 .) Snarkitecture written by Snarkitecture

Lists It Appears On:

• Dwell
• OPUMO

The first monograph on Snarkitecture, a New York-based collaborative and innovative design studio with an introduction by Maria Cristina Didero Fast becoming one of the world’s most sought-after studios, Snarkitecture has designed installations, architecture, products, and furniture for a diverse range of clients including COS, Kith, Calvin Klein, the New Museum, Kartell, and Beats by Dr. Dre. This book presents more than 70 of their projects and investigates how its founders, artist Daniel Arsham and architect Alex Mustonen, work at the interface between their disciplines to come up with some of the most beguiling and fascinating designs seen in recent years.

7 .) The Art of Reading written by Lawrence Schwartzwald

Lists It Appears On:

• Elizabeth Avedon Journal
• Publishers Weekly

The Art of Reading presents New York photographer Lawrence Schwartzwald’s (born 1953) candid images of readers, made between 2001 and 2017. Partly inspired by André Kertész’s On Reading(1971), Schwartzwald’s subjects are mostly average New Yorkers―sunbathers, a bus driver, shoeshine men, subway passengers, denizens of bookshops and cafes―but also artists (most notably Amy Winehouse at Manhattan’s now-closed all-night diner Florent).

6 .) The Beat Scene: Burt Glinn’s Vivid Portrait of a Subculture

Lists It Appears On:

• Magnum Photos
• PDN

This magnificent volume features a remarkable collection of largely unseen photographs of the Beat Generation by renowned Magnum photographer Burt Glinn. This amazing, untouched treasure trove of images was discovered when Reel Art Press was working with Burt Glinn’s widow, Elena, on a larger retrospective of Glinn’s work. Archived with the negatives was a short essay by Jack Kerouac entitled “And This Is The Beat Nightlife of New York,” which is published here alongside the photographs. The book features black-and-white shots, and also—uniquely, for images of this era—more than 70 in color. An extremely rare find, these photographs capture the raw energy of the Beat Generation in a way that has never been seen before in print.

5 .) The Hunt: Navigating the Worlds of Art and Design written by Patrick Parrish

Lists It Appears On:

• Dwell
• PDN

In this little gem of a book Patrick Parrish, of the eponymous Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York, offers advice, stories, gossip, and pointers on how to go about acquiring top-quality art and design from flea markets all the way up to the finest auction houses in the world. With over 25 years of hard-won experience in the trenches as a picker, collector, and dealer he tells you what to do, what not to do, and how to negotiate the often-confusing labyrinths that international galleries, auction houses, and even flea markets can present.

4 .) The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons: A Semi-serious A-to-Z Archive written by Bob Markoff, ed.

Lists It Appears On:

• Amazon
• Folio

The is the most ingenious collection of New Yorker cartoons published in book form, The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons is a prodigious, slip-cased, two-volume, 1,600-page A-to-Z curation of cartoons from the magazine from 1924 to the present. Mankoff–for two decades the cartoon editor of the New Yorker–organizes nearly 3,000 cartoons into more than 250 categories of recurring New Yorker themes and visual tropes, including cartoons on banana peels, meeting St. Peter, being stranded on a desert island, snowmen, lion tamers, Adam and Eve, the Grim Reaper, and dogs, of course. The result is hilarious and Mankoff’s commentary throughout adds both depth and whimsy. The collection also includes a foreword by New Yorker editor David Remnick. This is stunning gift for the millions of New Yorker readers and anyone looking for some humor in the evolution of social commentary.

3 .) Transcendental Concord written by Lisa McCarty

Lists It Appears On:

• Elizabeth Avedon Journal
• PDN

Transcendental Concord documents the spirit of Transcendentalism, the literary and philosophical movement that arose in the mid-19thcentury. While the circle of Transcendentalists in New England was wide, at its center was a core group that lived in Concord, Massachusetts.Bronson Alcott and daughter Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson,Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau lived within a few miles of each other for nearly 20 years, regularlymeeting in each other’s homes and on the paths of Walden Woods todiscuss their writings and beliefs. In the course of a year and in every season North-Carolina based photographer Lisa McCarty photographed thesites where these Transcendentalists lived and wrote in Concord.McCarty’s parallel reverence for the natural world is evident in herphotographs which point to large and small variations in environment,season and light. McCarty uses long exposures and camera movement inorder to capture these variations. Transcendental Concord payshomage to Transcendentalism not only in capturing a shared landscape,but in McCarty’s technique: her keen observation of natural phenomenaand openness to experimentation and chance.

2 .) Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness written by Renee Mussai

Lists It Appears On:

• New York Times
• PDN

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is the long-awaited monograph from one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. The book features over ninety of Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, “I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces―brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves―to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.

1 .) Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler; Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art written by Mary Gabriel

Lists It Appears On:

• Booklist 1
• Kirkus
• New York Times

Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world’s first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting.

The 250+ Additional Best Coffee Table Books Og Last Year

17 Best Photography Books Of 2018 Sources/Lists