Getting Started
Search Scholar OneSearch, the main search bar on the library homepage to search for books. Use the filters under Material Type to select books, e-books, and book chapters in order to limit your results to just those formats. Note that print books in the Snell Library Remote Annex can be requested for in-person pickup at Snell Library in Boston. Books that have a location of "Online Access" are e-books and can be read remotely. Tutorials for accessing books are available at the bottom of this page.
Library Class Session Books List
- Library Class Session Photography Books ListBrowse this list of the circulating print books we browsed in class.
- Artists' Books Collection (Boston, MA)The Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections collects contemporary artists' books as part of an active teaching collection. Most simply and broadly, artists' books are works of art in book form. Included works showcase a variety of formats, techniques, and subjects. Email Regina Pagani r.pagani@northeastern.edu to set up an appointment to view them.
Browse Books by Subjects
Just getting started and want to browse a selection of titles? Use the subject headings below to view related search results of books, e-books, and book chapters. These subject headings are applied by a cataloger and are structured according to the Library of Congress Classification system.
Visual Research and Browsing the Print Collection at Snell Library
Most of Snell Library's print book collection in the arts is located on the lower level of the library. These books will have a location of "Snell Library Stacks" in their Scholar OneSearch record.
Browsing the shelves of books can be a great research method for finding books for inspiration or to observe relationships and influences between one photographer's work and another. You might also make connections with a wide array of themes, topics, etc. when browsing.
The library uses Library of Congress Classification to organize and shelve the books, which uses an alpha-numeric system to assign a call number to each book. There are signs at the end of each stack with a call number range to help you find the section or specific book you are looking for.
Most of the photography books are in the TR's. Use the table below to guide your browsing in call number ranges relevant to the genres of still life, portrait, and landscape photography:
| Subject | Call Numbers |
|---|---|
| Animals / Wildlife | TR 727 - 729 |
| Architectural | TR 659 |
| Artistic Photography | TR 640 |
| Color Photography | TR 510 |
| Documentary Photography | TR 820.5 |
| Food Photography | TR 656.7 |
| Landscape Photography | TR 660 |
| Lighting (including daylight, artificial light, night views, open air views, and interiors) | TR 590 - 620 |
| Nature Photography | TR 721 |
| Outdoor Photography | TR 659.5 |
| Portrait Photography | TR 550 - 581; TR 680 - 682 |
| Still-life Photography | TR 656.5 |
| Street Photography | TR 659.8 |
| Travel Photography | TR 790 |
*Note, the above ranges are just starting points! You might find relevant books in several sections. For example, there are some great examples of portraiture that are not in the call number range dedicated to portrait photography; they may be shelved elsewhere, including the documentary photography section.
You might also find relevant books outside of the TR's. You can use Scholar OneSearch to search for books and take note of their call number.
Select Books on Photography and Film History
The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present by
Since its first publication in 1937, this lucid and scholarly chronicle of the history of photography has been hailed as the classic work on the subject. No other book has managed to relate the aesthetic evolution and technical innovations of photography with such an absorbing combination of clarity, scholarship and enthusiasm. For this fifth edition the entire volume has been completely revised and expanded, and over half of the photographs have been newly selected. Through more than 300 works by such master photographers asWilliam Henry Fox Talbot, Timothy O'Sullivan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emerson, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange,Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Brassaï, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, the author presents a fascinating, comprehensive study of the significant trends and developments in the medium since the first photographs were made 1839. New selections added to this fifth edition include photographs made in colour, from handtinted daguerreotypes to autochromes by Steichen to works by such contemporary masters as Eliot Porter, Ernst Haas,William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz.
Publication Date: 1964
A World History of Photography by
Encompasses the entire range of the photographic medium, from the camera lucida to up-to-date computer technology, and from Europe and the Americas to the Far East. The text investigates all aspects of photography - aesthetic, documentary, commercial and technical - while placing it in historical context. It includes three technical sections with detailed information about equipment and processes. This edition also updates important new international work from the 1980s and 1990s.
Publication Date: 1997
Photography and Cinema by
What did the arrival of cinema do for photography? How did the moving image change our relation to the still image? Why have cinema and photography been so drawn to each other? Close-ups, freeze frames and the countless portrayals of photographers on screen are signs of cinema's enduring attraction to the still image. Photo-stories, sequences and staged tableaux speak of the deep influence of cinema on photography. Photography and Cinema a considers the importance of the still image for filmmakers such as the Lumière brothers, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Mark Lewis, Agnès Varda, Peter Weir, Christopher Nolan and many others. In parallel it looks at the cinematic in the work of photographers and artists that include Germaine Krull, William Klein, John Baldessari, Jeff Wall, Victor Burgin and Cindy Sherman. From film stills and flipbooks to slide shows and digital imaging, hybrid visual forms have established an ambiguous realm between motion and stillness. David Campany assembles a missing history in which photography and cinema have been each other's muse and inspiration for over a century.
Publication Date: 2008
Search for Books
Photographer / Artist / Filmmaker / Animator
Search for books by or on a particular person and/or their work by searching Scholar OneSearch for the person's name. See below for examples:
Diane Arbus by
When Diane Arbus died in 1971 at the age of forty-eight, she was already a significant influenceeven something of a legendamong serious photographers, although only a relatively small number of her most important pictures were widely known at the time. The publication of Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph in 1972along with the posthumous retrospective at The Museum of Modern Artoffered the general public its first encounter with the breadth and power of her achievements. The response was unprecedented. The monograph of eighty photographs was edited and designed by the painter Marvin Israel, Diane Arbuss friend and colleague, and by her daughter Doon Arbus. Their goal in making the book was to remain as faithful as possible to the standards by which Diane Arbus judged her own work and to the ways in which she hoped it would be seen. Universally acknowledged as a classic, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph is a timeless masterpiece with editions in five languages and remains the foundation of her international reputation. Nearly half of a century has done nothing to diminish the riveting impact of these pictures or the controversy they inspire. Arbuss photographs penetrate the psyche with all the force of a personal encounter and, in doing so, transform the way we see the world and the people in it. This is the first edition in which the image separations were created digitally; the files have been specially prepared by Robert J. Hennessey using prints by Neil Selkirk.
Publication Date: 2005
Sugimoto Portraits by
Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is renowned for his elegant photographic series of seascapes, theaters, museum dioramas, and Buddhist statuary. His new series presents life-size, black-and-white portraits of historical figures - Henry VIII and each of his wives, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, and Emperor Hirohito, among others - photographed in wax museums, isolated against black backgrounds, and dramatically lit so as to create haunting Rembrandtesque images. The series, which also includes a 25-foot, five-panel photograph of a wax effigy of Leonardo's Last Supper, emulates the grand tradition of portraiture and recalls the wax figures' sources in famous paintings by Holbein, David, Van Dyck, and Vermeer.
Publication Date: 2000
Theme, Topic, or Group
Search for books on a theme or topic within photography, film, and more. Or, search for books on a particular group of photographers, artists, etc. See below for examples related to surveillance/public space photography and women photographers:
The Culture of Photography in Public Space by
From privacy concerns regarding Google Street View to surveillance photography's association with terrorism and sexual predators, photography as an art has become complex terrain upon which anxieties about public space have been played out. Yet the photographic threat is not limited to the image alone. A range of social, technological, and political issues converge in these rising anxieties and affect the practice, circulation, and consumption of contemporary public photography today. The Culture of Photography in Public Space collects essays and photographs that offer a new response to these restrictions, the events, and the anxieties that give rise to them.
Publication Date: 2015
A History of Women Photographers by
This comprehensive, eye-opening history of women's accomplishments in photography ranges around the world and throughout the entire history of the medium, from the mid-1800s to the present." "With A History of Women Photographers, Dr. Naomi Rosenblum - author of A World History of Photography, which has become a standard reference - helps set the record straight. She explores the work of some 240 women photographers, from Anna Atkins, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Genevieve-Elisabeth Francart Disderi to Tina Modotti, Lisette Model, Margaret Bourke-White, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Susan Meiselas, and Cindy Sherman. Her ground-breaking work provides an invitingly readable chronicle both of the women's creativity and of the often-challenging contexts within which they worked. Many of these individuals have not previously received the sustained scholarly study needed to establish their importance to the field, and women photographers in general have long been stinted in photographic exhibitions, collections, and criticism, as Dr. Rosenblum makes pungently clear." "In addition to the illuminating text and striking photographs are densely detailed individual biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography. All of this will make A History of Women Photographers an invaluable resource for years to come and should intensify the growing interest in these remarkable women and their work.
Publication Date: 1994
Requesting Print Books from the Snell Library (Boston, MA) Remote Annex
Some print books are not located on campus and are in the Remote Annex facility. To request an item located in the Snell Library Remote Annex, follow these directions:
- Make sure you are logged in to your Scholar OneSearch account
- Click the "Request" link under the item you need and submit the form
- We'll send an email when items are ready for pickup at the Help & Information desk