When it comes to gifts, a book is often your very best bet. Better still, a beautiful photography tome, a book stacked with images to inspire, conceived to take its readers somewhere else, no matter where they happen to be when they flick through it’s pages.
Luckily, it’s been a standout year for just such books. The worlds of fashion, photography, travel and design have all had light thrown onto them in a series of newly published titles we can’t wait to get our hands on. With visuals designed to enrapture and subjects that range from Amazonian jungles to the Amalfi coast, steely beauties to starlets, perfect houses to fantasy fashion sets, here’s our roundup of the best books to give, should you wish to help transport someone away from their sofa and to another world this Christmas. Should one also happen to end up under our tree, we’d have no problem with that, whatsoever.
Jonathan Becker – 30 Years at Vanity Fair
Via stints as both a taxi driver and a backgammon player, Becker, one of the Vanity Fair’s lead photographers, has been shooting for the magazine for three decades. Since his first picture was published in their prototype relaunch issue in 1982, the magazine has sent him everywhere from the Amazon to Aspen, via Buckingham palace. Famous for his portraits, on his journeys he has shot everyone from Andy Warhol to Robert Mapplethorpe, Arthur Miller to Gwyneth Paltrow, Jocelyn Wildenstein to Nancy Reagan. This book doesn’t just document that life, it takes you behind the scenes of both Becker’s shoots and his subjects’ worlds, shedding light on some of the most famous faces of the past 30 years. More than a book of portraits, it’s a romp through decades of our culture, a snapshot of it’s icons from the man whose job it was to really see them. Whether it’s escapism or insight you’re after, here’s your man.
If you wanted to bottle the good life and then pour it into the pages of a book, here’s an example of how to do it. During a decades long love affair with Italy, the late photographer Slim Aarons shot the good, the bad and the glam of Italy living it large in the country’s most fabulous spots. From Sicily to Capri, bronzed bodies to boats, Ursula Andress to to the Amalfi, here’s a book that will take you far, far away from a wintry day at home.
She’s been THE face for decades, is THE supermodel still standing, and has looked good dressed in everything from nothing to gold paint. In a collection of photographs (some never seen before) shot by the great and good of fashion photography, here are the many faces of Kate Moss, plus proof of the power of quirky beauty.
If fashion is about fantasy, then Tim Walker is a man who makes that magic appear. The British photographer known for his elaborate sets has had Lily Donaldson crash landing a Spitfire in a country house, Karlie Kloss clambering over Humpty Dumpty and even recreated the world of Alice in Wonderland, all in the name of fashion. In this, his latest book, his sets and portraits (all 175 of them) are conceived to take you on a journey somewhere otherworldly. They work.
