Research Guides: Photography: Books

Browsing Photography Books

Use these call numbers to browse for books at the Cabell Library:

Photography books are located in the
TR section, 4th floor.

TR1-1050 Photography

TR250-265 Cameras

TR287-500 Photographic Processing. Darkroom Technique

TR504-508 Transparencies. Diapositives

TR510-545 Color Photography

TR550-581 Studio and laboratory

TR590-620 Lighting

TR624-835 Applied Photography

TR845-899 Cinematography. Motion Pictures

TR925-1050 Photomechanical processes

Art Browsery

Look. Learn. Create.
Visit the Art Browsery on the 4th floor of Cabell Library to see a selection of new visually rich books available for checkout.

Featured Photography Books

100 Ideas That Changed Photography
Call Number: Cabell Library TR15 .M27 2012
Chronicles the most influential ideas that have shaped photography from the invention of the daguerreotype in the early 19th century up to the digital revolution and beyond.
Photography: a cultural history
Call Number: TR15 .M273 2015
Surveys the history of photography with the medium's multifold developments the historical and cultural contexts in which photographers lived and worked. Incorporating the latest research and international uses of photography.
The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century
Call Number: Cabell Library Oversize Books - Shelved upright (4th floor) TR199 .B66 2001
Light, Paper, Process: reinventing photography
Call Number: TR645.L72 J225 2015
Features the work of seven artists who investigate the possibilities of analog photography by finding innovative, surprising, and sometimes controversial ways to push light-sensitive photographic papers and chemical processing beyond their limits.
Women Photographers: from Julia Margaret Cameron to Cindy Sherman
Call Number: TR139 .F75 2014
The greatest women photographers from the 19th century to today features the most important works of 55 artists, along with in-depth biographical and critical assessments.
Faking It : manipulated photography before Photoshop
Call Number: TR148 .F56 2012
Photographic manipulation is a familiar phenomenon in the digital era. The desire and determination to modify the camera image are as old as photography itself--only the methods have changed. This book traces the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990.
Jill Enfield's Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes
Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2020
Covers alternative processing from its historical roots through to digital manipulation and contemporary techniques and how to combine them. It features several new techniques alongside new approaches to older techniques, including hand painting on silver gelatin prints, ceramics and photography, cyanotypes, wet plate collodion, digital prints and many more.
The Photobook: a History
Call Number: TR650 .P37 2004
Publication Date: 2004-2014
Provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the photobook: from its inception at the dawn of photography in the early nineteenth century through to the radical Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and 70s. The book is divided into a series of thematic and broadly chronological chapters; each features a general introductory text that offers background information and highlights the dominant political and artistic influences on the photobook in the relevant period, followed by more detailed discussion of the individual photobooks.
(3 Volumes)

Books by VCUarts Faculty & Alumni

Mark Boulos
Call Number: N6537.B6447 A4 2017
Whether set amidst traffic in London's financial district, conflict in the Nigeria Delta, a Catholic home in Damascus, rebel territory in the Philippines, a field in Syria, a church in Greenwich, or upon an acting stage in Hollywood, Boulos traces the complexities of our era at the fringes of politics and cinema.
Flat Pictures (You Can Feel) by Will Douglas (Artist)
Call Number: TR647 .D684 2019
Flat Pictures (You Can Feel) consists of photographs made in response to the ways in which spontaneous screen-based collage influences and complicates our perception of the 3-dimensional world. Douglas photographs video monitors and commercial displays, appropriates imagery, and flattens experiences while considering photography and its construction through consumerism, belief systems, masculinity, and failure.
Devil's Pool by Sarah Kaufman (Photographer)
The Devil's Pool photographs explore a swimming hole in Philadelphia's Wissahickon Park and emphasize the value of access to green spaces within an urban setting. The project investigates how people relate to their environment and affirms a human need or impulse to commune with the natural world.
Isla de Las Palmas by Paul Thulin-Jimenez
Isla de Las Palmas is a “docu-literary” photography project examining Puerto Rican identity within the layered sociopolitical dynamics and systemic pressures of colonialism. The project exposes overlooked histories and subjectivities in an effort to activate civil debate amongst a diverse audience of native islanders, the diaspora, and all other U.S. citizens.
Pine Tree Ballads by Paul Thulin (Photographer)
Call Number: TR647 .T46527 2018
Pine Tree Ballads is a poetic memoir, featuring the artist's daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother as a single protean character (or multiple characters?) vibrating in time, navigating the mysteries and menace of a shared ancestral forest. This deeply personal photographic sequence is part visual narrative of family myths and part origin story.