Reading has a profound impact on personal development, shaping our thoughts and values, and understanding the world. In a time where interest in books appears to have waned, choosing to immerse yourself in reading is an extraordinary act. As spring sets in, now is an excellent time to dig into your self-development and strengthen your mindset with these hand-picked reads! 

Civil Unity, The Radical Path to Transform Our Discourse, Our Lives, and Our World
Shola Richards
Imaging USA's keynote speaker from 2025 in Dallas, Shola Richards is leading the movement to bring more connectedness, respect, and civility to our world. In a world of increasing polarization, the challenges we are presented with require creative solutions. Civil Unity provides clear tactics to solving these challenges, while healing ourselves and uniting our world. 
 

On Photography
Susan Sontag
This 1977 collection of essays by American writer Susan Sontag explores the history and evolving role of photography in society. Both thought-provoking and, at the time, controversial, Sontag's essays delve into the ways photography shapes our understanding of the world. She argues that photography acts as a tool of control—a means by which we attempt to capture, interpret, and even dominate reality.

Ansel Adam's Classic Photography Trilogy
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams produced some of the 20th century's most iconic photographic images and helped nurture the art of photography through his creative innovations and technical mastery. This book series is often recommended by photographers, regardless of what you capture, or your methods. Learn about artificial and natural light, exposure, technique, and so much more.

American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to Present 
Jonathan Green
A history of modern American photography surveys maror developments in photographic theory, trends, method, and style, as well as the work of influential American photographers. A great read with lots of illustratives and tons of detail. 

The Photograph as Contemporary Art 
Charlotte Cotton
This book considers all the ways that today's artists engage with photography to make art. More than 200 examples of the important works are illustrated and themed chapters consider subjects like narrative and storytelling in art photography, photographing the everyday and the insignificant, the use of photography in conceptual art, and the cool, detached, objective aesthetic prevalent in current art photography.

Close
Martin Schoeller
Close presents 120 portraits of the world's most famous and influential people across the arts and entertainment industries, politics, business and sport—from Julia Roberts and Adele, to Frank Gehry and Marina Abramovic, Barack Obama, Julian Assange and Roger Federer. Between 2005 and 2018 Martin Schoeller (born 1968) photographed his subjects, in his words "to create a level platform, where a viewer's existing notions of celebrity, values and honesty are challenged." Schoeller realized this goal by subjecting his sitters to equal technical treatment: each portrait is a close-up of a face with the same camera angle and lighting.

Pioneers: Photography by Women
Edited by Elwin Hendrikse & Saskia Asser 
From the more than 15 million photographs stored in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague, the editors of Pioneers: Photography by Women selected a compilation of more than 200 images by 42 female photographers created between 1859 and 1999. These never-before-published images highlights under-recognized artists that created profound work. Whether through composition, technique or subject matter, their innovations paved the way for future generations of photographers.

Do I Know You?
Eugene Richards
After meeting people during his travels, the American documentary photographer Eugene Richards (born 1944) learns what he can about their lives, then photographs them as they are, without direction or artifice. Being photographed can be a means of being lifted out of the shadows, acknowledged as existing, as alive. Do I Know You? is a compendium of 24 photographic and textual stories that speak of the diversity of America, of survival, the shadows cast by slavery, crime, imprisonment, blind hatred, incomprehensible loss, the longing for love and what it means to be beautiful.

City of Angels
Jasmine Benjamin
City of Angels features more than 120 portraits of daring, expressive Los Angeles creatives shot in locations across the length and breadth of this vast metropolis. The book features iconic streetwear creators, free spirits from Topanga Canyon, surf and skate kids in Venice Beach, edgy Echo Park hipsters, Los Feliz vintage aficionados, shop girls and guys working at boutiques on Melrose, Chicano punks, K-Town cuties, Hollywood royalty, LGBTQIA+ fashion designers, Laurel Canyon bohemians, Black musicians and artists from South Central and Inglewood as well as from the affluent suburbs of Baldwin Hills and historic Leimert Park.

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.” Neil Gaiman. Happy reading, photographers!