
American bioacoustician and musician Bernie Krause has recorded over 5,000 hours of natural soundscapes since the 1970s. Both poetic and scientific, his archive reveals the musical harmony and orchestral structure of nature. This book presents an immersive installation created in 2016 by Krause and United Visual Artists for the Fondation Cartier in Paris. It traces the transformation of Krause’s field recordings into a three-dimensional audiovisual experience that blends art, technology, and ecology.

This comprehensive volume documents the design history of Braun, covering consumer electronics, photography equipment, watches, calculators, lighters, flashlights, personal care products, and household appliances. Richly illustrated with photographs, it traces Braun’s influential industrial design approach and its lasting impact on modern product aesthetics and functional innovation.

This book features a collection of written materials from American artist Joseph Cornell, famous for his surrealist shadow boxes – it includes diaries, letters, and files detailing his creative process, influences, and personal life.

This books contains the many lives of Lee Miller – intimately recorded by her son, Anthony Penrose. From the archives, this book collates a rich selection of her best work – including portraits of her friends Picasso, Braque, Ernst, Eluard, Miró.

Source Books in Architecture No.14: Rem Koolhaas / OMA + AMO Spaces for Prada is the most recent volume in the Source Books in Architecture series. Among the topics discussed in the book are the long-standing relationship with Prada and how the early objectives in that relationship have both maintained and shifted

Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) is undoubtedly one of the most significant figures in 20th-century interior design. This is the first monograph of her works.
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This comprehensive monograph contains a selection of emblematic works by Sengalese-born artist Issa Samb aka Joe Ouakam. The publication follows Samb's first solo exhibition in Europe, curated by Koyo Kouoh, entitled “WORD! WORD? WORD!".

Known and recognized for the elegance as much as for the insolence of her creations, Chantel Thomass imposed a style that has become, over time, synonymous with refinement and freedom for countless women. This book reveals all the richness and breadth of a partly ignored artistic universe.

Catalogue presenting the Spring/Summer 1984 Menswear Collection attached to Issue 137 of L'uomo Vogue.

Born and raised in Belgrade, Boogie first began photographing during the Yugoslav Wars, which ravaged the Serbian territory throughout the 1990s. Growing up during these wars ignited Boogie’s attraction to the darker side of human existence; his distinctive photographs often focuses on rebellion, unrest, and the disenfranchised. In this book, he documents the people of Moscow – people sculpted by a brutal, concrete landscape, fighting to survive.

A collection of photographs of activist graffiti by feminist guerrilla groups often sprayed over advertising boards in the 1980s and 1990s.

A book documenting kids playing on the streets of New York.

This book collects Brassai's iconic scenes of nocturnal Paris with its prostitutes and thugs, its night workers, cafes, dance halls, and theatres; fog-shrouded streets, monuments, and bridges; the literary and artistic elite of the Parisian avant-garde, whom Brassai counted among his friends.

The photo book of Kim Jones' debut menswear collection shot by Luke Smalley – a collaboration that followed after came across a copy of Smalley's 'Gymnasium' work.

Begun in 2014, Njideka Akunyili Crosby's ongoing series, The Beautyful Ones is comprised of portraits of Nigerian children, including members of the artist's family, derived from personal photographs and, more recently, from images taken during her frequent visits to Nigeria, where Akunyili Crosby lived until the age of sixteen.

In a collection of austere portraits of personalities including Truman Capote, Rose Mary Woods, and Andy Warhol, Avedon demonstrates his aim to retain the sitter's identity and solidity of being without using illusionistic effects.

This book collects the work of Saul Bass, who created some of the most compelling images of American postwar visual culture.

Tek Hod is a contemporary photographic response to an ancient tradition: Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling. Documenting a legacy of romanticism on one hand and industrialisation on the other, David Ellison's photo series speaks to the complexity of the landscape's tradition via costume and archive as well as the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement.

A collection of stamps from the People's Republic of China between 1949 - 1954, supplement to China Reconstructs Issue 4 1955

Inside the Bum documents the making of Harmony Korine’s film ‘The Beach Bum’ – starring Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher, Snoop Dogg, and Zac Efron. In October 2017, the Lebon brothers were invited onto the set of the film for six weeks. Given the freedom to wander the set as they pleased, the Lebons received unrestricted access and a privileged insight into the filmmaking process of Korine - a long-time inspiration for both brothers.

A book about architecture

An insightful sociological typology, this work presents documentary black-and-white portraits of Japanese seventeen-year-olds taken between March 1987 and January 1988. Through a restrained, observational approach, it captures a nuanced portrait of adolescence during a specific cultural moment, rendered with clarity and quiet documentary precision.

This book is a visual celebration of the Swinging Sixties and of the beautiful, creative women of that era. Portraits taken by John D. Green Julie Christie, Susannah York, Hayley Mills, Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithful, Mary Quant and many more.

This book offers a comprehensive visual survey of Donald Judd’s living and working spaces in New York and Texas. Featuring unpublished photographs and essays, it explores his buildings at 101 Spring Street and in Marfa, including Ayala de Chinati. The volume reveals Judd’s concept of permanent installation, integrative living, architectural preservation, and rigorous attention to function, design, and landscape.
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In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. This book is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there.

This unparalleled collection traces the development of modern trademarks and sheds light on forgotten designs and early versions of famous logos.
A collection of Bill Brandt's portraits of actors, poets, musicians, philosophers, and artists of all kinds.

Lost Dreams details the youth clubs of East London from 2005 to '07, these clubs provided the foundations for aspiring musicians some of whom are now well recognised in the grime scene and beyond. If you're at all familiar with Wheatley's previous book on the heydays of Grime, you'll know the depths of his access to the subject and his attention to detail photographically.


Provoke, with its subtitle of Provocative Materials for Thought, was an experimental, small-press Japanese photography magazine founded in 1968 by critic/photographers Kōji Taki and Takuma Nakahira, photographer Yutaka Takanashi, and writer Takahiko Okada. Daidō Moriyama joined from the second issue. The magazine itself was printed through techniques like the "are-bure-boke" style, which embraced grain, blur, and high contrast to convey a sense of immediacy and raw energy. The printing process was considered a crucial part of the work, often using techniques that increased grain and contrast, with photos printed edge-to-edge without margins to make them appear to bleed into one another.

I colori del ferro blends industrial materials and contemporary art, combining photographers by renowned photographers with technical macro shots of steel and industrial scenes. An essay by Umberto Eco and captions by engineer Gino Papuli provide aesthetic, technical, and conceptual insights, creating a sophisticated dialogue between industry and art.

Dorothy Sing Zhang unveils a compelling portrayal of humanity’s vulnerable state during sleep. The scene is set in the bedrooms of others. One is asked to be asleep, a squeeze cable release is placed under the pillow. The chance of one’s unconscious body rolling over and triggering the camera results in an exposure. Like Someone Alive expands these boundaries by withdrawing the traditional relationships between the photographer, the object and the camera.
Jean Tinguely was one of a number of artists of the period who explored movement, in what became known as Kinetic art. From the mid-1950s he made strange machines, some of which involved radios, lights and motors while others relied on the viewer to turn a crank. He used everyday materials and junk to explore ideas of motion, impermanence and accident.

Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) has been described not only as a craftsman but also as a consummate artist who brought a dramatic glamour and bold inventiveness to the fashion portrait. Organised decade by decade and illustrated with fashion plates, portraits and contact sheets, the book features a number of previously unpublished editorial images.

Tillmans’s now iconic artist’s book consists of 62 color photographs of the Concorde airplane—taking off, landing or in flight, and sometimes as just a tiny, birdlike silhouette in the sky.

For over a decade, Robert Bergman journeyed through America’s Rust Belt and East Coast, capturing striking color portraits of everyday people who deeply moved him. Using simple equipment but extraordinary vision, he created a powerful portrait of the American spirit. A Kind of Rapture presents the first selection from this epic project, showcasing images reproduced with unprecedented artistic fidelity and care.

Richard Rogers explores modern architecture

A football calling card archive featuring over 40 infamous 80-90’s UK hooligan/casual firms.

Long recognized for her clothing line, Run, Cianciolo’s boundless creativity is evident throughout her multifaceted practice, which includes designing books, theatre costumes, films and forms of ephemera that defy the categorizations of fashion, craft and art.

A collection of black and white images of 1950s London people and landmarks.

Echoes: A Vision of the American Southwest captures the vision of a French photographer Jean Meziere experiencing colour and light in the boundless expanse of the Amercian Southwest.

Black and white photographs of babies and infants taken by Sue Packer taken in 1980s.

This book brings together, for the first time, the entire Private Scenes photographic series in which we discover a new dimension of the work of Masahisa Fukase, that of the artist struggling with his medium. This singular corpus is made up of images in which the artist inserts himself. The series is made up of two sets: “Letters from Journeys” which presents photographs taken in 1989 in different cities around the world (Paris, London, Brussels, Antwerp, etc.), and “Private Scenes '92” which focuses on his daily life in Tokyo, where now each print is enhanced with colour paints, thus becoming a unique work.

Building on his first monograph, Jock Sturges presents us with a new body of work that strikes the same chords of beauty and evolution that we find in his earlier images, but with a more intense dramatic and metaphoric intention.

Each summer, thousands of Juggalos from around the world congregate at a privately owned campground on the Illinois border of the Ohio River to party. This intimate portrait of the Gathering presents Daniel Cronin's images of men, women, and children sitting in tents and cars, swimming in a brackish lake, painting each other's faces and, often, staring back at the camera communicating their defiance and pride.

An incredible reference book that quietly tells the history of fashion in Japan. Kurimoto shoots girls on the street in their everyday outfits from 1970-1988, in Tokyo, Kyoto, Yokohama, and so on. Arranged by year and roughly grouped according to their looks – with reference to natural styling & accessorising present in Japanese youth culture.

In this book, through searing images evoked in paintings, photographs, performances and texts, David Wojnarowicz exposes the duplicity and soullessness of an illusory "one-tribe nation" promoted by media, government and organised religion.

First Son is an extraordinary collection of photographs by C.D. Hoy (1883-1973), a Chinese-Canadian photographer whose startling, evocative portraits of First Nations, Chinese, and Caucasian subjects in small-town British Columbia, taken between 1909 and 1920, form an important historical and cultural document about the roots of "otherness" in Canada.

This book brings together key writings on the interrelationship of Britain and the English-speaking Caribbean nations, focusing specifically on the art of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain from the 1920s to today.

Constructed Narratives brings together essays and several recently completed buildings by David Adjaye, in the United States and elsewhere. In the essays, Adjaye shows how his approach to the design of temporary pavilions and furniture, private houses, and installations at the 2015 Venice Biennale feeds into his designs for public buildings.

As a photographer George Platt Lynes was a brilliant craftsman and master of composition, whether it be in one of his many portraits of the famous and the legendary, or in his stunningly vivid documentations of the New York City Ballet. This book breaks down his body of work into distinct sections, featuring portraits include such luminaries of twentieth century art and society as Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Countess Bismarck and Gertrude Stein, as well as fellow lens-men Cecil Beaton and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

This survey of the work of photographer Jeanloup Sieff covers 40 years of photography, encounters and memories. It collects together his major photographs, and shows how Sieff has left his mark on his generation, and how he continues to work in fashion, advertising and portraiture.

For nearly two thousand years, Japanese women living in coastal fishing villages made a remarkable livelihood hunting the ocean for oysters and abalone, a sea snail that produces pearls. They are known as Ama, and they make their living (well into their 90s) by filling their lungs with air and diving for long periods of time deep into the Pacific ocean, with nothing more than a mask and flippers. This book is a document to the lives of these women.

New York, New York: Master Works of a Street Peddler by George Forss is a captivating photographic journey through the soul of New York City, as seen through the lens of a self-taught street photographer. From his humble post on the sidewalks of Manhattan, Forss captured iconic cityscapes and fleeting moments with striking clarity and emotion. This collection showcases the raw beauty, grandeur, and humanity of the city that never sleeps—revealing a world often overlooked by the hurried passersby. A true outsider artist, Forss transforms everyday scenes into masterworks, offering a deeply personal and timeless tribute to New York.

Fashion Photography 1950-1975 is a book by German photographer F.C. Gundlach that showcases his iconic work during that period. His photos are known for blending social commentary with fashion, reflecting the spirit of the times and influencing fashion perception in Germany and beyond.

A witty, candid, and revealing autobiographical account of the artist's early life, from his childhood in Bradford to his time at the Royal College of Art and sojourns in California and Paris. It contains a wealth of reproductions of his work, including 434 illustrations.

This zine, published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name, brings together a selection of mail art projects that Carrión developed between 1973 and 1983, erasing the boundaries between artwork, archive and document.

A reflective photographic project by Tina Enghoff exploring childhood, identity, and memory. It considers what is lost in leaving childhood behind—imagination, emotional fluidity, and a fairy-tale sense of perception. Enghoff suggests that while childhood becomes distant and fragmented, its memories persist as an obscured but foundational emotional presence shaping adult life

The eighth volume of the Villages and Towns series explores vernacular architecture across the Iberian Peninsula. With texts by Fernando Higueras Díaz and photographs by Yukio Futagawa, it examines landscape, climate, community harmony, environmental preservation, and natural light, highlighting shared regional principles that create enduring architectural diversity.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue 8: Private Diary 1980-1995
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Beginning with his early days in London's East End, this book follows the life and work of David Bailey from the 1950s up until the late 1960 – from his first photographic experiences as an assistant to John French; his early years with Vogue; his close relationship with the stars of rock music; and his friendships and love affairs.

A double-sided concertina alphabet book made up of 26 pop-up capital letters.
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Universally acclaimed as the world's greatest mime, Marcel Marceau takes us on a visual journey through the alphabet.

Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, Lee Miller: A Woman’s War tells the story beyond the battlefields of the Second World War by way of Miller’s extraordinary photographs of the women whose lives were affected. The photographs in this volume, many previously unpublished, are accompanied by extended captions that place the images within the context of women’s roles within the landscape of war.

A study of man's expression of the symbol in the city.

This book contains over 150 pages of 200 photographs of London in the late sixties taken by German photographer Juergen Seuss.

In Israel, Palestinian-Christian burial sites are often found vandalized and desecrated by members of other religious groups. Artist Dor Guez, founder of the Christian Palestinian Archive, has used his work to tell the stories of this minority group, their religious practices, and the discrimination waged against them for their heritage and beliefs. His exhibition 40 Days featured photographs from the Archive as well as video installations to narrate the losses of the Christian-minority families affected by this violence.

This book covers materials, forming methods, surface decoration, glazing, and firing techniques of clay. The third edition expands technical guidance, includes colour charts of clay and glaze combinations, outlines historical developments in ceramics, and provides references to key resources and museums, supporting both introductory study and advanced practice.

Marching To The Freedom Dream presents American photojournalist Dan Budnik’s significant body of work documenting three seminal marches of the civil rights movement. It is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and precedes the 50th anniversaries of the Selma-Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act in 2015. A foreword to the book is written by prolific civil rights activist, Harry Belafonte.

This is the first major publication by multidisciplinary designer Samuel Ross, showcasing his work for A-COLD-WALL* and his studio SR_A. Featuring over 300 images, previously unpublished materials, and essays by figures such as Virgil Abloh, Takashi Murakami, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, it provides a comprehensive study of Ross’ contributions to fashion, art, and design.

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A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue No.16: Erotos

This book is artist's book by American sound artist and visual artist Terry Fox documenting 52, out of a potentially larger set, of the symbolic, often chalked, messages used by transient individuals in America and Europe.

Work of David Adjaye published in conjuction with an exhibition organised by the Art Institute of Chicago and Haus der Kunst, Munich.

In My Room: Teenagers in their Bedrooms, photographer Adrienne Salinger has been allowed to enter the private lives of forty-three teens. Her images, taken over a two-year period, offer an intimate glimpse into these intimate escapes and the adolescents who have made them their own.

The stylish and extravagant world of the "Bright Young Things" of 1920s and '30s London, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton.

Liz Rideal is an artist, writer, and Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Working across a variety of media including photography, printmaking, and painting, Rideal explores themes of drapery, portraiture and pilgrimage in her work.

Gabriela Gründler’s Stars of Suburbia reimagines portraiture through the intimate story of two women who become close friends after meeting in a new neighbourhood. Rather than faces or bodies, their identities are revealed through letters, gifts, and personal exchanges. The work reflects on friendship, perception, and the limits of traditional portraiture.

In the small mountain town of Heber Springs, the Arkansas artist known as Disfarmer captured the lives and emotions of the people of rural America between 1939-1945.

Top photographers Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon, and Herb Ritts interpret Gianni Versace's kaleidoscopic vision of men's fashion. Whether at ease by the sea, or dressed for business in New York or Milan, the Versace man radiates self-assurance and defines contemporary taste. The Versace man - a man without ties - is drawn to Gianni Versace's timeless elegance.

BLINK. presents the work of 100 of the world's most exciting contemporary photographers, selected by 10 internationally acclaimed critics, curators and creative directors. An exhibition in a book, BLINK. showcases up-and-coming talent from all parts of the world, enabling the reader to stay one step ahead of emerging trends in the fast-changing world of photography.

This book presents necklaces, rings, bracelets, pendants, earrings, and cuff links designed by sixteen modern architect, with brief interviews with each about their work. Includes postmodern jewelry by Mario Bellini, Ettore Sottsass, Peter Shire, Marco Zanini, Michele de Luccchi et al.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue 3: Yoko (Ono)

This book contains the most eminent and interesting examples of fashion photographer Helmut Newton’s work for magazines across Europe and the United States. Facsimiles of more than 500 original spreads from the likes of Elle, Amica, and, above all, Vogue follow Newton’s ongoing ability to break the boundaries of his genre and explore the interaction of his unique, daring, pictures with typography and layout. In lively personal anecdotes alongside the spreads, Newton talks through the inspirations and informal moments behind some of his most memorable images.

Following the release of the first seven volumes in 1973 the editors returned to the project in 1977 with a series of four yearly annuals.

Dance Perspectives was published quarterly from 1959-1976, and was a collection of writings on dance, art, costume and theatre.

In this photographic scrapbook, fashion photographer Stan Shaffer share his extraordinary life at the nexus of art, fashion and cinema. Over his career as icon maker, Shaffer hung out with everyone from Andy Warhol to Jerry Hall, Carla Bruni to Uma Thurman. With his fine-tuned intuition, this trendsetting photographer reveals the real person beyond these public facades.

This book provides the blueprint for an ‘ecocritical art history’, one that is prepared to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene, climate change and global warming. Without ignoring its own histories, the book looks beyond – politics, posthumanism, new materialism, feminism, queer theory and critical animal studies – invigorating the art-historical practices of the future.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue 4: New York.

Horst Portraits celebrates the portraits of Horst P. Horst - one of the great master photographers of the twentieth century and the creator of some of the most elegant, glamorous, and stylish images in photographic history. It is the first book specifically devoted to his signature portraits.The photographs are all reproduced in full-page plates. For anyone interested in photography, fashion, or celebrity, some of the most fascinating faces of the twentieth century are to be found in the pages of this book.

GA Document is a Global Architecture focusing on contemporary international architecture and design projects.
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Wegman is known for his photography and video art, which evolved from his early conceptual work in the 1970s. He frequently uses a large format 20x24 inch Polaroid camera, a medium that inspired much of his color photography.

Cornelius Cardew cofounded the Scratch Orchestra in 1969 with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons. The orchestra was a culmination of the ideals expressed in Cardew's own innovative and experimental music through the 1960s. Scratch Music is a collection of the repertory the Scratch Orchestra created. Brought back into print with a new preface by John Harries and Sharon Gal, this reissued edition of a classic work makes a key title in sound studies available to new audiences.

This is the catalogue for Wolfgang Tillmans' exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2010. After 20 years of working in London, Tillmans reflects on his relationship with the city, both through his past work and the new work produced for this exhibition.


Fellini's Faces is an impressive collection of photographs taken by legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini throughout his long career.

An unprecedented publication showcasing Gucci as never before, including thought-provoking essays, commentaries, and authoritative anecdotes along with previously unpublished contemporary and archival photographs.

This book documents the eclectic collections of Martin Parr, spanning 25 years of photographic and themed objects. It features memorabilia of political figures, cultural icons, wristwatches, photographic trays, kitsch wallpaper, and items commemorating events like 9/11 and Sputnik. The collection combines humor, poignancy, and the eccentricity of everyday objects.

In 1996, five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Mikhailov began making portraits of the outcasts in his hometown, Kharkov, Ukraine, where he was born in 1938.This body of work, comprised of 431 photographs, explores the oppression, devastating poverty, and the deeply troubling everyday reality of a marginalised community who had been left homeless by the rise of a new capitalist oligarchy.

This book contains a collection of letters that the famous brothers Jonas and Adolfas Mekas sent from America to Semeniškiai village, Biržai district, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. They were all addressed to the most important addressee of their lives – their mother, Elzbieta Mekienė.
The Library
Our Library is the heart of Reference Point and from where all other elements take their philosophy and context. An evolving and growing collection of rare books, ephemera and printed matter focused on Post-War Radical Art, Architecture, Design, Fashion and Culture. The library exists to create inspiration and conversation, and provide creatives of all stages and disciplines reference points for their projects.
Our librarians are always on hand to serve as research assistants but you can also email us with your interests and project brief and we can prepare a selection of works in advance of your visit.
Reference Point
2 Arundel Street
WC2R 3DA, London