
This book features previously unpublished drawings and photographs from the extraordinary archives of Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev documenting a disappearing subculture of tattooed criminals.

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.

Exhibition catalogue of the work of John Piper – a pivotal 20th-century British artist celebrated for his evocative landscapes, churches, and monuments, bridging English Romanticism with modernism, abstraction, and surrealism, working across painting, printmaking, stained glass, theatre sets, and textile design.

This book brings together a distinguished group of authros to reflect on Adjaye's practice as an architect.

A periodical book on modern houses from around the globe. Featuring work of architects C.R. Mackintosh, O.Wagner, L.H.Sullivan, F.L. Wright, W.M. Dudok

The most refined of the costume, the glove follows the shape of the hand and keeps its imprint. In symbolic language, it has come to designate the entire hand. Instrument of action and execution, the hand holds within it the promise of all gestures. From the gloves of the Renaissance and even older to the gloves of fashion designers through sports or protective gloves, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the art of the glove. This book presents all the uses and symbols of the glove.

A collection of poetry written in the form of Bhakti Poems in the ancient romantic Indian tradition, exploring the Jungian relationship between the animus and anima.

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.

Though it began as a military uniform, the trench coat has become a cornerstone of the twenty-first century wardrobe, a kind of chic yet classic envelope that perfectly balances form and function. From linen to leather, The Trench Book explores the stylish evolution of this outerwear icon in design and fashion.

Marin is a unique album of the great Navy family – the strength, the solitude and solidarity, the open faces of reunions, the serious looks of great departures.

In this book, American documentary photographer Susan Meiselas captures the Nicaraguan Revolution of the 1970s.

A behind the scenes look at the creation of one of Bruce Oldfield's Winter collections, from initial designs to catwalk.

A socialist journal of the social services. In this issue: social welfare in a capitalist society, radical therapy.

Gallant began his professional career in fashion as a hairdresser, working at Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York as one of the city's top colourists. This new book tracing Gallant's life and career is edited by David Wills and features photographs by Richard Avedon plus a foreword by Anjelica Huston.

A survey on Japanese package design.

Camera in Paris by Brassaï is a captivating photographic journey through the streets of 1930s Paris, revealing the city’s hidden nocturnal life with striking intimacy and poetic depth. Known as the “Eye of Paris,” Brassaï captures the city’s shadowy corners, bustling nightlife, and everyday moments.

No Mundo Maravilhoso do Futebol, which translates to 'the wonderful world of football' is a book photographs taken by children at Favela do Cascalho in Brazil.

Long Shot was a notable underground literary journal founded in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that published poetry, prose, and art focused on social issues.

A book about architecture

For almost 60 years the Rolling Stones have helped shape popular culture around the world. Unzipped traces their impact and influence on rock music, art, design, fashion, photography, and filmmaking. Packed with evocative archive photos, artworks, outtakes, and memorabilia, this book immerses readers in the world of the Stones.

Men of Consequences follows on from Jane Brown's Women of Consequence, and offers a rich visual collection of black and white portraits of men.

The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand assembles 86 of the photographer's most compelling, never-before published images of travellers, flight attendants, airport waiting rooms, airplanes on runways and all the people and places in between.

A double-sided concertina alphabet book made up of 26 pop-up capital letters.

Photographs of fans of The Rolling Stones.

This volume compiles and annotates the extensive correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, offering insights into his personality, creative process, and groundbreaking projects—including the “ready-made” that reshaped 20th‑century art. Curated over 20 years by Francis Naumann, the book translates, contextualizes, and introduces each correspondent, making Duchamp’s life and ideas accessible to both scholars and general art enthusiasts.


An encyclopedic collection of all known Becher industrial studies, arranged by building type.

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.

An incredible and compelling collection ofimages shot by British photographer Tom Wood spanning twenty years of travel on the Merseyside buses. The result is a long-lasting portrait of Liverpool – it's people, familial relationships, changing fashions and landscapes throughout the 1980s to the 2000s.
during 20 years of travel on the buses of Merseyside. The images provide a visual impression of Liverpool's population, the changing fashions and the changing faces of the city throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Leafing through a wealth of private photo albums and personal archives, Lee Radziwill offers a unique perspective of happy times: from the first trip to Europe and the Bouvier sisters to fond memories of Christmas in Palm Beach with President Kennedy. Through anecdotes and pictures, personal notes and drawings, Happy Times offers readers a very personal perspective on a highly publicized life.

Across three decades the American artist and cinematographer, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, USA) has developed a dynamic, multidisciplinary practice ranging from films and installations to lecture-performances and happenings that tackle, challenge and question prevailing cultural assumptions about identity and race. This book was published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name at Serpentine.

Raised By Wolves, published in 1995, followed California street kids as they fumbled through lives coloured by addiction, abuse, and violence.

This book is the first to feature the work of the Brazilian photographer Alair de Oliveira Gomes. A philosopher, art critic and university professor, Gomes (1921-92) was in his 50s when he began to develop a body of photographic work, focusing almost exclusively on the athletic young men to be found on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. This book presents a collection of these images.

Dieter Roth (1930–1998) was a highly diverse and influential artist, known for his work as a poet, sculptor, graphic designer, and musician. He associated with the Fluxus movement and explored the boundaries between material and intellect in his work, often using unconventional and even perishable items in his art. This book is characteristic of Roth's experimental approach to art and publishing, with a mix of letterpress texts, drawings, and rubber-stamp pictures, with German and English texts included.

Born in Hungary, Ata Kando worked in Paris where she married Ed van der Elsken and later settled in the Netherlands. She may be best known for her hard hitting photojournalistic work on Hungarian children refugees from WWII photographed with Violette Cornelius. In this book of photographs she uses her children as models and can be seen as an escapist fantasy from those grim wartime years.

This book explores the most influential printed books in Western history, tracing how print shaped science, politics, religion, and culture, and documenting the transformative impact of publishing on the development of Western civilization.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue 6: Tokyo Novel

Top Symbols & Trademarks of the World was the efforts of Franco Maria Ricci & Corinna Ferrari, and Italian publisher Deco Press. The series, published in 1973 was an unprecedented initiative to catalogue many of the finest examples of trademark design of the time. What marks this series out is both the format and the approach Ricci and Ferrari took. The third volume in the series looks at Japan, Spain and Latin America.

Filled with compelling images from revered photographers of the past and present, this book sheds light on marginalised communities who have traditionally shied away from the cameras. Works by critically acclaimed photographers including Bruce Davidson, Paz Errazuriz, Jim Goldberg, Danny Lyon, Mary Ellen Mark, Boris Mikhailov, Daido Moriyama, and Dayanita Singh cast a compassionate, unflinching eye on the worlds inhabited by transsexuals, hookers, hustlers, bikers, junkies, circus performers, gang members, survivalists, petty criminals, and others who live in the shadows, on the streets, and out of the public eye.

Artist, photographer and sculptor Peter Schlesinger was at the heart of fashionable London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is a compendium of photographs chronicling the circles in which he moved during the 1960s and 1970s.

GA Document is a Global Architecture focusing on contemporary international architecture and design projects.

Photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia is best known for his elaborately staged scenes made to look like real life, in which he meticulously plans every element of a shot-lighting, pose, etc, before taking the photograph, creating the "ur" moment. This is conceptual photography with the veneer of the documentary. Heads is a departure from this method. Turning his lens onto New York City, diCorcia took unstaged pictures of passers by that follow in the street photography tradition of Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank.

The Smell of Calpol on a Warm Summer's Night blurs the line between reality and fiction. Framed like paintings, each image is a cinematic tableau of Suburbia, with a warm glow of neon light reminiscent of hazy evenings spent in front of TV screens. Carlos Clarke presents a glance into others' living rooms and domestic environments, offering an eerie portrayal of twilight.

Weaving the World is the first substantial monograph on the Swedish-born, Norwegian modernist textile artist Hannah Ryggen (1894–1970), presenting works from her entire oeuvre, emphasizing her politcal tapestries from the 1930s. Six of these were presented at Documenta 13 in 2012.

A zine about The Black People’s Day Of Action of 3rd March 1981.

Once a month a horse fair is held at Smithfield in north Dublin. In the almost medieval atmosphere, kids from the tough Dublin estates can buy ponies for the price of a pair of trainers. The pony kids now exist in defiance of moves to licence such trading, portrayed here in portraits by Perry Ogden.

Altars presents Mapplethorpe's colour work together with his final work, which were unique prints, elaborately framed and mounted on multiple coloured panels. The final work was the culmination of his creation of the unique photographic object, and it places Mapplethorpe outside the realm of photography and firmly in the world of contemporary art.

This book presents a detailed account of manned space programmes of the US and the USSR as well as an account of the non-American and non-Soviet astronauts.

With many never-before-published photographs taken by the artist, as well as paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and films, this volume offers an unparalleled examination of Pablo Picasso’s relationship to photography.

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.

Examining some of the many parallels between visual art, dance and music in the 20th century, this issue of Art & Design brings together an enormous diversity of material: from the pure saturated colours and blue-black voids of Anish Kapoor's art, to the choreographic notations of Merce Cunningham; to the musical scores and edible drawings of John Cage.

Christopher Felver's photographs testify to the spirit's vitality in late-twentieth-century America. In Angels, Anarchists & Gods, Felver assembles a community of individuals whose lives and work nourish America's historic dream of freedom, justice, and human decency.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue 12: Dramatic Shooting and Fake Reportage

In Praise of Still Boys showcases exclusive stills and poetry from JulianKnxx’s acclaimed short film, In Praise of Still Boys (2021) – a striking testament to this very process of an ongoing reconciliation and a kind of healing.

A nuanced profile, in image and text, of the great Black Power leader at the exhilarating moment of the movement's ascendancy.

From Coco Chanel's final show to Galliano's graduation, supermodels to showstoppers, McQueen to Versace and more Catwalking presents the definitive catwalk highlights captured by the photographer who has seen and shot it all.

Chicks on Speed is a feminist music-art ensemble formed by Melissa Logan, Kiki Moorse and Alex Murray-Leslie. This publication, contained inside of a cloth bag, captures their sense of freedom. It is divided into periods of their lives: 'Fake Band:, 'Pressing the Press', 'Sell Out;, and so on. Die-cut, over-printed, and assembled from many different paper stocks, this book approximates a scrapbook, full of press clippings, personal mementos, printed ephemera, and merch.

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.

A photographic study of cockroaches.

This book is a collection of photographs of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz. The two met in 1916 and married in 1924, and these several hundred portraits made over twenty-something years is an image of a life and a love. O'Keeffe claimed: "When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me . . . I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives."

In the practice of Dr. X - a dermatologist in Lyon in the early thirties - surface rugged men with bizarre life stories: Foreign Legionnaires, ex-convicts, artists and sailors. They are all tattooed all over their bodies. The doctor and amateur photographer, who liked to take photos of flowers and landscapes on the weekends, was fascinated by the skin illustrations he saw, not as clinical cases but as "secret" works of art. This book presents a collection of these works.

Near East documents photographer and designer Cecil Beaton's wartime assignment for the Ministry of Information in the Middle East during World War II. The book combines his photographs, including images of soldiers and ancient sites in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq along with his journalistic text that provides a unique pictorial history of the region during the conflict.

A large poster of a photograph by Burkinabe photographer Sanlé Sory from 1972, which inspired Wales Bonner's Spring/Summer 2022 collection.

Created by Kate Moss herself, in collaboration with creative director Fabien Baron, Jess Hallett, and Jefferson Hack, this book is a highly personal retrospective of Kate Moss’s career, tracing her evolution from “new girl with potential” to one of the most iconic models of all time.
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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.
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Bruce Weber’s second eponymous monograph is a multidimensional exploration of masculinity. These photographs present a wide array of shifting archetypes and myths that inform society's sense of the masculine – the tough guy, the wild man, the heroic athlete, the courageous soldier, the pensive artist, the family man, the sensitive troubadour, the object of desire.

The definitive book on the legendary photographer's life in New York City, with many never-before-seen images and reminiscences by his closest friends and confidants. From the 1930s, when he helped revolutionize fashion journalism, through the 1960s, when he launched headlong into the Pop art era, London-based photographer Cecil Beaton brought to New York City his own perspective--aristocratic, sexually ambiguous, and theatrical

This book includes over 200 portraits, still lives, landscapes and dirty realism by photographerWolfgang Tillmans.

A periodical book on modern houses from around the globe. Featuring work of architects Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, Mies van der Rohe, Carlo Scarpa, Louis I. Khan, Piano + Rogers Architects.

Colorful look at the short lived but vivid design movement from the 1980s, with many color examples of furniture, objects and other pieces of designs.

Where is ‘69” Shinjuku Kaminari Zoku has taken on cult status in Japan and is almost impossible to find. The book contains numerous gritty black and white photographs documenting the Japanese biker gangs of Shinjuku in the late sixties. Fukuda has done an incredible job of capturing the life style surrounding this slice of pop history

European Diary 1983. 1984 is a collection of works by Keizo Kitajima, a photographer representing postwar Japan.


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.

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

This highly illustrated book is a complete monograph on the Leigh Bowery, and includes previously unpublished photographs and ephemera from the artists' personal archive.

The Heartbeat of Fashion presents photographs from the FC Gundlach collection from 1860 to 2006 and features photography that documents the image of people through their external appearance: fashions, poses, facial expression and gestures - featuring works from Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Lindbergh, Wolfgang Tillmans, and more.

In this incredible book, photographer Andrew Bush examines the tension between private and public in his remarkable series of photographs of individuals driving cars in and around Los Angeles--a city famous for its car culture. By attaching a camera to the passenger side window, Bush made these pictures while driving alongside his subjects--often traveling at 60 mph.

Renowned as the world's leading female fashion photographer from the 1930s to the 1960s, Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) was acclaimed for her fashion photographs, still lifes, and portraits. Her fame reached its apogee after she joined Harper's Bazaar, the vanguard of women's magazines. This book is the first comprehensive retrospective on this important photographer. In addition to her fashion image, the 200 photographs gathered here include Louise Dahl-Wolfe's experimental color work and black-and-white portraits of such luminaries as Mae West, Cecil Beaton, Josephine Baker, Christian Dior, Orson Welles, Isamu Noguchi, and others

A selection of photographs of one of the most distinguished practitioners of portrait and fashion photography. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalogue was the first comprehensive retrospective of Irving Penn's work.

Seven Years is a series of photographs that deconstruct the trope of family photography by meticulously mimicking it. In the series, the title of which refers to the age gap between the artist and her elder sister.

Although Will McBride's work almost always appeared in magazines, this book presents a different side to his work that presents more intimate and photographs private snapshots into the most private spheres of American human existence.

Eva Hesse: Sculpture is the exhibition catalogue of the same name held at Whitechapel Gallery in 1979 that introduced her groundbreaking, post-minimalist sculptural work, often using fragile materials like latex and cheesecloth, to UK audiences, cementing her legacy and exploring themes of the body, ephemerality, and female experience.

This book presents Gillian Wearing's most seminial public artwork in which she invited members of the public to write what was on their mind on a sign. With their permission, she then photographed them holding their written statement. 'Queer and Happy', 'I'm Desperate', 'I Really Love Regents Park', 'Convenience causes apathy', are just a few of the responses. The images presented interrupt the logic of documentary photography, and present an engineering of self representation.

Over the past decade, the fashion industry has witnessed a renaissance of the classic khakis that have been the casual pant of choice of such prominent historical figures as James Dean, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, and Picasso. Produced in conjunction with Dockers "RM" Khakis, Khaki: Cut from the Original Cloth is a compilation of over 100 historical and contemporary images, creating a veritable photographic history of khakis. Included in this fascinating fashion retrospective are Hollywood film stills, historical snapshots, and recent fashion and celebrity images by such acclaimed photographers as Annie Leibovitz, Peter Beard, Duane Michals, Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, and more.

In 1975, photographer Mary Ellen Mark was assigned by The Pennsylvania Gazette to produce a story on the making of Milos Forman's film of Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital, a mental institution. While on set, Mark met the women of Ward 81, the only locked hospital security ward for women in the state. The result is a compelling, intimate and haunting collection of portraits of vulnerable women.
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Designed while Man Ray was living in Hollywood and published in December 1948, Alphabet for Adults was printed by pioneering California lithographer Lynton R. Kistler Man Ray illustrated it with reproductions of 39 fanciful cartoon drawings representing the letters of the alphabet.

In 1996, Alexander McQueen took over the Hawksmoor masterpiece Christ Church in London’s East End to present Dante – the seminal collection that would resonate throughout the young designer's career. This book features unique photographs shot behind the scenes, with raw, unseen pictures of the designer, models and clothes. The fashion creatives who worked with McQueen to make the show such a success recall this pivotal time in the designer’s career and reflect on what made the collection so groundbreaking.

Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK documents contemporary British folk and popular art. The book presents a personal selection of objects and actions reflecting ambition, humor, pathos, and resistance, offering insight into everyday life, culture, and creativity in present-day Britain.

John Deakin (1912-1972), whose portraits are among the most significant (and amongst the most overlooked) in the history of twentieth-century photography, was a natural successor to August Sander and precursor of Diane Arbus. He phographed everyone from Hollywood stars for British Vogue in the late 1940s and early 1950s to his artist and poet friends in London's bohemia, Soho. Robin Muir, former picture editor of British Vogue, bringstogether a comprehensive collection of Deakin's most important photographs.

This is the first book to document the short yet prolific artistic career of fashion photographer and filmmaker Tom Kublin, and a celebration of his creative union with Cristóbal Balenciaga during the fashion house’s postwar heyday in Paris. More than 140 photographs and film stills by Kublin capture the golden age of Balenciaga couture in the 1950s and 1960s, from the impeccable elegance of the collection shoots – including exclusive film footage of Balenciaga himself at work – to striking covers and editorials for high-profile magazines.

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.

A themed collection of Araki photographs. Issue No.9: Private Diary 1999

Josie Borain carried a camera throughout her career as one of the top models of the 1980s. This book brings together these fascinating, intimate photographs to build a portrait of Borain outside of fashion.
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An exhibition catalogue of works from the Bauhaus housed at the Busch Reisinger Musuem Collection.

A periodical book on modern houses from around the globe. Featuring work of architects Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Meier & Associates

Following the evolution of fashion from the beginning of the twentieth century to its culmination, this volume takes in all the diversions, influxes and crossroads along the way. A decade by decade account of all the prevailing fashion for the period and its most influential designers.

A periodical book on modern houses from around the globe. Featuring work of architects Le Corbusier, Atelier 5, Taller de Arquitectura, Carlo Aymonino/Aldo Rossi, Ralph Erskine.

Bauhaus Imaginista marks the centenary of the Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius, highlighting its global influence across art, design, and architecture. Featuring figures like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers, it traces the school’s international reception and enduring impact amid twentieth-century geopolitical change.

Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019) was one of the most experimental artists of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book traces six decades of the feminist icon’s diverse, transgressive and interdisciplinary expression through Schneemann’s experimental early paintings, sculptural assemblages and kinetic works; rarely seen photographs of her radical performances; her pioneering films; and groundbreaking multi-media installations.
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