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Woman in the Mirror by Richard Avedon (Abrams) — Avedon’s complete engagement with the female subject across fifty years: the fashion photographs that defined Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for decades alongside portrait work that revealed something about female identity, power, and self-presentation that the fashion photographs simultaneously created and concealed. An essential monograph from one of the twentieth century’s greatest photographers. Published by Abrams.

The Dutch Golden Age by Jp A. Calosse (Lorenz Books) — a comprehensive guide to the most significant school of painting outside Italy: Rembrandt and Vermeer, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, in response to the specific conditions of the Dutch Republic, the rise of a bourgeois art market, and the Protestant tradition that displaced religious subject matter in favour of the everyday world. Historical context and visual analysis of the major works throughout. Published by Lorenz Books.

Lucian Freud: A Life by William Feaver (Phaidon) — the definitive biography by the author who knew Freud personally for the last three decades of his life and had unprecedented access to the artist and his archive. Two volumes tracing the complete life: the Berlin childhood, the London exile, the long career, the multiple families, the gambling, and the sixty years of nude paintings that constitute one of the most sustained and most honest engagements with the human body in painting history. Published by Phaidon.

500 Self-Portraits by Julian Bell (Phaidon) — the complete history of the most intimate genre in the visual arts, from Dürer’s Messianic self-portrait through Rembrandt’s decades of self-scrutiny, Frida Kahlo’s symbolic autobiography, and the contemporary artists who have pushed the genre into entirely new territory. A complete history of how artists see themselves — and therefore of how they see, full stop. Essential Phaidon. Published by Phaidon.

Woody Allen: A Retrospective by Tom Shone (Thames & Hudson) — the complete Allen career from 1969 to the present, with exceptional visual material and serious critical analysis of a body of work that ranges from early slapstick comedy through Annie Hall and Manhattan to the European films and the late crime dramas. Allen as writer, director, and performer, in the context of the American and European cinematic traditions that shaped him. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Spielberg: A Retrospective by Richard Schickel (Thames & Hudson) — the complete Spielberg career presented with exceptional visual material and the critical depth it deserves: from Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark through E.T. and Jurassic Park to Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Lincoln. The most commercially successful and most diverse career in American cinema — analysed with the seriousness it has not always received. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Robert Capa: In the Making by Cynthia Young (Thames & Hudson) — the complete arc of Robert Capa’s career presented with exceptional archival photography and the contextual depth that the work demands. From the falling soldier of the Spanish Civil War through the Normandy beach landings to his death on a landmine in Vietnam in 1954 — the greatest war photographer of the twentieth century, and the most debated. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Sheer: Yves Saint Laurent (Thames & Hudson) — an art history of one of YSL’s most philosophically interesting techniques: his use of transparency, deploying sheer fabrics, lace, chiffon, and organza to create garments that both clothed and revealed, in which the boundary between covering and uncovering became the formal subject of the work. Exceptional photography traces this thread through forty years of collections. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Harry Gruyaert: Morocco (Thames & Hudson) — Gruyaert’s definitive Morocco collection, gathering work from across five decades of photographing a country whose chromatic intensity has drawn him back repeatedly. The terracotta and cobalt and saffron of Marrakech, the silver Atlantic light of Essaouira — the full range of Moroccan visual experience captured by one of the great colour photographers. Large-format, rich, and completely absorbing. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Italy: In the Footsteps of the Masters by Stefano Zuffi (Thames & Hudson) — a visual journey through the landscapes, cities, and buildings that shaped Western art, pairing each location with the works it inspired: Raphael in Urbino, Caravaggio in Rome, Titian in Venice. Travel photography of exceptional quality combined with art historical depth — the ideal companion for anyone who has been to Italy or plans to go. Published by Thames & Hudson.

Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion by Cassie Davies-Strodder (Thames & Hudson) — a visual history of the designer whom Chanel called the only true couturier and Dior called the master of us all. Cristóbal Balenciaga’s technical mastery of construction, material, and silhouette was so complete that his peers regarded themselves as craftspeople by comparison — and his 1951 and 1967 collections each changed the shape of fashion. The essential Balenciaga reference. Published by Thames & Hudson.