New Books in Photography

Is food porn a vibrant and democratic new expression of modern food culture or a superficial addition to an image-saturated world? Tracing its origins from the 1970s to today, this timely book examines the evolution of food porn as a desire-inducing aesthetic practice and a visually extravagant food spectacle. Through discussions on class, gender, sexuality and national identities, Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age (Bristol University Press, 2026) by Dr. Jonatan Leer & Dr. Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager questions whether food porn reinforces social hierarchies or empowers individuals. Also exploring anti-food porn aesthetics, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deeper social implications of food’s digital allure. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Vindhya Buthpitiya is a groundbreaking ethnography that explores how, in the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and its turbulent aftermath, photography has become bound to the Tamil political imagination. From state-commissioned images meant to surveil and rebel documentation of armed resistance, to the fragile memorials created from identity photographs of the disappeared, A Volatile Picture traces the making and moving of images across borders, communities, and generations. Studio portraits, passport pictures, family albums, atrocity photography, social media posts, and more act not only as records of loss and horror but also as vital tools for protest, solidarity, and the realization of alternate political futures. Drawing on transnational archival and ethnographic encounters and long-term fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka, Dr. Buthpitiya situates photography as both a volatile medium and a political practice. Photographs emerge here as incendiary agents—simultaneously evidencing and triggering violence, sustaining memory, and inciting new visions of liberation.This is the first in-depth study of Tamil photographic practices in Sri Lanka, offering a major contribution to the anthropology of war, visual culture, and South Asian studies. Richly researched and deeply humane, A Volatile Picture demonstrates how, amid devastation and displacement, photographs continue to generate truths, solidarities, and hopes that resist erasure. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Veins of Influence: Colonial Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in early Photographs and Collections by Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra (Neptune Publications, 2023) is a pioneering monograph that brings a rich array of early images (specifically of Sri Lanka (Ceylon)) into the global discourse of photography, pairing a striking lens of visual appreciation with distinctly humanizing perspectives. In the context of colonial photography, “veins of influence” delineates the circulatory pathways through which images operate, tracing not only their material production and dissemination, but also the curatorial, creative, cultural, epistemic narratives they generate across time. The over 450 images featured are from the: Royal Collection Trust; Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford; Royal Commonwealth Society, Cambridge University; Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Rothschild Archives and, also by the famed Victorian photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. (A little known fact is that Cameron spent the last 4 years of life in Ceylon and died there.) In addition to these UK collections, this publication includes early photographs from important local family collections and period publications. The collections are mainly those of influencers and the writing considers images by both studio photographers and hobbyists, for commercial and non-commercial purposes. This seminal publication is for general audiences and specialists. Ganendra’s unusual analysis of these collections adds another layer of understanding of the viewing and imaging of Ceylon specifically, importantly also offering another approach to the understanding of colonial images generally. Shalini Amerasinghe Ganendra’s impact on cultural development has been defined by nearly three decades of cultural programming including exhibition and scholarship, with notable focus on Sri Lanka. Ganendra is Sri Lankan born and lives in Malaysia. She read law at Cambridge University (1987) and qualified as a Barrister and New York Attorney. She was the first Sri Lankan specialist to be appointed to the Tate Gallery (UK) Acquisitions Committee (SAAC) and has served on numerous judging panels including for the Commonwealth Arts Award and as a nominator for the Sovereign Art Prize and Aga Khan Architecture Awards. She was most recently a Chevening Fellow at Oxford and has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, including at: the History of Art Department, St. Catherine s College and the Pitt Rivers Museum. She was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (Vatican) in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

In the 1950s, American glamour swept into a war-torn Britain as part of a broader transatlantic exchange of culture and commodities. But in this process, the American ideal of the blonde became uniquely British—Marilyn Monroe transformed into Diana Dors. British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain (Yale UP, 2025) by Professor Lynda Nead examines postwar Britain through the changing ideals of femininity that reflected the nation’s evolving concerns in the twenty-five years following the Second World War. At its heart are four iconic women whose stories serve as prompts for broader accounts of social and culture change: Diana Dors, the quintessential blonde bombshell; Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain; Barbara Windsor, star of the Carry On films; and the Pop artist Pauline Boty. Together, they reveal how class, social aspiration, and desire reshaped the cultural atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s, complicating gender roles and visual culture in the process. Richly illustrated with paintings, photography, film stills, and advertisements, this interdisciplinary and engagingly written study offers a highly original perspective on an era that transformed Britain’s visual and cultural identity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

In A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire (U Chicago Press, 2026), Professor Michelle Henning presents an environmental history of chemical photography through the lens of its deep connections to empire and industry. Dependent on the extractive practices of fossil-fueled industrial capitalism, chemical photography’s emulsions and films were highly sensitive to polluted atmospheres, and photographic companies had to work hard to control this sensitivity. Drawing on histories of empire, coal, and chemistry and from the archives of British photographic manufacturer Ilford Limited, Professor Henning exposes the ways photography shaped how we see and understand the atmosphere while leaving its toxic residues in the air, soil, and water. Structured as thirty-six short chapters and with over seventy illustrations, this innovative book begins in interwar London, follows the supply of Ilford products to photographers on the West African coast, and considers photography as a military technology linked to the development of chemical warfare. Combining close readings of photographs with discussions of low-light, tropical, and aerial photography, Professor Henning examines the extraction and development of photographic materials, their role in the current environmental crisis, and how they have shaped experiences of time and the environment. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

How can habits of racialization be affected by art, in its reception and its creation? How can a carnal aesthetics help us understand Latinx life? What if we listen to photographs? How might they undo us? Can we be undone? In Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad (Duke UP, 2025), Mariana Ortega focuses on photography using a hermeneutics of love and critical phenomenology to think about and with creative practices of primarily Latinx artists. Moving from the ocular to the mouthly, Ortega opens up possibilities for being affected by art. She also shows how artists use aesthetic practices to transform themselves, the possibilities for life, and as means to refuse to forget the dead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

The Road (Akashic Books, 2025) is an illuminating selection of photographs spanning iconic punk rock guitarist Brian Baker’s many years of global touring with Bad Religion, Dag Nasty, and other bands. The images are intelligent and arresting, reflecting time spent both inside and outside the bubble of backstages and tour buses. While touring is easily glamorized, all traveling musicians know that twenty-two hours of every day lack the lights, glitter, and other rock-and-roll trappings. For Baker, some of that time is spent photographing what interests him most in his surroundings. As revealed in The Road, his fascinations range from bizarre highway signage; to unsettling figurines, mannequins, and statuettes; to religious iconography that carries extra weight when one considers the ethos of a band called Bad Religion; to steaming cups of espresso and classic diner meals; to guitars, guitars, and more guitars; and so much more. The Road is designed in collaboration with award-winning photographer and curator Jennifer Sakai. Music lovers across the globe will revel in a Brian Baker’s–eye view of the landscapes he inhabits, and gain insight into the sometimes disquieting and always beautiful imagery that seizes his attention and engages his obsessions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India. This book explores how the digital selfie, unlike traditional photography, turns the lens inward while reconfiguring social identities, gender norms, power relations, and everyday interactions. Drawing on rich, situated examples, it shows how selfies operate as acts of self-making and place-making in contemporary India. At once playful and political, intimate and public, selfies offer a fascinating entry point into the fast-changing cultures of digital media and visual expression. Avishek Ray is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. His research spans mobility, marginality, and digital culture, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (Routledge, 2024). A Fulbright-Nehru Fellow (2021), he has held visiting fellowships at institutions across Europe, North America, and Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photographs. German Jews of considerably diverse backgrounds took and preserved these photographs: professional and amateurs, of different ages, gender, and classes. The book argues that their previously overlooked photographs convey otherwise unuttered views, emotions, and self-perceptions. Based on a database of more than fifteen thousand relevant images, it analyzes photographs within the historical contexts of their production, preservation, and intended viewing, and explores a plethora of Jews’ reactions to the changing landscapes of post-1933 Germany. Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Rebekka Grossmann is Assistant Professor of Migration History at Leiden University. In her research, she explores the connections of visual culture, migration and politics with a special focus on Jewish history. Her dissertation, which will be published in 2026, investigates the role of the camera as agent, chronicler and critic of Jewish nation-building. In her new project, she looks at the entangled stories of the legacies of Jewish forced migration, post-war memory culture and peace activism through the lens of different artistic projects. Shira Miron is a PhD candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her research explores aesthetics as a mode of investigation for human experience and social formation and studies the particularities of different artforms alongside their conceptual and practical cross-pollination. She pursues theoretical questions as they relate to history and culture and vice versa. Her dissertation project, Composition and Community: The Extra-Musical Imagination of Polyphony 1800/1900/1950, explores the advent of western polyphony as a modern aesthetic, communicative, and ethical phenomenon that extends beyond the field of music. Shira published on the relationship between music and literature, German-Jewish literature and culture, visual studies, theories of dialogue and communication, and on a wide range of authors including Novalis, Adorno, Kleist, and Gertrud Kolmar. Shira holds B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees in piano performance from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and studied German literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently, she is a DAAD research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Sarah Wobick-Segev is a research associate at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg. Her research explores the multiple intersections of European-Jewish cultural and intellectual history with gender studies, everyday life history, and visual and religious studies. Her current project analyzes the religious writings of Jewish women in German-speaking Central Europe from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. While on sabbatical, in 2025-2026 he is the Mosse Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of the recently published monograph Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025) , as well as Anti-Heimat Cinema (2020); Weimar Film and Jewish Identity (2012); and Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Cinema (2010). He edited volumes and published articles on various topics in German and German-Jewish history including Jewish youth movements in Germany; the German interwar anti-war movement; Cold War memory culture; Jewish migration from and to Germany; and German-Jewish visual culture. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is a Professor of History and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States. His research focuses on the linguistic, visual, and cultural history of Nazi Germany, modern German-Jewish history, historiography and historical theory, transnational history, and global protest movements in the twentieth century. His recent publications include Taking the Transnational Turn: The German Jewish Press and Journalism Beyond Borders, 1933-1943 [in Hebrew] (Yad Vashem Publications, 2023) and Holocaust Testimonies: Reassessing Survivors’ Voices and their Future in Challenging Times (with Wolf Gruner, Miriam Offer, and Boaz Cohen (Bloomsbury, 2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of feminist and queer art, blasting it as sacrilegious or pornographic--and sometimes both. On the bully pulpits of television and talk radio, as well as in the halls of Congress, conservatives denounced artists ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe and Judy Chicago to Marlon Riggs and David Wojnarowicz. Conservatives, alarmed by shifting sex and gender norms, collided with progressive artists who were confronting sexism, homophobia, and racism. In Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars (Oxford University Press, 2025), Anthony Petro offers a compelling new history of the culture wars that places competing moralities of gender and sexuality alongside competing visions of the sacred. The modern culture wars, he shows, are best understood not as contests pitting religious conservatives against secular activists, but as a series of ongoing historical struggles to define the relationship between the sacred and the political. Through captivating case studies of "subversive" artists, Provoking Religion illuminates the underside of the culture wars, revealing how progressive artists and activists rendered from those most apparently profane aspects of human life-the stuff of conservatives' worst nightmares--their own haunting visions of the sacred. Anthony M. Petro is Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at University of Notre Dame (effective fall 2025). His first book, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion, was a finalist for the Religion Newswriters Association's book award for nonfiction. An early chapter from this book also won the 2012 LGBTQ Religious History Award from the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. In 2019-2020, Petro was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Clayton Jarrard is a graduate student at NYU's XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Bruce Harvey is a historian and photographer based in Syracuse, NY, who works at the intersection of memory, place, and public history. As an independent consultant, he helps both public and private clients document historic sites--shaping how we remember, preserve, and sometimes say goodbye to the built environment. In this episode, Bruce reflects on what drew him to historical consulting, the art of managing complex projects, and the deeper philosophical questions that animate his work: What do we choose to remember? And why? We discuss the beauty and impermanence of old buildings and landscapes, Bruce’s social mission of preserving memory for future generations, and the unique challenges of working in a field where history, economics, and policy meet. Along the way, he shares insights from his work with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), programs with their own rich histories rooted in New Deal ideals of public service and economic recovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography

Chris Stowers, longtime photographer, credits a fellow journalist for the title of his latest memoir, Shoot, Ask...and Run (Earnshaw, 2025). The journalist’s advice to a young Chris, just starting out, went like this. Shoot: Take the photo when the opportunity arises. Then, if someone notices that you took a photo, “ask” for permission to use the photo. Finally, if the subject seems annoyed, “run”...particularly if he or she has a gun. Shoot, Ask...and Run is the second memoir from Chris Stowers, who previously joined the podcast to talk about his first memoir, Bugis Nights (Earnshaw: 2023). Chris is a photojournalist based in Asia. He has traveled, lived and worked in more than seventy countries. His work has appeared in most major international newspapers and magazines, among them: Time, Newsweek, The Economist, Forbes, Businessweek and The New York Times. Listen to Chris’s first interview, on Bugis Nights! You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography