New Books Network
100 episodes listed below
Photography books, read through power and history.
New Books in Photography treats photography as evidence, art, technology, and political practice. Through long-form author interviews, it follows recent books into subjects such as Sri Lankan war images, Latin American photojournalism, colonial collections, and the material chemistry of the medium.
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New Books in Photography is a book-interview series for listeners who think images deserve slow attention. Each episode takes a recent photography-related study and gives its author room to explain the stakes. The format is direct and scholarly. A host frames the book, asks broad questions, and then lets the conversation travel through archives, methods, examples, and historical context. The show treats photography as a way societies organize memory and authority. In the Sri Lanka episodes, photographs become evidence of war, displacement, citizenship, colonial collecting, Tamil studio practice, and the partial nature of national photographic histories. In the Latin American photography discussion, the medium carries testimony, migration, blindness, state projects, and the work of figures such as Graciela Iturbide. A conversation on colonial Sri Lanka looks closely at royal tours, commercial studio stock, posed subjects, collections, and the visual language of empire. Other episodes widen the frame again. Post-war images of women and desire become a way to think about popular culture and looking. Frank Scholten's photographs in British Mandate Palestine open questions of biblical modernity, archive-making, religion, queerness, and place. Michelle Henning's work connects photographic history to chemistry, fog, fossil fuels, capitalism, air pollution, and extractive empire. An episode crossing into law and visual culture studies show trials, legal propaganda, post-World War II justice, and the political staging of guilt. The tone is measured and explanatory rather than promotional. It assumes curiosity and patience, but not specialist training in every field. The result is a quietly demanding guide to photography as art, document, technology, and political instrument.
Made for: For readers, photographers, historians, visual culture students, and museum-minded listeners who want rigorous conversations about images in social context. It works best for an audience comfortable with scholarly pacing and extended answers.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by using new photography books as entry points into politics, empire, law, migration, gender, chemistry, and archival practice. It gives guests time to build arguments rather than reducing each book to a quick recommendation.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/photography
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Book interviews reveal how photographs shape legal evidence, political memory, colonial records, and histories that written archives can miss.
New Books in Photography follows photographs into courtrooms, colonial collections, war, migration, and everyday life. Its book-centered conversations give scholars room to explain how images acquire legal, political, and historical force, from visual propaganda in postwar…
Even the ID photo has a wartime job here; your eye for the ordinary will be rewarded.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured review of photography, conflict, and who gets left out.
Vindhya Buthpitiya's A Volatile Picture treats photography in Sri Lanka as more than an archive of images. It moves from war photography to studio portraits and ID photos, then opens onto the people and practices left outside the country's photographic canon.
A careful, bookish discussion of photography as testimony, history, and method.
The discussion treats photography as witness, argument, and historical method, moving from blindness and testimonial images to the other, then into a Zacatecas migration project and current work on Graciela Iturbide.
A careful look at colonial photographs that turn portraiture, collections, and royal tours into imperial evidence.
Shalini Amerasinghe-Ganendra's book on colonial Sri Lanka treats photographs as more than simple records of place, and this episode follows that idea with care.
A focused talk on law, image, and postwar justice.
Agata Fialkowski's conversation about Law, Visual Culture and the Show Trial stays tightly on how legal authority is staged and made visible, especially in post-World War II justice across Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
A patient conversation about photography, media, and how politics becomes visible.
Jared Green's The Electro Library treats photography and media theory with real care. It moves from one photographic example into broader questions about postmodern image culture, Benjamin and Barthes, and the way media shapes what can be seen, named, and even imagined in…
Art historian Tamar Avishai interviews critics, curators, and writers about single paintings and ideas.
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament interview artists about their materials, biography, and process.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins and James Deakins interview film crew about the craft behind specific shots.
Robert Bound interviews artists and reviews new film, book, and music releases with critics.
Sound art from places, recordings, and memory.
Miranda Melcher introduces Vindhya Buthpitiya’s 2026 University of Washington Press book, A Volatile Picture, War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka.
The speaker discusses the book and the ideas that hold it together.
The host opens from the SOAS University of London Broadcasting Studio and introduces Shalini Amerasinghe-Ganendra and her book, Veins of Influence: Colonial Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in Early Photographs and Collections, published by Neptune Publications in 2023.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Professor Lynda Nead about her book 'British Blonde: Women, Desire and the Image in Post-War Britain' exploring gender and visual culture in post-war Britain.
This episode features an interview with author Sary Zananiri about her book examining the photographic archives of queer Dutch photographer Frank Scholten and his work in British Mandate Palestine between 1921-1923.
This episode features an interview with Professor Michelle Henning about her book 'A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire', which explores photography's connections to fossil fuels, the Industrial Revolution, capitalism, art, air pollution, and empire.
Agata Fialkowski joins the show to discuss her book, Law, Visual Culture and the Show Trial.
This episode features an interview with photographer Ori Gersht about his debut fiction novel 'Ham's Heaven', which fictionalizes the story of the first chimpanzee NASA sent to space during the Cold War space race.
This episode features an interview with Bruce Harvey, a historian and photographer who combines his expertise in history and policy with photography to run a consulting business.
This episode features an interview with Andy Hunter, founder of Bookshop.org, discussing a better way to buy books while supporting independent bookstores.
This episode features an interview with historian Valerie Hébert about her edited book 'Framing the Holocaust: Photographs of a Mass Shooting in Latvia, 1941', examining how photographs shape our understanding of historical atrocities.
This episode features an interview with Nancy L.
Recall This Book Presents rebroadcasts a conversation with Jared Green, creator of The Electro Library, with Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz framing it as a special experiment.