1 of 16
Coffee Table Curator: December 2015

Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue, Phaidon, 150 USD

Grace Coddington, former model and current creative director at American Vogue (and noted feline enthusiast), became a household name after the 2009 documentary The September Issue. Ever since, she's been revered for her cool, calm, and collected demeanor—not to mention her extremely keen eye for style and production. In this reissued monograph, hundreds of beautiful photographs (taken by the likes of Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, and Mario Testino) both shed light on her long tenure at Vogue (you'll know a Coddington photo shoot when you see one) and showcase her indisputably celebrated aesthetic. Simply put: if you're a fashion enthusiast, you're going to want to read (and see) this. And for additional reading, we also recommend her memoir, Grace.

The Art of Flying, Assouline, 175 USD

We're certainly aware that the golden age of flying has long passed, but the glamorous jet-set crowd was, and still is, infectious—be it flying commercial or at the behest of exclusive private air travel. Whether it's Jackie O. elegantly stepping off Air Force One, Karl Lagerfeld strutting off his Chanel-adorned jet, or even glimpsing the elegant Pam Am stewardesses of yesteryear, it's clear that air travel as been at the forefront of luxury, culture, and technology since the beginning of the "jet age" in the 1940s and '50s. Chronicling that fascinating evolution, this striking volume will allow you to live vicariously through these glitzy jet-setters while also providing some insightful cultural aviation history.

Christina Seely: Lux, Radius Books, 60 USD

For artist Christina Seely, the beauty of what light represents is simple: "Light itself no matter its source is visually seductive, so it serves as an apt tool to draw the viewer in," she tells us. With a project undertaken between 2005 and 2010, Seely chose to focus on and document the man-made, artificial light in 45 cities across the world-specifically, cities that are the most illuminated on NASA's maps of the earth at night. The resulting photographs, on top of being visually striking, provide an underlying theme of the global ramifications of consumption and progress.

"When I started Lux I had long been in search of a direct and poetic way to address the complexity of our relationship to the natural world," she continues. "I have mostly lived a split life between landscape and city and was living in Manhattan at the time, so I wanted to find a way to talk about our relationship to the natural world and not exclude the city from this conversation. I did not want to specifically vilify the city or the play between city and nature, but to draw attention to this relationship, to the edges of both."

Bettina Rheims, Taschen, 700 USD

The French-born Bettina Rheims has been a provocative and unpredictable tour de force in the photography world since she rose to prominence in the 1970s. Having a penchant for capturing the dissonance between beauty and imperfection, she has photographed some of the most famous women in the world who embody her interest in female fragility and strength, including Kate Moss Madonna, Monica Bellucci, and Claudia Schiffer. Serving as a collector's edition, this volume showcases more than 500 photos from Rheims' vast body of work, and each has been personally selected and assembled by the photographer herself. But please note, you can't help but feel a bit erotic when you're finished reading it.

Berghain 10, Hatje Cantz, 60 USD

If you've been to Berlin and love dancing and simply having a good hedonistic time, there's a fair chance you've attempted to gain admission to the legendary X-rated nightclub Berghain. Adding to its inherent mystique, absolutely no photography of any kind is allowed inside (if you're lucky enough to get in, that is) and journalists are rarely granted access to the former power plant's interior. So if there are few photos and even fewer descriptive articles, what's the next best thing? This volume, perhaps, which celebrates Berghain's 10th anniversary and features a handful of artists' work (including Sven Marquardt, Sarah Schönfeld, and Piotr Nathan) installed on the club's raw concrete walls, giving you a little taste of the inside. 

Lois Greenfield: Moving Still, Chronicle Books, 60 USD

For American photographer Lois Greenfield, capturing the unique energy and grace of gifted dancers is more than just seeing a body in motion. "I am far more interested in the expressive potential of dancers improvising for the camera than I am in documenting choreography," Greenfield tells us. "I like to create enigmatic scenarios that confound the viewer, but that the viewer knows, or suspects, really happened." Whether the dancers are soaring, balancing, or bending, the gravity-defying images beautifully capture the purity and exhilaration of movement.

The volume chronicles Greenfield's work from the past two decades, but she officially began her fruitful career as a newspaper photographer in the 1970s. "Among my mix of assignments was to shoot dance performances," she says. "At first I was drawn to the obvious photogeneity of dance imagery, and found that I preferred not having to tell a story with an editorial point of view. All a dance photo had to be was visually interesting. Soon, however, I realized that I didn't want to document someone else's art form. Instead, I wanted to instigate unique moments that could only be seen with the split second timing of a photograph. I set out to create a hybrid, one that fused the two antithetical art forms." The results, dare we say, are nothing but stunning.