All I want for Christmas...

Lauren: On top of my list is the Polaroid Snowman print by Kurt Tong. I love all of Kurt's work and think this one is particularly unique and unusual - the perfect addition to my small collection of photography. Christian Lutz's book on oil executives in Nigeria, Tropical Gift, is also high up on my list. We published this as a feature in the new issue (The Legacy of Oil) as it's unlike any other work done on the subject, with an extremely sinister undertone. Other books I am coveting for my shelf are Geoff Dyer's Working the Room and Peter Maass' Crude World (as I can't seem to escape the oil theme). In terms of giving gifts, I would buy Chris Steele-Perkins' print of boys practising baseball with Mt Fuji in the background for my dad, who is a baseball fanatic.


Anna: If I could have a Foto8-Christmas-wish I would ask for the Kate Peters print Shoe Tree, Middlegate because I find it very intruiging and it would look great on the wall in my dining room. If I had to choose something to give to someone else I would choose a signed copy of Motherland by Simon Roberts. It's a book I personally really like and I think having a signed copy of any book you like is something special.


Max: I'd like to ask Santa for Working the Room by Geoff Dyer. Books of essays are multifunctional during holiday periods: it looks like you're working when really you're being fabulously entertained, albeit in a mind-improving way. Geoff Dyer is such an original thinker, combining insight and lightness of touch, so I can't wait to read him on my favourite author W G Sebald. I'd also like to dip into the Gerry Badger book The Genius of Photography, in a Terry's All Gold kind of way. Print-wise, I'd like the chill that emanates from Chris Morris's Field Agent hanging in my hall to dispel any uninvited carol singers.




Leo: I saw Restrepo recently and was very moved and so Tim Hetherington's Infidel, his still photographs from the same embed, is at the top of my list. Hetherington's "war photography" shows a great humanism, which is the best anyone can hope for. I'd love to have a copy of Larry Towell's The World From My Front Porch for similar reasons. I am always interested in histories of photography that acknowledge contradictions rather than making a clean line. After hearing Geoff Dyer's HOST podcast I'm very curious about both Working the Room, his collected essays, and his earlier The Ongoing Moment. A gift recommendation: 10: 10 Years of In Public is a terrific book for a lover of street photography (and who does not love street photography?). It's also accessible to someone you know who doesn't look at a lot of photography books. In fact it might be the book that makes someone say "Aha, now I am starting to see what you have been going on about!"


Harry: I'd like to get Yann Gross's book Kitintale, as it's a great example of where photo book publishing is exciting right now – a small print run, on newspaper, and beautifully packaged. Not only is this a collectible book from an incredibly interesting rising star of documentary-based work, but it tells a fantastic, yet humble story.

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