This is the first publication in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's series 'The Photobook: A History', providing an in depth study into the phenomenon of the photobook.

The Photobook provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the photobook: from its inception at the dawn of photography in the early nineteenth century through to the radical Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and 70s, by way of the Modernist and propaganda books of the 1930s and 40s.