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From formal studio shots to relaxed family groups and images taken outside, this comprehensive guide explores a range of portraiture styles, explaining how to work with subjects of different ages, encourage natural poses and expressions, and create a sense of atmosphere.

Originating from an exhibition at the Weiss Gallery in London, Artfully Dressed is an ongoing project that highlights the role of women in the art world and empowers them through portraiture. The 300 sitters in this volume were photographed by Carla van de Puttelaar in a manner reminiscent of Old Masters – naturally lit against a dark background and often sumptuously clothed – and represent a range of cultural backgrounds, nationalities, ages and professions.

Starting out as photographer for jazz label Artists House in the late 1970s, Deborah Feingold graduated to Musician magazine and was soon photographing the leading names in the industry for Rolling Stone, Time and Newsweek. This collection of her best work includes portraits of Madonna, Bono and Prince.

Slightly off-mint

In February 1969 Rolling Stone magazine published a special issue dedicated to ‘the Groupies and other girls’, revealing a world of liberation and self-expression among women who had attached themselves to the music scene. Reprinting the classic articles and images from that issue, this photographic portfolio features chief photographer Baron Wolman’s celebrated portraits, with additional and previously unpublished out-takes and contact sheets as well as recent interviews with several of the women.

Documenting the life of Buddhism’s spiritual centres in the 21st century, this collection of photographs follows the religion’s geographical expansion from its origins in northern India to Indonesia in the south and Japan in the east. The journey takes in famous sites including Shaolin, with its legendary Kung Fu monks, and the temple of Angkor Wat, in addition to mountain landscapes, Buddha statues of many sizes and scenes of pilgrimage and monastic activity.

At the Monterey Festival in June 1967 a German photographer told Ed Caraeff, ‘save some film for this Jimi Hendrix cat’; among the photographs that Caraeff took that day was the famous image of Hendrix setting fire to his guitar. From that summer to the Newport ’69 festival, this volume of photographs follows the iconic guitarist and his band as they played gigs across America.

Based on the photography collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, each book in this series illuminates a facet of 20th-century African American history through 50–60 photographs, with brief captions and curators’ commentaries.From children picking cotton in 1895 to a young boy checking Barack Obama’s hair in the Oval Office in 2009, these images reflect on the past experience of African American children and the evolving concept of childhood.

Principal at the Royal Ballet for 20 years, Darcey Bussell collaborated with the leading figures of the ballet world as well as moving beyond her sphere into other forms of dance, fashion and advertising. Including the work of leading photographers such as Anthony Snowdon, Mario Testino and Annie Leibowitz, this portfolio traces her career from the young soloist in rehearsal to the international star of fashion shoots and television. Slightly off-mint.

The Barabaig are nomadic cattle herders in north central Tanzania, but the land development of recent decades has eroded their territory and threatens their survival. In the 1980s, as part of a project to highlight the threat, Charles Lane lived among the people for two years and has campaigned on their behalf ever since. Recounting his personal experiences, this photographic volume paints a portrait of their culture and lifestyle.

Using a large format Polaroid camera, the documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark travelled to 13 schools across the USA in 2006–09, capturing images of teenagers at their traditional American rite-of-passage.

The celebrated photographer Brian Duffy collaborated with David Bowie during the 1970s, helping to create his highly influential album artwork. The images in this catalogue, which was inspired by the V&A’s ‘David Bowie is’ exhibition, are supported by the recollections of people who worked on the shoots.

Jerry Dantzic was commissioned to photograph Billie Holiday during a week-long engagement at Sugar Hill jazz club in Newark, New Jersey, in 1957. Allowed into her inner circle, Dantzic was able to capture intimate moments backstage and at the singer's Manhattan apartment, as well as atmospheric shots of her performances. The 100 images in this portfolio present a poignant portrait of the troubled star two years before her death at the age of 44.

When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, it was not only the city’s art treasures that aroused their greed, but the belongings of ordinary people, especially Jews. A photograph album discovered in German archives systematically recorded the pillage. Reproduced here with an informative commentary, it offers a chilling insight into the relation between greed and mass destruction, as furniture, toys, saucepans and bedlinen are loaded into crates and trucks by Nazi officers, French collaborators and prisoners from the camps.

From the success of Roman Holiday in 1953, the arrival of the film industry in Rome and the release of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in 1960, a new breed of celebrity-scoop photographers emerged, the paparazzi, with Elio Sorci at the forefront. A virtual who’s who of 1960s and 1970s cinema, this portfolio of Sorci’s work includes his famous ‘kissing picture’ that confirmed the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra.

The photographer Cristian Barnett travelled eastward from Alaska, through Canada, Greenland and the countries of Scandinavia, completing the Arctic Circle in Russia, and capturing images of life and work along 'the line where each year there is one day when the sun does not set, and one when the sun does not rise'. Accompanying the portfolio of 182 colour photographs are an interview in which Barnett talks about his northern journeys and an Alaskan resident's reflections on the Arctic year.

Destined for the limelight from childhood, Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) was just twelve when National Velvet made her a star. And while later films such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) established her depth and power as an actress, she was better known for her many marriages and passion for diamonds. Illustrated with photographs, this handsome book charts her life and career, her turbulent relationship with Richard Burton, and her charity work. Off-mint.

'Never act with children or animals,' they say, but many of Hollywood's greatest stars were only too happy to be captured on film with their feline companions. This collection of over 100 vintage photographs offers a glimpse of such luminaries as Dirk Bogarde, Marlon Brando, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Jayne Mansfield, Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor in charming unguarded moments with their beloved pets, as well as the nameless strays who ruled the studios.