One of our lead titles for August is a novel. Anyone keeping up with the contemporary Scottish novel will know what a great writer James Robertson is. In his latest novel And the Land Lay Still to be published on 5 August, two of the leading characters are photographers. Michael Pendreich is curating an exhibition of photographs by his late, celebrated father Angus for the National Gallery of Photography in Edinburgh. The show will cover fifty years of Scottish life but, as he arranges the images and writes his catalogue essay, what story is Michael really trying to tell: his father's, his own or that of Scotland itself? The novel was very favourably reviewed by Irvine Welsh: “he maintains the pace and luminous prose that make his books such a joy to read. And the Land Lay Still is a wonderful novel, brilliant in a very different way from its acclaimed predecessor, The Testament of Gideon Mack. The book represents nothing less than a landmark for the novel in Scotland.” (For full review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/24/land-lay-still-james-robertson)

'Zelluloid is dedicated to a particular genre of artistic film, in which the image is generated directly, by physically processing the film strip. Unlike other forms of experimental film, the film material is interpreted as if it were a canvas by using a diverse range of artistic processes: through painting, drawing, collage on the celluloid, scores and scratches in the photographic emulsion, chemical manipulation or the direct lighting of photo-sensitive media.'

'This catalogue, arranged and designed by Tillmans himself, brings together the whole range of his oeuvre in all its diversity: portrait, landscape, and still life photography alongside abstract and random pieces, colour-saturated works, and experiments with process, forming a kind of meta art work, with a rhythm and logic of its own.'

Galen Rowell’s influential Inner Game of Outdoor Photography is now available in paperback for the first time. "This is an essential source of inspiration by one of the masters of creative nature photography” (BBC Wildlife magazine).

'A few years ago in the archives of the William Eggleston Artistic Trust in Memphis, a box was found containing Eggleston’s earliest photography – remarkably in black and white. The photos were subsequently exhibited at Cheim & Read gallery in New York and sold. This book reunites these photos in their entirety, and shows the artistic beginnings of a pioneer of contemporary photography.'

Simon’s previous work An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar catapulted her to international fame. Her new book promises to be similarly quirky. Contraband includes photographs of over 1000 items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad. Over five days, Simon documented items including counterfeit American Express travelers checks, overproof Jamaican rum, heroin, a dead hawk, an illegal Mexican passport, deer penis, purses made from endangered species, Cuban cigars, counterfeit Disney DVDs, gold dust, cow manure tooth powder and an ostrich egg. To view images from this book go to the Steidl website.

'Guy Bourdin’s vivid, narrative-infused work placed him at the vanguard of fashion photography for a career that spanned four decades. From his first provocative editorial feature in 1955, capturing haute couture alongside butchered cow heads, Guy Bourdin pushed the limits of fashion photography into foreign territory. In Between delves into that career, charting the course of his artistic development from the 1950s into the 1980s with over 200 exceptional images in black and white and color.'

Edward Steichen was one of the world's greatest photographers, celebrated for his black-and-white images - particularly his Family of Man exhibition. But he was also an innovator in colour photography who created magnificent autochromes, an early glass-plate color process that yields a unique print. This exceptional volume pays tribute to Steichen's rare and in some cases never-before-seen color work.