Slideshow: The Best Photo Books of 2008

Planet Shanghai
by Justin Guariglia (Chronicle Books, $25)
It's rare for documentary photography to do its work with wit and whimsy. National Geographic contributor Justin Guariglia accomplishes that in this study of Shanghai's street life, food, and couture. Mostly color portraits sequenced with found still lifes, Guariglia's photographs are not the usual images of faceless urban explosion. Instead, he probes cultural quirks, such as the recent taste for wearing pajamas in public. In such pictures, we see individuals challenging, carefully, the status quo of China's controlled society. -- r.h.