Gibson Thornley Architects - V&A Photography Centre - Photography and the Book - Gallery 98 © Thomas Adank

Photography books have long been a source of delight for Sofia Coppola. When the American filmmaker, known for sumptuously atmospheric tales of self-discovery such as The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, is in search of inspiration, she browses the photobooks on her shelves.

Coppola traces her love of photography to the fashion magazines she would page through as a teenager in the 1980s. Her appreciation deepened while attending art fairs with her mother, who encouraged her to collect photography. In the 1990s, she frequently visited the Los Angeles art bookshop Arcana, where she first encountered some of the books in her selection.

Like cinema, photobooks offer an immersive experience of sequenced images that unfold over time. They are products of collaboration – between photographers, editors, writers, designers and publishers – just as films are. The books on Coppola’s shelf echo many of the motifs of her films: the dreamy palette of 1970s colour photography, adolescence and girlhood, domestic intimacy, and a fascination with fashion and performance.

Discover the books that have inspired Sophia Coppola on a bookshelf in The Kusuma Gallery at the V&A’s Photography Centre. For this display, Coppola personally selected her favourite volumes. Visitors can turn their pages, immersing themselves in images that have helped shape Coppola’s singular vision.

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