Image-sharing and social media are driving an unprecedented boom in audiences for photography. Underscoring this trend, the world’s biggest museum space for the presentation of photography opened this year: the Pritzker Center for Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art devotes over 15,000 square feet to the medium.

As the New York Times commented in 2013, Museum directors are realizing that photography exhibitions attract crowds, particularly the young audiences they covet, so they are giving more attention and space to the medium than ever before. And, whether or not this is the best reason for doing it, it’s about time too, some will feel.

In 10 Must Reads: Contemporary Photography, we’ve drawn on the content of our contemporary photography titles to curate a range of thought-provoking essays on contemporary photography. You’ll find insights from curators, academics and practising photographers into the work of a cross-section of today’s photographers, well-known and lesser-known alike. The work of such luminaries as Tacita Dean, Robert Frank, Daido Moriyama, Richard Mosse, Ed Ruscha, Fiona Tan, Garry Winogrand and Francesca Woodman is closely examined and set in context.

Among the varied perspectives are considerations of many timely themes and issues: from street photography, through found photography, to photobooks and alternative methods of presentation.