I know, I know, it’s still November, there’s more than a month to go before Christmas. So why is everyone already in a rush?
Well, if you want to surprise your friends with something a bit more thoughtful than a pair of socks, and definitely more unique than the latest bestseller stacked by the supermarket tills, now is the right time to start. Especially if you’re thinking of gifting a niche title from the wonderful world of beautifully designed street art books, and especially if it’s a print-on-demand book like mine.
Because let’s be honest: books make the best gifts.
And when they’re about street art and graffiti, they become more than just books; they’re archives of artworks and stories that once lived on city walls.
A good street art book can travel through time and places, documenting art pieces that are no longer there in the street, or simply remind someone of a shared passion.
So here’s a selection of titles that I love, collect, and often return to, starting, of course, with my own series, a project that’s still growing, one city at a time.
📚 And here’s a tip: start a new Christmas tradition. 🎄
If you gift one book from my As Seen on the Streets of… series this year, next year you can simply add the next city to the collection. Problem solved, you’ve basically cracked every future Christmas gift. 😁 😂
As Seen on the Streets of London
As Seen on the Streets of London isn’t just a collection of murals; it’s a deep dive into the stories, neighborhoods, and artists that shape one of the most dynamic street art scenes in the world.
Each photograph is accompanied by context, history, location, and the kind of insights that only local street artists can offer. The book reflects my personal experiences and in-depth research, enriched by the voices of eleven London-based artists who generously shared their favorite neighborhoods, secret corners, go-to spots, and honest thoughts on the city’s urban art scene. Unlike the Paris edition, this book also features shorter contributions from many other artists, creating a rich mosaic of perspectives.
Printed on high-quality paper, it’s as much a pleasure to read as it is to leaf through, a carefully curated mix of narrative and photography that takes you from hidden corners to iconic walls.
Whether you’re an art lover or simply curious about the city’s creative pulse, this book offers an authentic, insider look at London’s street art culture. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who loves to explore cities off the beaten path: beautifully photographed, thoughtfully written, and impossible to put down.
As Seen on the Streets of Paris
If you’ve ever wanted to explore Paris through its walls rather than its landmarks, this book is for you. As Seen on the Streets of Paris combines high-quality photography with storytelling, offering both visual pleasure and meaningful context. It’s not just about beautiful murals, but about the neighborhoods, the artists, and the everyday stories unfolding across the city’s walls.
It’s the kind of book that gives art lovers and travelers alike a fresh perspective on the city — one far removed from the postcards. Its local insights come through interviews with thirteen Paris-based street artists, who share their favorite spots and honest thoughts on the scene.
This is the first book in our independent, self-published series As Seen on the Streets of… — the “number zero” edition and the foundation of the collection you’ll keep growing, Christmas after Christmas.
Full disclosure:
All the book recommendations in this newsletter come from my heart and my shelves. They’re not paid placements.
For this article, I’m partnering with Le Grand Jeu, an independent bookshop dedicated to graffiti and street art. If you buy through the links below, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
This helps me keep creating independent content and supports real bookshops, the kind that are genuinely rooted in the scene, that back small publishers, and that care about both the books and the culture behind them.
When you buy from a big retailer like Amazon instead, you’re often feeding a system that overlooks the grassroots of street culture.
Best Self-Published Street Art Books
It only now occurs to me that all the three books I’ve selected in this section are documentation of ephemeral exhibitions organized inside abandoned spaces. That’s probably because one of the main values of a “street art book” is exactly this: documenting what’s ephemeral, either in the streets or in even more striking locations like abandoned places.
Peramo Collective, Peramo: A Collective Project (2025)
This book is the counterpart to the documentary I told you about last year, Outer Space Kids. Both the film and the book follow local artist Sotiris and his crew, known as OSK (hence the film’s title), as they take over an abandoned factory in Pyrgos, in the northwestern Peloponnese (Greece). The collective embraced this vast post-industrial site as their canvas, turning 17,000 square meters of crumbling walls into an experimental studio space, free from the constraints of galleries.
Their monochromatic, figurative works stood apart from the typical graffiti found in abandoned places. Guided by a DIY ethos, the OSK crew cleared and repaired the site, ultimately opening it to the public for 2001, an unsanctioned exhibition entirely self-organized and independent of institutions.
SNIK, Ephemeral: A Project by SNIK (2021)
Produced by the art publishing company founded by Nik of SNIK, the British duo known for their precise hand-cut stencils, this book brings together works created before and during lockdown for the twin exhibitions Ephemeral Part I and Ephemeral Part II, held in the south and north of England.
The book explores SNIK’s recurring theme of transience, both in their subjects and in the fleeting nature of street art itself. Their ethereal portraits and dreamlike scenes are created using intricate multilayered stencils that reveal a distinctive halftone texture. Through this technique, they explore beauty in decay, the impermanence of nature, and the inevitability of change. Flowers and plants, as fragile as the paper used for their stencils, often appear as symbols of this delicacy.
Ephemeral also reflects a very specific moment in time, when the arts were on hold during the pandemic. The second exhibition, staged in a decaying, undisclosed warehouse in the north of England, was never open to the public. The photographs in this book are the only trace of that show, a quiet testament to SNIK’s fascination with impermanence.
My Dog Sighs, Inside (2021)
A beautifully crafted hardcover photography book documenting the 18 months it took My Dog Sighs to create his independent, crowdfunded, immersive exhibition Inside. From the moment Paul first stepped into the 3,000 sqm abandoned Grosvenor Casino in Portsmouth to the day visitors finally wandered through this monumental installation in summer 2020, the book captures every stage of the process.
With Inside, Paul moved from transforming forgotten objects into artworks to breathing new life into an entire derelict building, through sculptures, murals, and sound and light installations inspired by a time when street artists were invisible ghosts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t visit the exhibition because of Covid travel restrictions, but I discussed it with Paul in this youtube video.
Best Street Artist Monographs
Sainer, Kolorytm (BD Gallery, 2025)
A visually striking catalog accompanying the first solo exhibition in which Polish muralist Sainer (formerly one half of the Etam Cru duo) explored a new visual language through studies of color, landscape, and nature.
Even during his graffiti years, Sainer stood out for his exceptional use of color, and the creative journey documented in Kolorytm is a fascinating continuation of that exploration. In his recent works, color becomes the narrator, guiding the viewer through compositions where each tone takes on meaning and emotional weight. The artist transforms a given color into a main motif, reducing forms to their essence and allowing hue and shape to speak in place of realism.
Add Fuel, ADD FUEL (Underdogs, 2025)
This is the street art book for that friend who already owns every other one — it has just been released. The 7th volume in the series produced by Underdogs Gallery, this beautifully crafted monograph is dedicated to Add Fuel, the Portuguese artist known for his reinterpretation of traditional azulejos infused with pop art and skate culture references.
The book offers an in-depth look into Add Fuel’s intricate visual world, where layers of patterns and symbols collide, revealing the humor, precision, and cultural playfulness that define his art. A must-have for anyone fascinated by the dialogue between heritage and contemporary street expression.
Murmure Street, L’art d’être engagé (2025)
Written in French but primarily visual, this beautifully produced book documents the work of the Murmure duo, active since 2010. Through canvases, murals, and paste-ups, their art reflects on society and its contradictions, addressing environmental, social, and economic issues with a sharp, poetic tone.
Across every medium, their work carries a distinctive graphic style that merges hyperrealism and surrealism, inviting viewers to pause, reflect, and question the world around them.
RUN, Time Traveller Artist Man (2015)
A gem from the past, this ten-year-old book has become a collector’s piece, documenting the street work of Italian artist Giacomo Bufarini, better known as RUN, up to 2015. During those years, RUN painted in some of London’s most renowned spots, took part in international festivals, and exhibited in prestigious galleries, while also bringing his art to China, Africa, and the United States.
One of the pioneers of Italian street art, RUN was among the first to introduce a figurative aesthetic to mural painting in Italy in the early 2000s. Based in London since 2007, he is also one of the main featured artists in our London street art book.
Best Scholarly Street Art Books
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art (2016)
This book appears in the bibliography section of nearly all my own publications, and for good reason. It’s often considered the graffiti and street art bible, covering everything from ancient and hobo graffiti to how the art form has shaped today’s contemporary art market.
A comprehensive and well-rounded collection of academic essays by leading scholars in the field, it spans an extraordinary range of topics: gang and American Indian graffiti, psychology, gender dynamics, copyright law, and regional differences in style and practice, among many others.
It’s an essential reference for anyone who wants to dive deep into the culture. Every aspect of graffiti and street art is explored here through the lenses of political science, psychology, criminology, art theory, ethnography, photography, and sociology.
Rafael Schacter, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (2024)
Rafael Schacter redefines graffiti as a “monument,” a public reminder that marks presence and speaks collectively. Structured around the ideas of form, message, and trace, the book moves through space and appearance, body and visibility, temporality and sociality. Grounded in decades of research, Monumental Graffiti reveals how this art form reclaims public space and challenges who gets to be seen and heard in the city.
Lachlan MacDowall, Instafame: Graffiti and Street Art in the Instagram Era (2019)
Drawing on more than 23 million pieces of public data from Instagram, Lachlan MacDowall offers a fascinating analysis of how social media has reshaped the creation, distribution, and reception of graffiti and street art.
He compares Instagram’s endless scroll to the experience of viewing graffiti from a moving train, a continuous stream of fleeting visuals. According to MacDowall, this visual rhythm mirrors the aesthetic of graffiti itself, where visibility and immediacy are key.
By aligning with the logic of social media, graffiti and street art have entered a new era of digital fame. Once hyperlocal and ephemeral, they now circulate globally, redefining what it means to see street art in the twenty-first century.
Remi Rough, Future Language of the Ikonoklast: A Visual History of the Ikonoklast Movement 1989–2024 (2025)
Not exactly a scholarly read, but more of a history book on UK graffiti written by one of its key protagonists, Remi Rough (who also happens to be one of the voices featured in our London street art book).
The Ikonoklast Movement, founded by JUICE126, brought together several graffiti writers who reinterpreted, both stylistically and conceptually, what had been imported from New York in the 1980s, giving it a distinctly British flavour.
Highly visual, the book features over three decades of archival photos by the artists themselves, along with the movement’s manifesto, letters, flyers, sketches, and other behind-the-walls material.
Good to know: the copies available at Le Grand Jeu are autographed by the artist.
Best Street Art Books Centered on a City
Josh Jones, The Dragon Bar: 1998 – 2008
As Dotmaster also recalls in our book on London’s street art, The Dragon Bar was the place where all the street artists would gather, one of the defining underground hotspots of the London scene. The book The Dragon Bar 1998–2008 pays tribute to this long-gone but not forgotten venue, featuring interviews with Banksy, Faile, INVADER, Mode 2, EINE, Sweet Toof, and many others.
Derek Ridgers, Punk London 1977
If you are fascinated by London Punks you should have this book Punk London 1977: the Roxy, the Vortex, Kings Road, and beyond by photographer Derek Ridgers.
That’s all, folks!
My aim with this listicle was simply to help you find the perfect gift for the street art lovers in your life (yourself included).
Let me know if I’ve succeeded, I’d love to hear which titles will end up wrapped under your Christmas tree 🎁
