First and foremost, photographs describe surfaces. Although lingering on texture and tonal gradations, their meanings always extend, expand, and multiply beyond what they show and the surfaces to which they attend. Yet how does a photograph describe the surface of New York City?

Given how little images can actually do, it is often surprising how much we expect of them. We pin our hopes on them to reveal and transform, to mitigate injustice and make the world a better place.

Eloquently balancing hope and somber despair, Chris Killip’s large-format black-and-white work grapples with the fragility and strength of community in the face of economic change, governmental indifference, and outright hostility.

The Rail’s selection of the best art books of 2014.

The task of the photographer in examining the effects of war has become increasingly problematic. At a time when cell phones, video, and social media dominate the coverage of events, the heroic model of the photojournalist braving the front lines has lost its relevance and forced artists and documentarians to look for alternative approaches to scrutinize conflict.

It was almost 10 years after Gerald Ford told New York City to drop dead that a young Ken Schles picked up a camera and began to document his life in the East Village and Alphabet City.

One of the pivotal figures of 20th-century photography, Walker Evans’s austere and formally precise images of the American vernacular helped define a stylistic approach to photography that continues to resonate with contemporary artists.

Since the late 1960s, Robert Adams has documented the American West with a consistency and clarity that is rare for photographers. From his influential photography books to his writings, Adams has produced a complex body of work about the land we live in and inspired several generations of photographers.

At the time of writing this review, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics are poised to commence. While much of the media in the United States is focused on the homophobic policies of Putin’s Russia, little attention is paid to the two recent suicide bombings in Russia’s Northern Caucasus region, or the astronomical cost of the games themselves.

For many young photographers in the ’70s and ’80s, Winogrand was a mythic figure. The territory Winogrand carved first in the streets of Manhattan, and later in the rodeos of Texas, the airports of New York City, and the open streets of Los Angeles, helped established a photographic language of spontaneous engagement with the world.

Mårten Lange’s Another Language is the latest book published by the increasingly influential photobook publisher MACK. While Lange has self-published numerous books, this is his first by a major publisher and an exciting addition to the young photographer’s growing body of work.

In the mid-20th century, photographers such as Garry Winogrand, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, and Helen Levitt captured the vitality of the modern city and helped define the genre of “street photography.”

In the late 1950s, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate carved a bloody trail of mayhem across the plains of Nebraska and Wyoming. At the end of their three-day killing spree, more than 10 people lay dead, including Fugate’s family.

Guidi is a photographer whose gritty Neorealist-influenced documentary work is little known and underappreciated in the United States. Working in the tradition of Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and Stephen Shore, Guidi’s large format color photographs are full of surprises and pictorial sophistication.